After 40 years of good health, I finally had a problem that I had to seek some medical attention for. I was having stomach pains occasionally in the middle of the night. After 6 weeks I had had one night that I didn't get to sleep until 5 in the morning due to the discomfort.
Due to basic good health, I hadn't been to a doctor since I talked my pediatrician into giving me a physical for college 23 years ago. He'd long since retired. Rats. So I had to find a new doctor in town.
My wife works at the hospital, so I was able to select one she was comfortable with from those accepting patients. I went to see the doctor on Friday and he prescribed some drugs for the most likely GERD problem he thought I had. He said that if that didn't work, he had some others more oriented to ulcers and that if none of that cleared things up, he would schedule an ultrasound to check the gall bladder next. I took the pill that night and it didn't do a thing. The pain was back with a vengeance. I could tell it was going to be another 5 AM morning, so my wife and I went to the ER.
The doctors did some basic stomach X-rays and then an ultrasound of the gall bladder. They decided the gall bladder had some gall stones that were causing problems and that it had to come out. Surgery was Sunday. Part of the gall bladder was dead and part was green and slimy (not in a normal bile sense either). The pathologist's assistant was impressed. They usually didn't look that bad.
The point of the story? If I had had a relationship with a physician in town, I probably would have gone to see him sooner, and he would have been able to make the correct diagnosis before the pain got so bad I had to go to the ER. The surgery would have probably been unavoidable in any event, but it could have been scheduled before the pain got so bad and on a non-emergency basis. Fortunately, we have a great hospital here and the surgeon on-call did a great job. I have had virtually no pain since the operation, and am getting around well. Praise God!
How about our spiritual lives? Do we have the right relationship with the Great Physician? The thing about our spiritual lives is that there is no ER to go to when life is done. If you don't have a proper relationship with the Great Physician during your life, there is no ER to bail you out at the end.
If you are coasting along waiting for some future event to get right with the Great Physician, I urge you to stop delaying and get right with God today. You never know when you will wind up in an ER. You might not be as lucky as I was and still be conscious.