Tongue-Bump Diversions

Colossians 1:21-23
"You yourselves are a case study of what he does. At one time you all had your backs turned to God, thinking rebellious thoughts of him, giving him trouble every chance you got. But now, by giving himself completely at the Cross, actually dying for you, Christ brought you over to God’s side and put your lives together, whole and holy in his presence. You don’t walk away from a gift like that! You stay grounded and steady in that bond of trust, constantly tuned in to the Message, careful not to be distracted or diverted. There is no other Message—just this one. Every creature under heaven gets this same Message. I, Paul, am a messenger of this Message."

Argh. The pain. The agony. The madness of those darn little bumps that you get on your tongue. Do you know what I'm talking about? They're not canker sores. Although we often call them this. More than anything, they're just an inflamed taste-bud. What causes the inflamation? Who knows? A virus maybe? Too much sugar? A Canadian plot to win the Stanley Cup? I'm sure that someone learned who reads these musings may be able to let us in on the secret origin of tongue-bumps. If so, please email me!

All I do know, is they are maddening. Whenever I get these stupid things, they make me crazy. They are such a distraction. I'm sitting in a meeting with a fresh tongue-bump, rearing its ugly bud, and I just can't help moving my tongue around inside my mouth, dragging the bump over my teeth, feeling it go in and out of the grooves and spaces in my teeth. Occasionally, it would catch in a gap, and the peaceful flow of our meeting would be interrupted by a quiet little "Ouch" from me. I'm supposed to be focused...paying attention, for goodness' sake. Someone has put in hard work to prepare for this important meeting that I'm in so the least I can do is give them the respect of paying attention, right? All I know is that when you've got a tongue-bump, your attention span for anything beyond the bump itself is minimal. Until the bump has faded from your mind as well as your tongue, you will continue to be diverted and distracted.

I remember getting them as a kid. I would whine and complain to my parents. And they would either tell me to "quit crying or I'll get something to cry about," or they would douse my tongue in Anbesol, helping me to speak with the grace of a dog with peanut-butter in its mouth. I remember when I got just a little older, like about ten years old or so. At about this age, my parents wouldn't dignify my whining with a response. If lucky, my mom would give me about this much sympathy: "Oh sweetie, I'm sorry...now go take out the garbage." Being a mature and responsible ten year old, I decided that I needed to take matters into my own hands. This problem needed to be taken care of, and I was going to have to be the one to do so.

I went to the bathroom. I stood in front of the mirror. I leaned in really close...so close, that my breath was fogging up the mirror. I stuck out my tongue. Aha! There's the culprit, I thought to myself. Now, what to do to rid myself of this evil? I opened the closet door in our bathroom. In there, one could find everything from hem-cool (Preparation H) to eyelash curlers, from baby-aspirin to Old Spice. Some of the implements we had hiding in that closet would've been useful to Dr. Frankenstein himself. There were some scary items there. I was too afraid to ask about some of them. I rummaged through the bric-a-brac within: toothpaste? Nope, that'll make it sting worse. Hey, what about some hydrogen peroxide? It always seems to work on little cuts to clean them out. Maybe it'll help my tongue-bump?

Okay dear friends, and trust me on this one, don't ever use hydrogen peroxide on your tongue. 'Nuff said.

I kept rummaging until I heard the angels singing Hallelujah, my hand came to rest on a pair of tweezers. Now, if you're squeamish, this is where you may want to close your eyes, because I'm guessing you might have an idea of what's coming next. With tweezers in hand, I returned to the mirror. I looked myself in the eye (you ever notice you can only look at one eye at a time? Sounds like another devotional topic, eh?). There was a look of firm resolution and determination there. It was much the same look that Clint Eastwood has when he's Dirty Harry and is about to draw his guns on some unsuspecting cowboy who has double-crossed him. With the look of Dirty Harry on my face, I steeled myself for what was to come. A tumbleweed blew by. I could hear someone whistling in a minor key off in the distance. My tweezer hand was gettin' itchy. It was time. I drew. I took the tweezers and grabbed for the tongue-bump. Zing. It slipped out of the tweezers. I tried again. Slip. By this time, I'm drooling all over the place, the pain in my tongue has gone from minor irritation to "Holy root canals, Batman!" I take a deep breath, calming my frayed nerves. I focus with the precision of a Zen master, wiping away the pain and all distractions from my sub-cortex. With a hand as steady as any bomb-squad expert about to clip the red wire, I take the tweezers, grab the tongue-bump, pull...

I screamed. The kind of scream that you see in a movie when they have a camera shot from outer-space which has zoomed in on the house, and then pulls back to outer-space, indicating that the scream can be heard 'round the world. Blood gushed forth from my tongue. The pain was unfathomable. I would later know that only shark bites, kidney stones, and bullet wounds hurt worse than when you rip a tongue-bump from your being. It hurt, but the bump was gone. And with a little help from my dear friend Anbesol, a couple of Tylenol, and a few hours of time, the pain had subsided to a dull ache. By the next day, all I felt was a little tickly kind of pain around the site of the wound.

But the bump was gone. It was no longer a distraction to me. It no longer diverted my attention from the important matters at hand: like what was that girl's name sitting three desks up from me to the right?

Sometimes, we are distracted and our attention is diverted from what matters most. Tongue-bump diversions stealing our focus, erasing the thoughts which form at the tip of our mind. One minute, they seemed so very important, the next, our attention is diverted and we can only grasp at the fading protein trails, which almost had the chance to form in our brains to create a memory.

Paul writes to the Colossian church and in this passage, he reminds them of the tremendous gift we have been given through the death of Jesus. It was through the Cross and Jesus' death thereon, that we are made whole and holy, that our rebelliousness fades into the memories of yesteryear, that our very sins are forgiven. But we are too easily diverted from the true impact of this gift on our lives. Tongue-bump diversions, making the real gift of Jesus nothing more than a warm-fuzzy.

Sometimes, we must actually rip these distractions and diversions from our lives. There is no other solution. They won't just go away by themselves. They won't fade with time, or if they do, the damage to the rest of our lives will already be done. Sometimes, we must steel ourselves for some pain, take a deep breath, say a prayer, and then rip the tongue-bump diversion from our being, creating immediate pain, but in the midst of that pain, an incredible focus on the real and true things of life.

As long as we are diverted from the true impact of Jesus' gift, we will never live as radical disciples, changing this very world through the power of God's Holy Spirit. We will be, as I like to say, Diet-Coke Christians...just one calorie. We will not be the "real thing." We will be imitation disciples, looking good on the outside, but not having any real power or zing. Jesus will just give us a warm-fuzzy feeling, rather than cause us to be revolutionary agents of change in a hurting world. I believe that Satan's greatest victory is convincing us that he does not exist. But running a close second, is when he is able to distract and divert us from the real impact of the gift that Jesus gave us on the Cross. For when he does that, we become children playing at church.

Do you want to play church? Or do you want to be revolutionary, radical, sold-out, Real Thing disciples? Do you want to be cheap imitations, packing Nerf-ball blows, bouncing off with little or no effect? Or do you want to be totally sold out on Jesus, packing punches of power, changing this world by carrying a Message of even greater power to the least, the last, and the lost?

What distracts you from the real gift of Jesus, my friend? What diverts your attention from the wondrous gift which was given through the Cross? What is making Jesus nothing more than a warm-fuzzy to you?

I suggest you pray about it, my dear friend. I suggest you ask for God's help in removing this diversion from your life. I suggest also, that it may be that nothing short of actually ripping every vestige of the diversion from your being may be exactly what you'll need to do. And know this: it'll hurt. But the hurt will fade. And you can use the pain to refocus yourself on the Cross. You can use the pain to reenergize your sense of urgency in sharing the Message. You can use the pain as a reminder of how you were diverted from that to which you were called on the day Jesus found you, my dear friend.

What diverts your attention from the Cross of Jesus, and the gift which He gave through it? And how will you rid yourself of the diversion?

I'm praying for you today, my friend. I'm praying for courage to face up to the reality of your diversions. I'm praying for strength to go through with the extrication of your diversions. And I'm praying for healing for you, for when you extricate the diversion, you will be wounded. And maybe the wound will only be in your pride. But that's okay...God's healing is still available.

God loves you. Big time. And He showed that love to you through the gift of His Son's life on the Cross.

Do not be distracted and diverted from the real and true impact of that gift.

Be WILD For Christ!

Shane Burton