Several years ago, the newspapers carried a sad story of a man, identified only as "Patient X," who died after having been in a coma for nine years. He had been injured in an accident, and in an attempt to remove a blood clot from his brain, the cells were damaged beyond repair. For nine years he survived only by the aid of life support machines. When he died, his death certificate did not read "died from brain injury," but "died from brain inactivity." Day after day, he died little by little from deterioration until there was no longer life.
Inactivity is dangerous, especially for the Christian, yet I have observed the death of many individuals' spiritual life. James reminds believers that "as the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without deeds is dead." (James 2:26 NIV)
We must exercise our faith by challenging ourselves to live it in the real world. As Eugene Peterson puts it in The Message "The very moment you separate body and spirit, you end up with a corpse. Separate faith and works and you get the same thing: a corpse."
