Gospel notes from having shingles

After my mysterious rash turned excruciatingly painful last night, I got it checked out this morning. Turns out it's a classic presentation of shingles. But I'd had it for more than a week before starting medication today, so it's quite painful. In fact, I think it's the first thing that I've experienced that makes me want to say, "it hurts like hell!" And thus I realized:

1. Praise GOD that although I deserve to endure this for eternity, thanks to Jesus's work I don't have to!
   
   

   And if your eye causes you to sin, tear it out. It is better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye than with two eyes to be thrown into hell, ‘where their worm does not die and the fire is not quenched.’ (Mark 9:47-48)

   
   
   

   Then the king said to the attendants, ‘Bind him hand and foot and cast him into the outer darkness. In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.’ For many are called, but few are chosen.” (Matthew 22:13)

   
   
   

   4 Surely he has borne our griefs
   and carried our sorrows;
   yet we esteemed him stricken,
   smitten by God, and afflicted.
   
   5 But he was wounded for our transgressions;
   he was crushed for our iniquities;
   upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace,
   and with his stripes we are healed.
   
   6 All we like sheep have gone astray;
   we have turned every one to his own way;
   and the LORD has laid on him
   the iniquity of us all. (Isaiah 53:3-6)

   
   
   
2. I want my attitude toward my sins be more like my attitude toward this virus.
   
   This virus is a tiny, otherwise insignificant pest. But I want to kill it! I want it out, never to return.
   
   Oh, that I would view my sins the same way! I'm usually content to let them hide in me; they're small and insignificant and I have more important things to be concerned about. But if I could just see them for what they really are -- painful ruptures in my soul that steal my joy away from God and maul God's dwelling place -- then I'd see how good it is to rip them out!
   
   

   For if you live according to the flesh you will die, but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live. (Romans 8:13)

   
   

God may be gracious and bring even more observations to my attention; he's actually shown me a lot in this and I praise him for it (though sometimes with gritted teeth!). Jesus, let me not waste my suffering.

More than that, we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us. (Romans 5:3-5)