Stuck LiquiGels

Chaplain Bill Wolfe

Llano County Sheriff’s Department

Hello, and welcome to the Chaplain’s Corner. You can tell by the title that this month’s column is going to be a bit different. As I sat down to start writing, my wife was having trouble getting her Advil LiquiGels to come out of the bottle. Although it was a brand new bottle, the LiquiGels were stuck together. She jokingly suggested I write about it. Well, it took about 10 seconds to find an illustration in that situation. J

Hmmm…toying with an idea here: whether or not to ask my readers to describe something to me, and see if I can “find a sermon in there.” OK…let’s go for it and see if we can have a little fun. I will set some limits, however. For this, let’s stay away from trauma and tragedy, and let’s not play “try to embarrass the Chaplain.” Fair enough? (I heard you guys in vice say “Awww…he’s no fun.”) I’m having a bit of trouble with my “chappy” email address this weekend, so if you want to send a “challenge,” send it to lcso773@moment.net so that I will be sure of receiving it.

Now…back to the “Parable of the Advil” and the headache, I mean, article at hand. J I figure this makes for about a “5-point sermon.”

1. In this illustration, God is like Advil. Life isn’t fun all of the time. For a lot of us that’s an understatement. If we’ve lived long at all, life has brought us a myriad of “headaches” – some worse than others. Some we can simply ride out, and some just cause more pain than we care to (or are able to) deal with on our own. When those times come along, we reach for help. In each situation we face, God desires to be “a very present help in the time of trouble” (Ps. 46:1).

2. Relief is “in the bottle.” In our family, when we have a headache, we go looking for the Advil bottle, believing that we’ll find relief. That belief is rooted in what others have said it will do for us and in our history of receiving relief from taking Advil. The psalmist David asks and answers this question in Psalm 121: “From whence shall my help come? My help comes from the Lord.” He also has a history of receiving help from God: “For Thou has been my help” (Ps. 63:7).

3. Sometimes the LiquiGels don’t just fall out of the bottle. Because LiquiGels are designed to dissolve quickly, excess humidity can cause them to stick together, so it takes a little effort to get them out of the bottle. Sometimes our relationship with God isn’t what it should be. We get busy with life, preoccupied with other things. Then when life brings us a “headache” and we decide to bring it to the Lord, we have to expend a little effort to get relief. We may have to do a little soul-searching and a little repenting (ouch) – a philosophical “shaking the bottle,” if you will. Sometimes we have to tap the bottle a few times before that last LiquiGel comes loose. If you read through the Psalms, you’ll find numerous times where it wasn’t easy for David to hear God and find His answer to David’s problems.

4. We have a choice: Take the time necessary to get the LiquiGels out of the bottle, or live without the relief they can provide. When the LiquiGels won’t come out, we can put the bottle down and walk away, and our pain remains. We all have to decide for ourselves whether or not we’ll continue to seek God in prayer until He answers, even if that takes a little longer than we expect.

5. The relief is worth the effort; getting rid of the headache is worth having to “shake the bottle.” The writers of the Gospels record multiple instances where people had to expend a little time and/or effort to reach Jesus and tell Him about their need. But when the effort was made, these people did find relief from their suffering.

Whoa! I better quit – don’t want to make us late for shift change. I’ll let you go, but give it some thought, and I’ll catch you again next time.

Until then: Blessings to you and yours.

Chaplain Bill

chappy@chaplainscorner.org

lcso773@moment.net