Fighting the Wrong Enemies

The season of sneezing is upon us. The oak are just starting to spawn...and that means oak pollen is in the air, and that means better living through pharmaceutics for me. I am as fortunate an allergy sufferer as possible. I only turn into a wretched sniveling mess for 2 weeks. Some years I can get by with just a large box of tissues. Other years, I need drugs, but only for 2 weeks. The rest of the year, as long as I don't eat Hazel nuts or papaya, I live allergy free. If one must suffer allergies, this is the best kind to have.

The whole concept of allergies is disturbing. There is nothing intrinsically harmful with oak pollen. An allergic reaction is triggered when the body starts thinking it is harmful and starts attacking itself. One can even die because the body is foolishly fighting something it should not be fighting in the first place. This is stupid.

But I am in allergic mode in many areas of life, often without knowing it. I fight an enemy that is not really my enemy...until I start fighting. I won't go into details, because if you read my blog with any regularity, you already know what a neurotic blob I am, but I bet some of you can relate. I think many of us are turning against our own body fighting things that never meant to harm us, and really would not, except that we hurt ourself in the fight. I am sometimes my own worst enemy.

I love a newsletter with folksy, informative stories and great animal supplies/gifts put out by Gina Keesling of Hoofprints.com . In one newsletter, she talks about a horse with a fear of ropes, and how she goes about trying to convince the horse that ropes are really not something he should fear. She is a fun and witty writer, and I can picture that poor horse all in a lather over something as innocuous as a rope. I empathize completely with that horse. I don't want to...I want to save my energy to only fight real enemies, but time and time again, I am balking at ropes.

Paul of the Bible starts out when we first meet him as Saul, an adversary of Christians. He hates them, actively persecutes them, and fights against any mention of Jesus. Until Jesus meets him on the road to Damascus, and with an unseen presence but thundering voice asks, "Why are you kicking against the goad?"
In other words, "Why are you fighting something you can't budge and is not the enemy? In fact, not only am I not the enemy, I am the only true friend any man can completely rely on."

The irony is that after that encounter, Paul becomes one of Christianity's most ardent defenders, and his real physical enemies and troubles multiply. Beatings, disease, shipwrecks, imprisonment, exile are just a few of the adventures he gets to battle when he stops battling God. And even more interestingly, that is when he begins to finally know peace. Sometimes we are fighting the wrong enemy. Even worse, sometimes we are fighting what we think is the Enemy when it could be our greatest defender. Like me, sometimes our bodies our wrestling the pollen that is responsible for one day bringing the leaves that will shield us from the cancerous sun, or like the horse, running from ropes that are tethering him safely to a loving Master.

Acts 9: 4-6 KJV
And he fell to the earth, and heard a voice saying unto him, Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me? And he said, Who art thou, Lord? And the Lord said, I am Jesus whom thou persecutest: it is hard for thee to kick against the pricks. And he trembling and astonished said, Lord, what wilt thou have me to do? And the Lord said unto him, Arise, and go into the city, and it shall be told thee what thou must do.

-save a dog- hollowcreekfarm.org