The Feeling Fine

A farmers son, who was about to begin his studies at medical

school said, "Dad, when I get to be a doctor, I think I'll specialize in

obstetrics." The old man shook his head and responded, "Likely

you'll be just wasting your time son. Chances are, soon as you begin

making money at it, somebody else'll find a cure for it." Ignorance

can be the basis for a lot of humor. A pastor was once visiting an

elderly woman in a nursing home, and as he talked to her he noticed

a dish of peanuts on the stand by her bed. As he talked, he helped

himself to the peanuts. After a while he noticed he had eaten a good

share of them and he apologized. The old woman said it was all

right because she didn't like peanuts anyway. The pastor was

surprised and asked, "Why then do you have them sitting here on

your stand?" She replied, "I just like to suck the chocolate off

them." Ignorance can be bliss,

but revelation can be gross.

Ignorance can be funny, but it is no fun when people risk their

own health and that of others out of ignorance. Ignorance is

probably the number one enemy of health in this world. Medical

missions has been a major part of the churches mission to the world

because pagan darkness leads people into so many practices that

destroy them body, mind, and soul. The Christian world has

compassion for the whole man, and so with the light of the Gospel

goes the light of the knowledge to bring good health. In our advance

Western culture we have overcome most of the problems of pagan

ignorance, but ignorance is still alive and well.

Back in 1928 women were working for the US Radium

Corporation painting radium on various articles like luminous clock

dials. They were instructed to moisten the brush in their mouth.

They became ill, and one even reported that her hair glowed in the

dark. Their health was damaged by ignorance, and we all know of

the modern problem with asbestos and chemicals of all kinds. There

is no way to know just how devastating human ignorance is to the

health of human lives. What we don't know is hurting us all the

time. But what we do know is helping us constantly to overcome the

ignorance that hurts us, and experience the health God intends for

us to have.

Feeling good is a good feeling and a feeling that God's Word says

is good. Here in the shortest book of the New Testament, with only

219 Greek words, and one of these words is health. It is the same

word Dr. Luke uses in Luke 5:31 where he quotes Jesus saying,

"These that are whole need not a physician." To be whole is to be

healthy, and when you are healthy you don't need the doctor. The

implication is that when you are not whole or healthy you do need

the doctor. Jesus, therefore, puts His stamp of approval on the

ambivalent feelings we have toward doctors. The poet put it-

When I am well and feeling fine,

And not a pain or ache is mine,

I brand the Doc the King of ills,

And laugh at all his sugar pills.

There is no merit, I contend,

In any dose you recommend.

Your punk advise is but a joke,

Designed to keep the people broke.

But when I'm sick and full of aches,

And get the shivers and the shakes,

Or when my stomach starts to rock,

I call upon my friend the Doc.

I praise him then and think him great,

And take his doses by the crate,

Until I'm fully cured--and then,

I tell him he is a joke again.

We are glad they are there, but we hope and pray we don't need

them, , for not needing them means we are feeling fine, and this is

the way we should want to feel. It is the way John wants his friend

Gaius to feel, and in wanting that he shows us-

I. THE CHRISTIAN ATTITUDE TOWARDS HEALTH.

It is an attitude of admiration. It is the ideal state of life, and is

the state in which God created Adam and Eve, and the state of the

risen and glorified humanity of Jesus. It is the state of perfect health

that is the goal of God for man. It is perfectly natural then that

John would pray for his friend to enjoy good health. That is the one

goal of life that all men have in common. Feeling fine is a fine

feeling, and nobody doesn't like feeling fine. Adam was made so

healthy that even after the fall he lived to the age of 930. His son