Imaging Center

It was Valentine’s Day and I was sitting in the lobby of my healthcare provider’s Imaging Center, waiting to go back for my annual mammogram.  After scrolling through a little social media, I put my phone away, choosing instead to observe the people around me.  In the corner of the room was a Valentine-themed tree and, at its side, sat a man talking on his cell.  One lady was by the door, sitting with a young girl.  Other ladies were thumbing through magazines.  I watched as, hand in hand, an elderly couple walked out of the office.

As my eyes fell on the woman sitting across from me, my mind wondered about her story.  A thin scarf covered her head.  She looked pensive as she clutched the bag on her lap.  I wondered, too, about the women who’d sat in these seats before us.  The Imaging Center performs many kinds of radiological exams on both men and women, but my heart felt for the women, in particular, who’d been here before.  Some may have come in dreading the discomfort of a procedure, only to have received life-altering news days later. 

I thought, then, about my mom.  She was one of those women who’d received life-altering news.  As I often do, I wondered how she had felt as she waited, in rooms like this, to be called back for CT scans or MRIs.  Was she scared?  It didn’t look like it.  But maybe I just couldn’t see fear because, in my eyes, she was a superhero.  But my mom was human; she was a woman who, undoubtedly, had fears.  “What is the report going to say?  Has the cancer spread?”  God only knows what the scan will reveal.   

At one of her first chemo appointments, the nurse encouraged her to journal, to write through her journey.  But my mom, ever the writer, surprisingly declined.  She told the nurse that she didn’t want to leave that with her children.  I marvel at her love for us, that she didn’t want to leave my brother, sister, and me with the words that would come forth out of cancer. 

“Pressley…”  At the sound of my name, the technologist pulled me out of my musings and brought me back into the moment. 

The heart is deceitful above all things And it is extremely sick; Who can understand it fully and know its secret motives?  I, the LORD, search and examine the mind, I test the heart, To give to each man according to his ways, According to the results of his deeds.

Jeremiah 17:9-10 AMP

And now, I’m thinking about God’s journal, the Bible.  In this case, His medical journal.  I’m thinking about how much the Father loves us that He chose to leave us with words that would, ultimately, come forth out of crucifixion.

When I was first prompted to write, there in the waiting room, I thought that the message was going to end up being about the Bible as our imaging center.  Or, maybe, the blog would be about the image of Christ.  Those things, of course, are parts of it.  But then I felt a shift in my perspective.  I felt like I needed to take another look at “imaging center.” 

The Imaging Center, I realized, is not just a place, it’s a position.  Imaging starts at my center.  It starts with my heart.

The Bible tells us that, from the heart, come all the issues of life.  So, like a mammogram uses invisible energy to produce images of the breast, the place from which a woman nurses her child, we must use the light of the Word to reveal the spiritual health of our hearts.  Many times, mammograms detect tumors and abnormalities that cannot be felt.  And likewise, sometimes we’re living with heart issues (idolatry, hopelessness, fear, unforgiveness, hardness) that have become so natural to us, that we don’t even realize that we’re walking around sick. 

Maybe it’s a petty jealousy that seems benign.

Or maybe it’s an anger that, in its malignancy, is affecting every area of your life.   

If so, the Good News is that the Godhead not only scans and diagnoses, they also treat.  Holy Spirit, the technologist.  Jesus, the Word, the radiologist.  And God, the oncologist. 

You and I can be whole again. 

But first, we have to schedule an appointment.  We have to want to let God do the work of healing our hearts.  It will be invasive and there will be times that we will prefer the numbness of disease to the pain of healing.  But I want it.  Don’t you?         

In the lobby of life, we are all, essentially, waiting for the same thing.  Different people, different procedures, same purpose: to see those things that are hidden.  And to live. 

PRINCIPLE: Search me [thoroughly], O God, and know my heart; Test me and know my anxious thoughts; And see if there is any wicked or hurtful way in me, And lead me in the everlasting way. – Psalm 139:23-24 AMP