Spiritual Vital Signs

There are four main vital signs that are routinely monitored in healthcare settings. When we find ourselves in the ER or Urgent Care or even at our doctor’s office for a check up, medical professionals are interested in our heart rate or pulse, our respiratory rate or how many breathes we take in a minute, our blood pressure, and our body temperature. And this story we have for Holy Week got me thinking about vital signs. We begin the week with the story of Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem. The crowd greets him and blesses him. I suppose if a RN or PA or MD had been by his side, we would have seen a normal temp with a slightly elevated pulse, respiratory rate, and blood pressure. I mean it was a big day for him, right? On Friday, the signs are less than hopeful. We would see Jesus with a dropping temp and zero, zero, zero. Sunday morning vitals would be back on track. It’s the wildest of stories that’s become normalized because of the frequency with which it’s told. But I’m sure glad to be a part of it and it a part of me.

That got me thinking about spiritual vital signs.

If we were to come into our spiritual community, our church, for a check up, what would we look for? Those signs might be hard to determine, but I suppose they would be as follows—are you connected to God or as is said in the rooms of recovery, “do you have conscious contact with God (your higher power?)" From there we might ask, “are you connected to others?” Do you have some regular, meaningful, loving connection to other people, whether they’re family, friends, co-workers, other members of your church—whoever! Are you connected? Next, I suppose we might ask ourselves, “do we have a sense of our own belovedness?” Do we know we are chosen and marked by the love of God, that we are a delight to God? And, finally, if we need four vital signs like the medical community, that fourth would be “are you responding to that love? Are you sharing it? Are you spreading it?”

Fresh from the reflective experience of Lent and into the Season of Easter, we have yet another opportunity to check in with ourselves. What are our spiritual vital signs? Are we really living—spiritually? I love the reset that resurrection brings right to our thresholds. Not really living? Then start again! Connected to God, but need a little human connection? Get it at coffee hour! Seriously! Feeling the love, but not spreading the love? The Food Cupboard could help you there, and you’d be helping hungry people, too! God is soooo with us at St. John’s, and I’m so grateful for that. We’re connected here, too. Happy Easter, everybody!

Love, Jimmy