Have you had your jab yet? I got mine last week and lived to tell the story!

There are many vaccines available today, but of course the only one that most people are interested in a the moment is the corona virus.

Vaccines have brought a massive improvement in health conditions and life spans over the last century or so. Second only to the provision of clean and safe water, vaccines have changed our lives for the better. Diseases such as small pox and measles used to ravage communities and kill millions of people, but we don’t even think about them these days.

It amazes me that within about 12 months of the covid virus exploding around the world we have a number of vaccines available to protect our community. It used to take years, even decades, to discover how to beat a disease, but the increase in knowledge about genetics has made it possible to rapidly discover, test and deploy these vaccines.

There is another disease rampant around the world that we have learned to live with but is just as deadly. This disease is not a physical virus, but is deadly. You won’t get it by contact with other people and you can’t heal it with an injection.

The disease goes by many names- pride, self-centredness and sin are but a few.

It is a condition of the spirit that says that I am the most important person in the world. Everybody has to bow to my demands. I can do whatever I like regardless of how other people might feel.

Just about every problem in our lives comes down to our desire to control our own lives, to live as if nobody else matters and to ignore God’s ways for our lives.

There is a cure for this. It involves admitting that we are wrong and asking God to forgive us through Christ then living His way not our own way.

Tough medicine perhaps, but absolutely essential.