Disease and Illness No Respect for Any Person

 

Over the years as a clinician, nutritionist, and a former senior medical researcher, I have engaged in untold numbers of social dialogues with people from all walks of life, and from all socio-economic statuses. I have also taken part in WhatsApp and social groups. Many of the subjects they discussed bored me as I am more delighted if someone can engage with me on spiritual investments rather than temporary ventures, stocks and shares.   

The subject of conversation has always been, either about politics, business investments, how to get materially rich, political affairs concerning other countries such as the United States, China, Russia, NATO, Ukraine, and countries at war with each other that has nothing to do with us. Most of the time they would forward TikTok videos on a cat fighting with a cock, or a donkey chasing a chimpanzee, a lion and tiger fighting, and videos of these types, all which have no educational value to me.

Off and on others would to my delight consult me on nutrition and health, either orally, or through written consultation, or via WhatsApp chat.

Sometimes, they send videos to each other about intractable and chronic diseases, and how to prevent or treat them using other alternative or complementary therapeutic modalities. These have some educational values to me. 

Sometimes they would write about certain religions they abhor and fear.  

But I have a friend who is so obsessed about Covid-19, he writes nothing else in a WhatsApp chat except about Covid and long Covid and the devastating effects of Covid vaccines, if compiled together would have sufficient boring materials for a book on this subject.

Unfortunately, over the years I have witnessed doctors, colleagues of mine and other friends pass away from various diseases, a subject they have never discussed during their social chats.

Most of what was discussed when they were alive was how to invest in material gains for the future to get rich. I have often listened to them in deep silent thoughts.   

I then wrote to my brother-in-law how temporary our life is in this world.  I illustrated with the number of heartbeats already assigned to each of us, and there is no way we can change or extend their numbers.

For instance, the normal resting heart rate for adults is between 60 to 100 beats per minute. Let us assume it remains at 70 beats per minute throughout life which of course is not true. But for the sake of simplicity for calculation let us assume that it remains on an average at 70 beats per minute throughout life.

Suppose we have been numbered to live for 75 years. This means that the total number of heart beats given to us would be 70 beats per minutes x 60 minutes per hour x 24 hours per day x 365.25 days per year x 75 years = 2,761,290,000 beats before it must stop.

But friends of mine in high social class have been talking all the time about investments and the number of credit cards they have instead of the total numbers of breaths they were given. So, they gather more and more of their material gains outside their living bodies, not realizing as they gather and invest on them, 70 beats per minutes, 4,200 beats per hour, 100,800 heart beats each day are being subtracted from 2,761,290,000 beats before it stops completely. When that moment plus or minus inevitably must arrive for all of us, all their credit cards and totally everything else they have or have invested must come to an absolute naught. That’ s all we have, whether or not we are like this or not as our ultimate fate.

It would be far better to invest in our souls that do not die for all eternity. There is a way to do this if we seek spiritual wisdom that makes us see clearly across the other dimension, and not academic knowledge from universities that blinds us.

Let's remind ourselves we are made of dust and unto dust we shall return. This is an absolute truth whether from the biblical, or from the astronomical revelation, in that we are made from stardust brought here from another world through a supernova explosion of a distant star.

 “LORD, remind me how brief my time on earth will be. Remind me that my days are numbered— how fleeting my life is.

You have made my life no longer than the width of my hand. My entire lifetime is just a moment to you; at best, each of us is but a breath.

We are merely moving shadows, and all our busy rushing ends in nothing. We heap up wealth, not knowing who will spend it”.

(Psalm 39: 4 -6)

 “Man, who is born of a woman is few of days, and full of trouble. He comes out like a flower and withers; he flees like a shadow and continues not.”

(Job 14:1-2) 

 “Behold, you have made my days a few handbreadths, and my lifetime is as nothing before you. Surely all mankind stands as a mere breath!”

(Psalm 39:5)

 “Remember how short my time is! For what vanity you have created all the children of man!”

(Psalm 89:47)

 “As for man, his days are like grass; he flourishes like a flower of the field; All flesh is grass, and all its beauty is like the flower of the field.”

(Psalm 103:15)

 “All flesh is like grass and all its glory like the flower of grass. The grass withers, and the flower falls, but the word of the Lord remains forever.”

(1 Peter 1:24-25)

 “Look carefully then how you walk, not as unwise but as wise, making the best use of the time.  

(Ephesians 5:15-16)

 When we were young and in good health we never bothered about disease and illness. We assume that life will never end for us when we enjoy that short segment of life in good health. We have never been bothered that each passing year, aging will and must catch up sooner or later, and all those material investments we have been chit-chatting about at every social conversation we assume would never come to an end for us. We invest to gain the whole world and their empires, but not on our soul. But that time shall surely come upon all of us when we are suddenly crippled by illness. It shall be when we would no longer be interested in anything else, not even all the gains and empires of this world except regain our health and strength. Our souls shall then leave our body empty-handed.

Let us constantly remind ourselves that disease and illness is no respecter of any man. We might be the king, the president or a prime minister of any country, but finally diseases and illness will either suddenly strike, or come as lingering pain and disability till death take away without mercy all our powers, material possession and investments we have been preoccupied with when we were young, healthy and ambitious.

“ And when he had called the people unto him with his disciples also, he said unto them, Whosoever will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me.
For whosoever will save his life shall lose it; but whosoever shall lose his life for my sake and the gospel's, the same shall save it.
For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?
 Or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul?
Whosoever therefore shall be ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful” generation; of him also shall the Son of man be ashamed, when he cometh in the glory of his Father with the holy angels

(Mark 8: 34 – 38)

Diseases in their tens of hundreds if not thousands of all types, pathogenicity and morbidities, known or unknown to us, or yet to come, or old ones we thought we have solved remerging. They can strike humankind or any of us at any time. They are far from just Covid-19 or the disastrous effects of Covid vaccines as a friend of mine only constantly writes about in his WhatsApp chat.

Disease and death shall always prevail and reign supreme over all of us to regain her glory no matter how much, how intensive or how expensive the medical research we put in our conquest against them. 

That’s more than scientific truth. You can safely accept this from me.