My hope is not in essential oils…or Tylenol. My hope is in Christ.
We live in an age of quick fixes. Your head hurts? Turn to one person, and he’ll tell you to pop two Tylenol tablets. Turn to another, and she’ll give you the perfect essential oils to rub on yourself and drop into your diffuser. A third person will tell you to just visit the chiropractor.
Feel unexpected twinges in your side? WebMD has all the answers for you. (Just so you know, it’s probably cancer. Also, you can always tell which people spend too much time on WebMD!) Dietitians claim to fix all your problems, doctors come up with revolutionary procedures, and health experts (self-made or otherwise) can lecture for hours on the perfect way to find health and happiness.
All of these answers, though, are not the answer. My hope is not in essential oils. My hope is not in medicine. (Or even in doctors with many years of training.) It doesn’t rest on vaccines, or on the avoidance of vaccines. My hope is in Christ. He alone is the great healer.
Christ Our Healer
Is any one of you sick? He should call the elders of the church to pray over him and anoint him with oil in the name of the Lord. And the prayer offered in faith will restore the one who is sick…
James 5:14-15
Sometimes Jesus heals us directly. I know that He has healed me and others for whom I have prayed. Sometimes He also uses medicine, or essential oils, or chiropractors. But the most important thing that Christ heals us from is our sin. Our earthly weaknesses pale to nothing beside the mountainous burden of sin.
My hyperemesis gravidarum only lasts for the nine months of a pregnancy. Even cancer only lasts for a space of time in our mortal lives. But sin, sin’s burden will remain upon us after our deaths apart from Christ. Sin separates us from our holy, immaculate God. Sin fills us with hatred, jealousies, bitterness, depression, and sorrow. It rightly brings judgement down upon us. And there is only one cure. This cure is a Person, not a thing.
But he was pierced for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his wounds we are healed.
Isaiah 53:5, ESV
Is It Wrong to Use Medicine and Natural Remedies?
After we recognize that Christ is the only Healer, it’s true that sometimes we can get a bit lost in the weeds. My own grandmother worried on her deathbed that she might be going to hell, not because of her sin but because of her lack of sufficient faith to heal the cancer eating up her internal organs. My heart aches for the pain she must have felt, wondering if God would reject her for having such a “weak faith.”
God has given us gracious remedies in this life. We can enjoy them as blessings from His hand. However, we must learn to do this without putting our trust in the blessings instead of Christ.
Where is Your Hope?
Does your conversation always tend to be about your dietary rules? Your medical regimen? Your essential oils? Vaccines? Or Christ?
Too often our conversations get bogged down by the mundane. We find delight in preaching to others about everything small that fills our lives instead of glorifying the One Great Person who should be filling our life. I write now feeling convicted by my own petty conversational concerns.
It’s not wrong to talk about the small concerns. But we must weigh our conversations and ask, Do I ignore eternity and preach vaccines or essential oils instead of Christ and Him crucified?
For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be glory forever. Amen.
(Rom. 11:36)
