Was listening to a lecture about the thyroid gland yesterday and was struck by this incredible thought: your body was designed with a specific purpose and organization in mind. Obviously you know that on some level, how would you accomplish anything if you were completely unconnected and random? But I’ll explain below why it was so amazing to me.
The lecturer was talking about different procedures that could be done associated with the thyroid gland. As we learn frequently during training, he reminded that if a patient had a thyroglossal duct cyst- basically a collection of tissue with “anomalous thyroid migration” where it ends up in a different part of the neck, the surgeon needed to be careful. For awhile, surgeons would remove the cyst completely and by doing so accidentally remove all of the functional thyroid tissue the person had. The person would be left hypothyroid and require medication for the rest of their life.
But the kicker came when he pointed out that they eventually realized that if the person’s thyroid tissue was located in the cyst it didn’t matter if they removed it at that time or not- basically the tissue was not normal and was going to fail eventually. Either they would surgically remove it now while it still worked somewhat or they would have to do it when it failed later. I.e.- poor placement left it unable to do its job well for very long.
I was floored at the reminder that anything that is poorly positioned or out of place- including ourselves- will not last long on it’s own strength. There are many applications for that, but mostly I started thinking about our position in the body of Christ. The main strength we have in life that we far too often do not value is our church family.
God’s mission in our lives can be very overwhelming. Just like a thyroid gland having to work for 70+ years without break or appreciation, it can be tiresome! But far too often we make it about what we personally can do, instead of what God has given us to do together.
Because the truth is, you were designed and fashioned and intended to have a specific place in the body, and you can’t do it alone. You can’t ignore the church. You can’t just “read your Bible” and “listen to online sermons” and consider yourself set. You will eventually burn out if you are not connected and placed where you were intended to be.
And more than anything, you never know why your current placement happens or what good can come from it. The best example I have is that I worked for 5 summers at a bank. I was teller, admin, loan organizer… doing all kinds of random things I figured would never impact my life as a medical doctor again. But one of my last medical missions trips I sat in India counting lakhs. The money in India- the rupee- is smaller than in US- so $1 in US was 67 rupees. It quickly adds up to a lot of money once you exchange it. We had to pay for the hotels and transportation and medical supplies and food for the entire team and it added up to quite a bit in American currency, let alone in rupees. So to make things simpler, when you get up to 100,000 rupees, you are instead given what’s known as a lakh. So we spent an hour or two counting out and appropriately paying for things with lakhs. The other trip leader pointed out that it made her nervous- it was awkward and difficult to count up the money and not lose your place. But it didn’t trip me up that much, mostly because years ago I had a lot of practice counting money when I worked as a teller. And suddenly, something that seemed completely unrelated to the rest of my life became the lynch pin I needed to get through that trip.
We won’t always know why God places us where He does. I don’t know about you, but I’ve spent a lot of my life feeling out of place, serving where it didn’t seem like it mattered, working with people that were very different then me, or learning something I figured I would never use again. But it’s only because I was committed to staying where I was placed that I was able to reap the benefits of that obedience and the blessings of that commitment.
So what about you? Where has God placed you that feels at times feels like a poorly fit shoe but might be just the place where you can learn to thrive in a way you couldn’t anywhere else?
Ephesians 4:14-16- “Then we will no longer be infants, tossed back and forth by the waves, and blown here and there by every wind of teaching and by the cunning and craftiness of people in their deceitful scheming. Instead, speaking the truth in love, we will grow to become in every respect the mature body of him who is the head, that is, Christ. From him, the whole body, joined and held together by every supporting ligament, grows and builds itself up in love, as each part does its work.”