Road Rage and Thorns in the Flesh.

Traveling home from the office can be an emotional minefield to most people, sometimes even the seemingly most generous and compassionate, otherwise.  Say, one who does charitable works and cares for others.  We can be tested in a thousand different ways throughout the day.

That moment of impatience can ruin a life, if totally unchecked, but thank the Lord these things do not last: our emotional control returns, and we can feel thankful, and we can once again love others, even when they are very rude in traffic.

Even Paul had some sort of ailment that constantly nagged at him, and this in a day when there were no wonder drugs, no surgeries beyond the severing of limbs.

It chastened him; it reminded him, always, that he was not perfect, and in that pain and ailing, he could remember that his blessing was not in fact total.

The blessing wasn't total?

His human nature kept calling him back, in the form of that sickness.

It reminded him that his race was not over, that he was not perfect.  This is something we can all relate too, of course, as imperfect people in but another imperfect age.  And we too sometimes fall to sickness, and sometimes we might fall to the mercy of others.

We are reminded, and thus we are to be on our guard against that sin nature of mankind, keeping God in our heart and mind.

Myself, after so many times of being angry, so many cycles of being outraged at other motorists on the roadway, through God's grace and mercy, I was finally able to overcome most of that.  But not all: not totally.  Sometimes it creeps back, but not often, that Road Rage.  But I have compassion for the other motorist, and I wish them grace getting to their destination, instead of trying to curse them.

Indeed, with no adversity, the race cannot be said to be worth winning.  As the Bible speaks of leavening and bread, good bread has various ingredients: as such with a good life, various trials and temptations, such that the real way to peace is in part in rest after having overcome.

"In rest after having overcome..."  

That's heaven, the reward after, the everlasting, all good, totally perfect existence with God and Christ.

Paul himself said that he longed to go ahead to heaven, but he knew too that he had work left on Earth, in defense of the Gospel.  He "played through the pain", he kept going on the earth, despite his own sickness, and he made the Gospel his real focus.