Frogsicles
Each winter in Alaska, the common wood frog freezes solid. It quits breathing, and its heart completely stops beating. If you picked one up, it would not move. If you bent one of its legs, it would break off. But when the warm weather returns, its tissues thaw— and it miraculously comes back to life!
The wood frog has even been revived after being frozen for seven months at temperatures dipping as low as three degrees Fahrenheit.
These "frogsicles" can endure multiple freeze-and-thaw cycles in a season because the fluid in their cells contains high levels of glucose, a natural antifreeze also known as cryoprotectant, that lowers the freezing temperature of tissue. Scientists are interested in learning from these frogs in order to increase the shelf life of human organs for transplants by a process known as cryopreservation. Reviving organs after freezing them for a short period would enable them to be shipped around the world and save many more lives.
Did you know that God is an expert at organ transplants?
"I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; I will take the heart of stone out of your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. I will put My Spirit within you and cause you to walk in My statutes, and you will keep My judgments and do them" (Ezekiel 36:26, 27).
Step Confidently Into Newness of Life
According to the BJSM:
"Knee injury accounts for 41% of all sports injuries. One fifth of them involve the anterior cruciate ligament (ACL). Other injuries include meniscus tears, posterior cruciate ligament tears, articular cartilage damages and avulsion of ligaments and tendons."
To address that staggering number of knee injuries, it's estimated that there are over 800,000 total knee replacement surgeries performed each year in the U.S. alone (not including the hundreds of thousands of "lesser" knee repair surgeries).
Post-surgical healing and rehabilitation can take weeks, if not months, to complete. Ultimately, most people see significant improvement. Yet many people report that they are hesitant to use their new knee(s), frearful of trusting it to support them or fearful of re-injuring themselves. For example:
Once I was up early going through my morning routine playing basketball with a friend, when all of a sudden I turned the wrong way, and tore my ACL. After months of rehab, I went out to play light ball just to see if I could do it. I moved around on the court as if I were still injured -- I had not adapted to a healed ACL!
The coach (and my doctors and therapists) told me I could move, but mentally I was afraid to move the leg. subconsciously controlled by my fear of getting injured. I went into protection mode because fear had gripped me.
I was protecting, not realizing or acknowledging that I had a new knee.
We often protect what's been previously injured thinking that it will happen again. I had to ask my self why I was not willing to use the new knee. It's because I had not yet adapted to the new me.
Many of us limp into the Kingdom, bruised, battered, and lame from the brokenness of past lifestyles, sins, and hurtful experiences. We come to Jesus, asking healing for our brokenness, and He is doesn't let us down. In fact, Scripture states, "Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come" (2 Corinthians 5:17, ESV).
God calls us to live in light of our newness of life. Why walk and limp through life when your very being has been made utterly new. "[You] were taught in him, as the truth is in Jesus, to put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires, and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness." (Ephesians 4:21b-24, ESV).
Step out confidently in faith, without fear, to walk in newness of life!
"For God has not given us a spirit of fear and timidity, but of power, love, and self-discipline." (2 Timothy 1:7, NLT).
Expensive Cardboard
When Super Bowl LV kicked off between the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and the Kansas City Chiefs, Raymond James Stadium in Tampa, Florida looked full with the help of some fake fans.
Due to the ongoing pandemic, the NFL had approximately 25,000 in the stadium for the 55th Super Bowl, far fewer than the 70,000 fans that attended the big game the last time it was held in Tampa.
To make up the difference, the NFL produced 30,000 cardboard cutouts of fans to fill most of the remaining seats.
Unlike other sporting events where the cardboard cutouts are all bunch together in some areas of the stadium, the fake Super Bowl fans were spread out to keep the real fans socially distant.
The NFL charged each fan $100 to have their face placed on one of the cardboard cutouts. That's a cool $3 million in revenue to make up for some of the lost ticket and concession sales.
When I look at the faces on those cutouts all I can think of are the many who fill the pews every Sunday, pretending to be something they’re not. They appear to be there but they’re really somewhere else. They’re there to fulfill an obligation but not to worship. They seem to have it all together but it’s all an illusion. They want to be seen but not known. They have all of the zeal and passion of a cardboard cutout. They pretend to be alive but they're dead. They’ve made it a practice to be religious but what they really need is to be born again.
Jesus replied, “I tell you the truth, unless you are born again, you cannot see the Kingdom of God" (John 3:3, NLT).
•Application by I.E.