What Happens When You Separate Health from Hope
"The hand of the LORD was upon me, and he brought me out in the Spirit of the LORD and set me down in the middle of the valley; it was full of bones. And he led me around among them, and behold, there were very many on the surface of the valley, and behold, they were very dry. And he said to me, “Son of man, can these bones live?” And I answered, “O Lord GOD, you know.”” Ezekiel 37:1-3
"Was that, Mama?" my two-year-old pointed into a bush.
"It's an ear, baby." I replied.
It's almost Halloween, and we were trekking around the neighborhood on a spooky scavenger hunt.
My little one was especially motivated to get out and see the scary decorations. I think they simply surprised her. I'd rather her not see these violent depictions, but alas, I couldn't cover her eyes or she would walk straight into that bush. Yikes!
Halloween & Health
Dismembered ears stuck to a tree? Bloody hands hanging from the porch? Beady-eyed skeletons? Is that Yoda with a jack-o-lantern? Why, yes it is. Halloween blow-ups don't discriminate.
Why are even small children attracted to the gore and guts on display? These depictions are shocking for us living beings. A human body separated into all its parts means death, confronts us with our own mortality, and maybe even helps us rethink our own definition of life.
If death is disconnection, then life is connection.
If our idea of scary is to see our skeleton sitting vulnerable and cold without its skin, to hang up ears without a head to hear, and dangle hands without an arm to move, then the opposite—life—surely means to stick together.
The body has to stay connected to the heart, brain, and gut, the main agents that generate life in our body.
Overall health for a human being means to be connected not only to our physical source of life, but the spiritual as well. The more we disconnect our physical health to our spiritual hope, the more we will experience spooky side effects.
Spooky Health Side Effects
One example here is calorie counting solely for the sake of efficiency—looking at a food for its ability to fuel our workload and weight management instead of being grateful for food as a source of joy.
This article by Science History on Counting Calories even mentions the word "disconnected" when describing the rise of the calorie counting trend as a way to mete out food to workers to keep them productive in the factories back in the 1800s:
"Disconnected from pleasure and social contexts, food was simply substances used by the body to build and repair tissue, and to fuel it in its daily tasks."
The more we count on calories, the more we will see food as a unit of fuel to produce greater work for the human body machine. What we focus on, we will find.
But we are not just representative dots on the progressive evolutionary timeline, we are created by an invisible God who gives us life in Him and counts every hair, every day, out of love. So when we separate our health solely into physical functions, we are disconnecting from our spiritual flow of life.
As Acts 17:28 explains, "In him we live and move and have our being."
And to zoom out even more, health is not isolated to individuals, but enmeshed in the well-being of those we are connected to—family, friends, relational and geographical community.
Separating Health From Hope Results in Dry Bones
When we disconnect one of these health factors and put it under the microscope for too long, it starts to die. This, my friends, separating our health from our hope is the scariest thing you can do for your health.
If you’ve tried diet after diet in hopes of feeling better about yourself and still feel behind, you know what this feels like.
“Hope deferred makes the heart sick.” Proverbs 13:12
It is quite deceiving. Losing weight, getting more sleep, and nourishing yourself feels like you’re doing something good for yourself, and you are, but it will not last if you do not seek the hope of Christ.
“The wages of sin is death,” says Romans 6:23. This means that because our physical ancestors sinned, we too, will die. So we do not put our hope in things that will not last. We do not put our hope in achieving ultimate health here on this earth, we put our hope in the God who physically died on our behalf so we can live eternally with Him.
We can go without water for a few days, but then we will shut down.
We can strive on our own for a while for the sake of physical health, but then our spirit will dry up.
We need to place our hope for eternal health in Christ.
What does this practically look like? We'll refer to health habits without hope as dry bones (EEK! Run for your lives!) :
Counting calories without counting blessings before a meal ("Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits" Psalm 103:2)
Tracking daily sleep cycles and forgoing a spiritual Sabbath rest ("Observe my Sabbaths and have reverence for my sanctuary. I am the Lord." Leviticus 26:2)
Monitoring heart rate during exercise but forgetting to check in on our heart during daily moments of stress (“Search me, O God, and know my heart! Try me and know my thoughts!” Psalm 139:23)
Weighing our body on the scale and forgetting Jesus balanced the eternal scales for us through his death and resurrection (“For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.” Romans 6:23)
Logging 10,000 steps without bringing the peace of the gospel on the way ("How beautiful on the mountains are the feet of those who bring good news, who proclaim peace, who bring good tidings, who proclaim salvation, who say to Zion, ‘Your God reigns!’” Isaiah 52:7)
Striving to lose body weight and neglecting to go to God to lose the weight of shame through forgiveness (“If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” 1 John 1:9)
On the other hand, joy is the expression of grace, and grace is the fulfillment of the law in Christ, and Christ is Word became flesh, the joining of physical and spiritual health, and in Him we have true life.
“O God, you are my God; earnestly I seek you; my soul thirsts for you; my flesh faints for you, as in a dry and weary land where there is no water.” Psalm 63:1
Connect with Joyful Health
So yes, let's keep an eye (connected to your head) on our physical health and have fun experimenting with variables in alignment with God's healing design for our bodies.
But as for me, I have found that micromanaging my body in accordance with temporary diet trends doesn’t work. And after so many attempts, leaves me hopeless. Once I started trusting my God-given body cues to eat and move and rest, I become much less preoccupied with restriction and experienced more joy in Kingdom purpose.
If you, too, are tired of feeling hopeless when it comes to your health, I invite you to walk with my friend Aubrey and I through our Christian Intuitive Eating and Exercise Course where we will allow our mind-body connection to heal as we hope in Christ.
Dry Bones, Come Alive
As we walk with our feet around the spooky neighborhoods this week, let us continue to "...give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you” (1 Thessalonians 5:18).
After all, "it is not joy that makes us grateful; It is gratitude that makes us joyful,” says David Steindl-Rast.
As you walk by faith, let this gratitude for our eternal life in Christ overflow to our physical body and make these dry bones
come
alive:
"And I will put my Spirit within you, and you shall live, and I will place you in your own land. Then you shall know that I am the LORD; I have spoken, and I will do it, declares the LORD.” Ezekiel 37:14
Respond
Has there been a time where you felt hopeless when it comes to your health?
How can you put your hope in Christ, and how could that affect your health?