An Ice Bath for Frankenstein

At times, my lack of patience calls for desperate measures.  About ten days ago, I was out for a run when I wiped out on the ice.  I saw the patch, slowed my pace, but nevertheless, I had an intimate moment with the pavement.  I hobbled home on my sprained ankle and spent days with a Frankenstein foot (you know, that swollen stiff joint that doesn't bend).  I have two running dates scheduled in the week ahead that I didn't want to cancel.  I began some light exercise but still had the Frankenstein foot.  In my desperate mindset to prompt healing, I remembered reading about the benefits of ice baths over tossing a bag of frozen corn on your injury.  After a quick primer on the subject, I was willing to give it a shot.

Now the catch here is that I dislike cold very much.  The calendar reads mid-March, and I am still wearing three shirts under my ski jacket.  With at least three decades left to work, I am already planning my retirement in Florida.  I don't even drink ice water, so the thought of submerging anything in ice water simply sounded dreadful, but desperation called for desperate measures.  I spent twelve minutes with my ankle in an ice bath after exercising yesterday and today, and the improvement is remarkable.

To me, an ice bath is something of a dichotomy.  Why would someone subject themselves to something so dreadful?  Because the outcome is worth the pain.

In education, we call this concept "backmapping"(no, not causing pain... stay with me!).  We begin with the end in mind.  What skills or competencies do we want our students to have at the end of our time?  Ok, let's work backwards to design the steps to get there.  If we could figure out how to backmap our lives, we might navigate with less struggle, but we live a life without the privilege of seeing the end first or even really having the mind to understand it.  Our map rests on faith while we live the ice bath.  If we sat down and made a list of the dichotomies of life, we would circle the globe.

So why does God allow so much apparent contradiction?  What if God allows the contrast as the ultimate general revelation?  What if a broken world that displays moments of hope is the message of God's ultimate plan of redemption?  What if all of the moments of hope are there to call us towards that moment of glory, encouraging us not to loose heart and never to give up hope?  Scripture tells us that the rocks can testify of God's glory, so why not every dichotomy we encounter and ice baths too?