A cheerful heart is good medicine, but a crushed spirit dries up the bones. Proverbs 17:22
As many of you know I went through a traumatic health crisis in 2019. While my recovery continues, and I am at a point where I do not rely on the health care system on a daily basis, I will require some medical care for the rest of my life. As we age, and in reality the median age of the population is aging, we will be putting more stress on our health care system.
All over the news we hear of the stress and strain that the aging population is making on the system. There are not enough beds, doctors, nurses, or aides, etc to support the influx of people that require care. The system is sadly broken and no one knows how to repair it.
I know when I was in hospital, pre-Covid, I saw first hand a health care system in crisis! My interactions with nurses and aides showed me that they’re short staffed and overworked. Nurses who normally work 12 hour shifts were forced to work double shifts, so they had to work 24 hours in a row! How can this be safe or healthy for anyone? I am certain that at one point I was given a higher dose of a pain medication than I should’ve been given because it put me to sleep for over eight straight hours, and I never experienced that again. Was this an error made by a nurse due to being tired and stressed due to staff shortages? I will never know, but luckily I survived it.
If you’d like to send a little money to support my blog being published you can always support via PayPal: Donate to Shiny Side Up
We are told that our bodies are a temple: “Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own, for you were bought with a price.” 1 Corinthians 6:19-20 (ESV). If our bodies are a temple, as we are told it is, then we should treat it as such. We would never take anything unclean into a temple (or church) and therefore we shouldn’t take unclean things into our bodies. We all must make these choices and do so in our own time.
I have never been a “health nut” and I don’t eat healthy or exercise, but I do try to avoid putting things into my body that could really cause me harm. I quit smoking in 2011, even before I became a Christian. After my baptism in 2017 I made the choice to avoid all unclean foods as posted in Leviticus 11. Some of these items really cause health issues and with health issues, means we must access the health care system.
Sometimes though, as in my case with Guillain Barre Syndrome, ending up in the health care system is unavoidable. I spent seven months in hospital and am glad that the help was available to me. But if we make healthier choices in our lives then we would put less of a strain on the system in general and leave the system available for those who really need it.
God wants us to be healthy, and when Jesus returns and takes His followers with Him, there will be no more sickness or death. Heaven will be a glorious place of healthy and loving people. We can all be there together if we make healthy choices for both what we eat and do with our bodies, but also our minds. God wants us to focus on Him.
Our time on earth is short compared to eternity spent with God. And by spending time planning on spending that eternity, maybe we can reduce the strain on our earthly health care system because we could end up being much healthier people in general. Just a thought!
God bless
Shiny Side Up 