Last week, I walked into the fireplace.

This usually happens because I am:

a.) Doing too much too quickly.
b.) Distracted.
c.) A general klutz.
d.) All of the above.

The correct answer here is D.

Congratulations to you lucky winners!

At first, my injuries seemed slight, but over time I began to hurt every time I put my left foot to the floor.  It wasn’t my whole foot that was sore, just my pinky toe.

So, I adjusted, putting more and more weight on the other side of my foot.  This made walking look clumsy and more than a little bit ridiculous.

In fact, by the next day I was flat-out limping along, all because of one tiny little tender toe.

That night, I climbed into bed only to find that my big toe now had a blister.  This meant I had two toes out of commission.

It got worse.  The following day my entire leg was sore from limping in an effort to avoid both my pinky toe and my big toe.

The lesson here is simple.

Pay attention and don’t walk into fireplaces.

And value each member of the body, no matter how small and seemingly insignificant.

Just hurting one tiny, seemingly insignificant toe–the smallest toe I have–made life difficult as other parts of me struggled to compensate.

It’s true in the church body, of course, as well.  One small (perhaps seemingly insignificant) member of the body who isn’t obeying God in ministry throws us all off balance, stresses others out, and leaves us limping and ineffective.

Here’s a Scripture verse for the week all about being a healthy, whole, non-limping body of Christ:

 There are different kinds of gifts, but the same Spirit distributes them. There are different kinds of service, but the same Lord. There are different kinds of working, but in all of them and in everyone it is the same God at work
(1 Corinthians 12:4-6).