I was thinking this week how glaring things are when they’re big.
I had some really big kidney stones removed a year ago and had my follow up today.
“Good news! You have 3 kidney stones and they’re tiny!”
Ok. No, the doctor didn’t tell me it was good to have kidney stones still, but it was vastly more positive than my prognosis a year ago and I’ve been released to check again in another year.
Somehow, hearing that I have 3 tiny stones felt like the best news in the world! And yet:
I have 3 kidney stones.
In one kidney.
That has made massive stones before.
The big rocks that got blasted apart and removed from my body last year had started as tiny stones themselves. They were unknown and undetected for possibly years before causing pain and altering me forever. The evidence of surgery lives on in the scar left on my skin and in the trepidation I have when I eat peanut butter.
How often do our sins start out just as tiny? Something going slightly away from God and we don’t detect it. We get to the point where it feels normal to have distance from God in this area.
Until it causes pain. Gut-wrenching , soul-saddening pain.