Seriousness

Going to the doctor can seem tedious as a child and even as a teen, but it might surprise you to find out how long it really takes people to actually start taking their health seriously. According to a survey of 2,000 adults in the United Kingdom, people don’t start seriously monitoring their health until the age of 38—and often only after some sort of health scare.

The study found that starting to experience new aches and pains or reaching a milestone birthday were also among the triggers that encouraged them to take better care of themselves. Others were prompted to take action after a loved one passed away or experienced a health issue.

Celebrities also play a part in making people take notice of their health. Around one in 30 admitted that a famous person suffering a medical problem shocked them into taking things more seriously.

Following the announcement that King Charles is undergoing treatment for an enlarged prostate, the U.K. National Health Service’s webpage about the condition received 11 times more visits than the previous day—resulting in one person visiting the site every five seconds.

Dr. Elizabeth Rogers says, “It can be very easy to disregard your health – particularly when you are young or you feel that everything is OK. Sometimes it can take a bit of a wake-up call before you start taking your health more seriously, whether that is falling ill yourself or seeing a loved one or even a well-known person experience an issue.”

The study also found that nearly half (45%) of adults didn’t take much notice at a younger age as they felt broadly fine and 25% felt that nothing bad would happen to them. In hindsight, 84% feel they took their health for granted when they were younger, and 39% regret not taking more care of their health before they reached their mid-twenties.

Dr. Rogers adds, “Making even small changes to your exercise regime or diet can make a real difference to both your physical and mental health, as well as helping to prevent future conditions developing.”

Possible Preaching Angle:

At the beginning of the New Year people begin to give attention to their physical health. We might also take this occasion to ask Christians, “When did you start to take your spiritual health seriously?” When you are young it is easy to feel that it really isn’t necessary and that you have plenty of time, but later in life you will certainly regret not developing healthy spiritual habits of Bible reading, prayer, and church attendance.

So, laughter really is the best medicine. A mere chuckle is enough to expand cardiac tissue and increase the flow of oxygen throughout the body, thus exercising a weakened heart, according to a new study.

Scientists in Brazil set out to prove that “laughter therapy” can improve cardiovascular health and ease symptoms of heart disease. Professor Marco Saffi said, “Our study found that laughter therapy increased the functional capacity of the cardiovascular system.”

Researchers looked at 26 adults, at an average age of 64 who had previously been diagnosed with coronary artery disease. Every week for three months, half of the group viewed comedy programs while the other half watched serious documentaries about topics such as the Amazon rainforest or politics.

Results showed that the group who watched comedies had a 10% advancement in the amount of oxygen the heart could pump into the body as well as an improvement in their arteries’ ability to expand. Blood testing also detected notable reductions in inflammatory biomarkers, which can indicate if people are at risk for heart attack or stroke and show how much plaque is built up in blood vessels.

It’s believed that laughter has this effect because it releases endorphins, which are needed to maintain healthy blood pressure and reduce strain on the heart by keeping stress hormones low. Saffi said, “This study found that laughter therapy is a good intervention that could help reduce that inflammation and decrease the risk of heart attack and stroke. People should try to do things that make them laugh at least twice a week. Laughing helps people feel happier overall.”

Possible Preaching Angle:

Scripture foretold these findings many years ago. We read in Proverbs, “A joyful heart is good medicine, but a crushed spirit dries up the bones” (Prov. 17:22). A happy heart produces good health, but a heavy spirit can drag you down.

The December 20, 2020 issue of The New Yorker harshly criticized the numerous Christian churches that don’t take the pandemic seriously and refuse to follow basic safety precautions. No statistics are available on how many churches comply and how many defy lockdown protocols, but the magazine did say:

In 2020, many churches realized that the best way they could love their neighbors was to temporarily shut their doors. Early in the pandemic, the National Association of Evangelicals and Christianity Today issued a statement calling on churches to close “out of a deep sense of responsibility for others.”

The article went into detail into the history of Christian compassion during past deadly pandemics. They referenced Rodney Stark and his book The Rise of Christianity:

Rudimentary nursing, in the form of providing food and water, likely led to dramatically better survival rates among Christians and those they cared for, which would have seemed nothing short of miraculous amid so much suffering and death. Starks argues that differing mortality rates would lead to further conversion opportunities. He points out that “the Christian way appeared to work.”

However, the current behavior of the defiant churches will inevitably hurt the faith:

The pandemic in 2020 has held a mirror to Christianity, just as the epidemics of antiquity did, but today’s reflection carries the potential to repulse rather than attract. ... Churches will have to reckon … with how much their collective witness––the term Christians use to describe their ability to point to Jesus in their lives––may have been diminished.

Possible Preaching Angle:

There is an obvious tension between government regulation and freedom of religion, between loving our neighbors and the politicization of aspects of the pandemic. Every church is responsible before God to consider how best to worship God corporately, how to keep our vulnerable members protected, all the while being mindful of our appearance before a watching world.

East Syracuse Minoa High field hockey coach Kate Harris challenged her players, who were all dedicated and focused, to loosen up a bit. Harris said, “I had called them ‘boring’ the other day. They are very quiet this year. I am used to having a very loud team. I pretty much told them to let their weirdness out.”

As a team, they formally accepted the challenge. Literally. At the start of one of the ensuing practices, the entire team showed up decked out in formal wear, wearing either shirts-and-ties or brightly colored prom dresses.

Senior Kodi Smith thought up the idea in the aftermath of a loss. Searching for a way to switch things up, she began texting her teammates, who then began texting back pictures of potential outfits to wear. Senior Olivia Grabowski said, “At first we were all like, is she being serious? It was definitely a joke at first. I’m happy that the joke turned into something happening.”

The practice turned into a prelude for their annual tradition of dressing up in costume for a Halloween practice, wherein players in different student classes pick themes with which to adhere and coordinate. After the success of their impromptu dress-up day, Smith acknowledges that it might be tough to raise the bar, creatively speaking. “The seniors have ideas. We’re going to figure it out. We’re going to go all out, definitely.”

Possible Preaching Angle:

Even in hard times, we do well to find ways to inject fun and levity into life, so that we are not too often overcome by grief and heaviness.

In his book My Name Is Asher Lev, Chaim Potok's main character is an awakening artist, beginning to see the world with a different perspective. The author captures a simple moment at a family dinner from the emerging artist's point of view:

That was the night I began to realize that something was happening to my eyes. I looked at my father and saw lines and planes I had never seen before. I could feel with my eyes. I could feel my eyes moving across the lines around his eyes and into and over the deep furrows on his forehead. He was thirty-five years old, and there were lines on his face and forehead. I could feel the lines with my eyes and feel, too, the long straight flat bridge of his nose and the clear darkness of his eyes and the strong thick curves of the red eyebrows and the thick red hair of his beard graying a little—I saw the stray gray strands in the tangle of hair below his lips. I could feel lines and points and planes. I could feel texture and color …. I felt myself flooded with the shapes and textures of the world around me. I closed my eyes. But I could still see that way inside my head. I was seeing with another pair of eyes that had suddenly come awake.

What if we changed the way we looked at people? What if we paid attention to people with a new set of eyes that "suddenly came awake"? Might we see the helpless and hopeless condition of people with whom we come into contact every day? Noticing may be the first step in bringing someone the good news about Jesus and the kingdom of God … We begin to see others, ourselves, and even God differently. People we never noticed before (because we never paid attention to them) quite suddenly matter to us in ways we can't explain.

According to one story (which may be a legend), in the late 1960s, the now-iconic investor Warren Buffet pried seed money for his very first stock fund from eleven doctors who'd agreed to kick in $105,000. Then, in a symbolic act of his own commitment, Buffet added $100 of his own money to the kitty. No one knows exactly when the phrase "skin in the game" entered the American lingo, but many pinned it on Buffet's willingness to plunk down his own $100. The now common phrase captures the essence of an investment of heart and courage and risk, not the mere investment of money.

The idea is simple: You have no business asking others to trust you with their money if you're not willing to put your own resources at risk. If you have no "skin in the game," no stake of vulnerability, then your engagement is distant and rhetorical rather than personal and visceral. We might play fast and loose with others' resources but not with our own. Put another way, it's one thing to work for an entrepreneur; it's quite another to be the entrepreneur. The first involves little personal investment; the second demands our heart, our time, our sacrifice, our Commitment, some real "skin."

In the 2013 film, Gravity, Dr. Ryan Stone, played by Sandra Bullock, is a medical engineer on her first shuttle mission, with veteran astronaut Matt Kowalsky, played by Georg Clooney. On a routine spacewalk, the shuttle is destroyed by a freak hail of space debris, leaving Stone and Kowalsky completely alone. According to one description of the film, "They are tethered to nothing but each other and spiraling out into the blackness. The deafening silence tells them they have lost any link to Earth ... and any chance for rescue. As fear turns to panic, every gulp of air eats away at what little oxygen is left. But the only way home may be to go further out into the terrifying expanse of space."

After the film's release, the German magazine Der Spiegel asked 69-year-old German astronaut Ulrich Walter to fact-check the film. Walter said that after becoming completely untethered, Sandra Bullock's character would have died. The interviewer commented, "That doesn't sound like a very nice way to go, drifting through nothingness in a spacesuit, waiting to die."

But Ulrich replied, "When you're slowly running out of oxygen, the same thing happens as does when you're in thin air at the top of a mountain: Everything seems funny. And as you're laughing about it, you slowly nod off. I experienced this phenomenon in an altitude chamber during my training as an astronaut. At some point, someone in the group starts cracking bad jokes … A person who dies alone in space dies a cheerful death." In other words, your situation is hopeless, you're slowly dying, but you think it's funny.

Possible Preaching Angles: Is it possible that our entire culture is, in many ways, cut off from our spiritual oxygen supply, "drifting through nothingness, waiting to die" and yet "everything seems funny"? Is this an example of what Neil Postman called "amusing ourselves to death"?

On October 29, 2012, Hurricane Sandy (unofficially known as "Superstorm Sandy") slammed into the coast of the Northeastern United States. The Category 2 storm became the largest Atlantic hurricane on record (as measured by diameter, with winds spanning 1,100 miles. Experts estimate that the storm's monetary damages topped $68 billion. At least 286 people were killed along the path of the storm in seven countries.

As Hurricane Sandy bore down on New York City, almost everything shut down—except at least one rogue Starbucks near Times Square. Desperate (addicted?) but highly committed Starbucks junkies fought high winds, dangerous rains, and dire warnings just to get a latte or a cup of coffee. Bethany Owings, 28, walked 10 blocks with her one-year-old daughter for a fix. "I saw on Facebook that they were open," she said. "It was scary not having Starbucks." Her neighbor and friend 29-year-old Chris Hernandez came along and later said, "When she said they were open, I was like, 'Pack the baby up. Let's go!' I didn't know they were all going to close. I started panicking. There's nothing else I would've gone out for. This makes my day complete." Alex Mwangi, 25, walked more than 20 blocks looking for an open Starbucks. He told reporters, "It took half an hour. But I'm a Starbucks fanatic. I go four or five times a day." David Low, also 25, said he went to three closed Starbucks before learning the store was open. Low said, "I'm really happy these guys are open. I can't get a pumpkin spice latte anywhere else. The 10-minute wait was worth it."

Possible Preaching Angles: Value; Worship; Christ—People will make sacrifices for what they value. If we value Christ, we will lay down our lives for him. The people in this true news story were nuts, but you have to say that they weren't lukewarm or uncommitted about following their deep desire for a pumpkin spice latte. Like Paul and Epaphroditus in Philippians 2, they risked it all to pursue what they valued.

Schutt Sports, a major supplier of football helmets for the National Football League, issues the following warning label on all their helmets and on their website's homepage (as of 2024):

WARNING …. NO HELMET SYSTEM CAN PREVENT CONCUSSIONS OR ELIMINATE THE RISK OF SERIOUS HEAD OR NECK INJURIES WHILE PLAYING FOOTBALL.

The warning label continues with some information about the symptoms for concussions and concludes by repeating the original warning: "TO AVOID THESE RISKS [OF PLAYING FOOTBALL], DO NOT ENGAGE IN THE SPORT OF FOOTBALL."

A visitor to the website can't access any content until he or she checks a box next to the words "Please indicate that you have read and understand [this warning label]."

Possible Preaching Angles: (1) Discipleship; Counting the Cost; Risks; Persecution—At least this company is utterly honest about the risks of playing football. In a similar way, the Bible is honest about the risks of following Jesus. In a way, the Bible says, "TO AVOID THE RISKS OF DISCIPLESHIP, DO NOT ENGAGE IN FOLLOWING JESUS."Of course the Bible also offers some amazing promises about the rewards of discipleship. (2) Leadership—You could also conclude, "TO AVOID THE RISKS OF LEADERSHIP, DO NOT BECOME A LEADER."

Paul "Bear" Bryant is widely considered to be one of the greatest college football coaches of all time. Bryant's record in 38 years at Maryland, Kentucky, Texas A&M, and Alabama included 323 wins. He also took 29 teams to bowl games and led 15 of his teams to conference championships. In the 1960s and 1970s, no school won more games than Alabama (193-32-5). As one of his colleagues said, "He wasn't just a coach; he was the coach."

John Croyle, an All-American defensive end on the 1973 national championship team, played for the Bear, and was deeply impacted by the man. John recently told me about one of Coach Bryant's pregame speeches.

Coach Bryant paced in front of his assembled team as the band played for the capacity crowd waiting outside in the stadium. He made eye contact with each player as he spoke the following words:

In this game, there are going to be four or five plays that will determine the outcome of this contest. Four or five plays that will swing the momentum toward us, or away from us. I don't know which plays these will be. You don't know which plays these will be. All you can do is go out there and give all that you have on each and every play. If you are doing that on one of those crucial plays, and you catch your opponent giving less, that play will swing things in our direction. And if we rise to the occasion like that, on those four or five plays, we are gonna leave here today a winner.

Possible Preaching Angle: Prayer, Attentiveness, Obedience—Our life is made up of a series of moments. A few of those moments will be absolutely transformative—they will change our life and the lives of others forever. But since we usually don't know which moments will be the "game-changers," the Bible repeatedly urges us to "stay awake," "walk in the light," and "redeem the time."

In 1904 William Borden graduated from a Chicago high school. As heir to the Borden Dairy estate, he was already a millionaire. For his high school graduation present, his parents gave him a trip around the world. As the young man traveled through Asia, the Middle East, and Europe, he felt a growing burden for the world's hurting people. Finally, Borden wrote home to say, "I'm going to give my life to prepare for the mission field." At the same time, he wrote two words in the back of his Bible: "No reserves."

Indeed, Borden held nothing back. During his college years at Yale University, he became a pillar in the Christian community. One entry in his personal journal that defined the source of his spiritual strength simply said: "Say no to self and yes to Jesus every time."

During his first semester at Yale, Borden started a small prayer group that would transform campus life. This little group gave birth to a movement that spread across the campus. By the end of his first year, 150 freshmen were meeting for weekly Bible study and prayer. By the time Bill Borden was a senior, 1,000 of Yale's 1,300 students were meeting in such groups.

Borden also strategized with his fellow Christians to make sure every student on campus heard the gospel, and he was often seen ministering to the downtrodden in the streets of New Haven. But his real passion was missions. Once he narrowed his missionary call to the Kansu people in China, Borden never wavered.

Upon graduation from Yale, Borden wrote two more words in the back of his Bible: "No retreats." In keeping with that commitment, Borden turned down several high-paying job offers, enrolling in seminary instead. After graduating, he immediately went to Egypt to learn Arabic because of his intent to work with Muslims in China. While in Egypt, he contracted spinal meningitis. Within a month, 25-year-old William Borden was dead.

Prior to his death, Borden had written two more words in his Bible. Underneath the words "No reserves" and "No retreats," he had written: "No regrets."

I believe it to be a grave mistake to present Christianity as something charming and popular with no offense in it.

—Author Dorothy Sayers

Thousands of Chinese Christians were killed during the Boxer Rebellion—a nationwide effort to snuff out any foreign influences in China that were political, cultural, economic, or religious. Though the rebellion was relatively short, the intense persecution it started persisted for years—most notably under the later Communist leadership of Mao Zedong.

A Christian evangelist who called himself Epaphras was a young man during the early years of Chairman Mao's reign. He refused to sing the Communist Party songs, salute the Chairman's picture, or show his allegiance to any leader other than Christ.

Epaphras was soon arrested and sentenced to life in prison. A guard asked him why he was so happy all the time. Flashing his characteristic grin, Epaphras said, "Didn't the Lord tell me from the beginning to give up everything and carry the cross to follow him? This is the Lord's way. I am following him on the same path. Why should I be upset? Why should I complain? This is my biggest blessing."

Eleven years after Chairman Mao died, Epaphras, then 62, was surprised when prison officials agreed to set him free. He soon discovered the reason for his sudden release: "The court cheated me," he said, "by changing my record to show I had recanted my belief in Jesus."

In response, Epaphras rented a cell-like room just outside the prison gates and kept himself under house arrest. "If I stay in jail," he insisted, "they will know I haven't recanted."

Epaphras went one step further to show how serious he was about not recanting—he fasted five days a week. Ever-smiling, he would say, "If I die from fasting and living under house arrest, then I die as a criminal just like my Lord Jesus Christ!"

After 15 years of fasting, Epaphras died at the age of 78, having made an emphatic, brave statement that true freedom is found in Christ alone. Believers all across China celebrated his life and mourned his death.

In real life people disappoint you. They are cruel, and life is cruel. I think there is no win in life. Reality is a very painful, tough thing that you have to learn and cope with in some way. What we do is escape into fantasy, and it does give us moments of relief.