Here’s a question I bet you’ve never thought about: What do Vick’s Vaporub and the incarnation of Jesus Christ have in common? Stay tuned …
Several years ago, I offhandedly commented to a few friends that my husband really likes the smell of Vick’s Vaporub (you know, the gooey menthol stuff mothers love to slather on their sniffling kids). Don’t ask me how we got on the subject – I can’t remember and I’d sure hate to speculate.
Joe really did once quite innocently tell me that he likes the smell of Vaporub, probably because it triggers warm and happy childhood memories. But always delighting in having something to harangue me about, my friends have been offering up Vaporub jokes now for years, even giving me jars of the stuff with instructions to dab a little behind my ears for my hubby.
I certainly never intended to imply that Vaporub has aphrodisiacal qualities, but if you give a bunch of hormonal women an inch, they’ll take a mile, so the Vaporub comments continue.
The whole thing did serve one useful purpose, however, as it prompted a friend to give me a newspaper article about how Vaporub can cure certain toenail maladies. That’s a long way from being an aphrodisiac, but it was an interesting notion, so I gave it a try. Guess what? It works!
Who’d have thunk it?
Life is sometimes full of surprising cures for what ails us. If you doubt that, check out a natural home remedy book. You’ll discover bizarro treatments that make Vaporub seem pretty tame.
Or better yet, check out the Bible. It, too, is filled with amazing cures. Like how the prophet Elisha instructed Naaman to dip in the grungy Jordan River seven times to cure his leprosy, and how Jesus healed a blind man with a mud pack made out of dirt and spit.
But the most amazing cure of all was the way God healed our sin-sick hearts. Mankind was lost – floundering and rebelling under the weight of a holy law we wouldn’t and couldn’t keep. Our hearts were dark, weary, hopeless and miles away from the intimate fellowship they were created to enjoy with a holy God. We couldn’t be good enough; we couldn’t get there from here; we were the walking dead.
But when the time was right, God sent a cure, straight from His heart into the very midst of our misery. His name was Jesus. He was Immanuel: God with us. He was Christ: the anointed one. He was Savior: the one who rescues us.
More than we needed ease, more than we needed wealth, more than we needed the very air we breathe, we needed … God Himself. So He came.
Jesus might seem a strange cure for what ailed our sin-sick hearts, but He was the medicine the world was dying to find.
And He still is. Let Him heal your heart this Christmas.
“But for you who revere My name, the sun of righteousness will rise with healing in its wings. And you will go out and leap like calves released from the stall.” — Malachi 4: 2
“For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.” – John 3:16
“This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.” — 1 John 4:10