Getting a rise out of life...

BOX SCORE
Element	Current	Std. Range	Trend
Hemoglobin	7.4	13-17	^
Platelets	13	140-375	^
ANC	1560	1800-8300	^

What does the phrase "get a rise out of" conjure up in your mind? It is a not uncommon expression in our culture, although if you just look at the five words, they don't seem to be particularly meaningful. 

I love to bake and to make beer. Both of these pursuits involve yeast, a leavening agent. When making bread, one mixes flour, water, salt, and sometimes other ingredients. Now, in the Bible, we read about unleavened bread, which is bread made with these ingredients and baked. The result is something like a cracker. Matzo or Rye Crisp would fall in this category. 

But if you want to make a PBJ, you probably would opt for leavened bread, the softer, fluffier kind. For that you need leaven. Leaven or leavening, through a process of fermentation, produces carbon dioxide (CO2) gas which fills the dough with bubbles, thus causing it to swell. So, if you are baking bread and don't "get a rise out of" the dough, you are either baking unleavened bread, or your yeast is dead, which gives the same result. 

In brewing, the yeast creates CO2 during fermentation. That's why beer (and champagne) are bubbly. The CO2 actually dissolves in the beer or wine, and the liquid is sealed up in a container (bottle, keg, cask). While it is sealed up the liquid in the container retains the CO2 in solution. In the meantime, if there is any leftover space in the container, some of the CO2 is released from the solution and builds up a bit of pressure in the space above the liquid. 

According to Boyle's Law, when the container is opened, the CO2 gas will expand, because it now has the whole cosmos into which to expand versus the tiny "head space" that was above the liquid in its container. Ever open a bottle of beer, soda, champagne and have it foam over the top? That's because the uncapping decreases the pressure in the bottle, and according to Boyle's Law, the gas will expand and try to fill the new available space, in this case the whole cosmos!! The expanding gas that is dissolved in the beer immediately produces bubbles, which expand the liquid and force it out of the bottle. (Beware, there will be  quiz next period.) In a sense, the beer is "getting a rise out of" the CO2. 

OK, Tom, but that's not what I think of when I hear the phrase, "get a rise out of." I only went so deeply into the fermentation discussion, because I am fascinated by it. In fact, most of us think of "get a rise out of" as applying to people. But there is a connection. When we are talking about people, the "leaven" is emotional. If we do or say something that creates a strong emotional response in another individual, it releases emotional energy that often drives the person to some kind of action, or at least to some kind of heightened awareness or alertness. Like the yeast in our bread, it expands in the person's mind or heart and may cause him to rise up and do something about it. In other words, we "get a rise out of" that person. 

So, let's talk about leukemia. Say what? If you look at the Box Score above, reflecting lab results from yesterday, you will notice that all of my scores went up. Most especially, my ANC went up like a hot air balloon (or perhaps, a CO2 bubble?). The reason for these increases is that my bone marrow is beginning to recover from the chemotherapy I had last month. I will grant you that the transfusions I had on Thursday last week account for part of the rise in hemoglobin and platelet counts, but the ANC, or Absolute Neutrophil Count, is all the  result of renewed activity in the bone marrow, where blood cells, in this case white blood cells, called neutrophils, are made. 

Now, I must admit that I have been injecting myself with a medication called Filgrastim, which is a white cell stimulant. In other words, it encourages the bone marrow to produce white cells. But Filgrastim doesn't create white cells. You might say it is the "yeast" that will "get a rise out of" the bone marrow stem cells and cause them to produce, among other kinds of white cells, neutrophils. And neutrophils are the body's immune warriors that protect us from invasion by foreign substances by killing or neutralizing them. 

Take a look at the Standard Range for ANC in the Box Score. You will notice that it is above my current ANC score, so I have a ways to go, but we are told that when it is above 1000, we may judiciously consider making social contacts. I may eat raw veggie and fruits. So you can see why having my ANC above 1000 will "get a rise out of me." And that rise is always twofold. First I get an emotional boost, because of the positive implications for both my physical health and my social life. And second, I am able to get up and do things that I haven't been able to do during quarantine. For those things, I give glory to God for His steadfast love and for the incredible creation that my human body is.  

In the Bible, we read about leaven. It often is used as a metaphor for sin, in the sense that, when we sin, we are more likely to become desensitized to the damage it does to us and those around us. Like yeast in a bit of dough, the longer you leave it, the more the dough will expand. 

The Apostle Paul wrote to the church in Galatia. This church was made up of Gentile believers in Christ, who were fairly new to the faith. Paul tells them that they need to beware of certain people who have been trying to convince these believers, that in order to be "saved" from their sin, they must not only believe in Jesus, but they must, according to Jewish law, be circumcised. He goes on to tell them "a little leaven leavens the whole lump," (Galatians 5:9) and he explains his meaning this way: "...every man who accepts circumcision...is obligated to keep the whole law." (Galatians 5:3) In other words, these "Judaizers" were trying to get a rise out of the Galatian church. Instead they got a rise out of Paul, the greatest missionary who ever lived.

The entire Old Testament (or Old Covenant) testifies to the fact that no one, but no one was able to keep the Jewish law (comprising something like 613 individual laws) perfectly. And the New Testament (or New Covenant) relates God's solution to the problem of keeping the law, which no one could do. The solution is in the form of God's Messiah (Hebrew) or Christ (Greek), Jesus of Nazareth. "For God so loved the world that He gave His only Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life." Jesus WAS able to keep the law and lived a perfect life. That made Him the only "perfect sacrificial Lamb," who could pay for the sins of the world through His death on the cross and resurrection to new life. 

The Apostle Paul wrote to the church in Rome: "...if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. ¹⁰ For with the heart one believes and is justified, and with the mouth one confesses and is saved." Do you see anything in there about circumcision or rule-keeping? No. Christ's death and subsequent resurrection paid for the sins of the world past, present and future and established His Lordship over all of creation, including the law. 

"How can this be?, " you may ask. "I know plenty of Christians who commit sins." To which I reply, "There used to be a bumper sticker that said, "Christians aren't perfect, just forgiven." 

The Bible puts it this way:

Our firm decision is to work from this focused center: One man died for everyone. That puts everyone in the same boat. He included everyone in his death so that everyone could also be included in his life, a resurrection life, a far better life than people ever lived on their own.

^16-20 Because of this decision we don’t evaluate people by what they have or how they look. We looked at the Messiah that way once and got it all wrong, as you know. We certainly don’t look at him that way anymore. Now we look inside, and what we see is that anyone united with the Messiah gets a fresh start, is created new. The old life is gone; a new life emerges! Look at it! All this comes from the God who settled the relationship between us and him, and then called us to settle our relationships with each other. God put the world square with himself through the Messiah, giving the world a fresh start by offering forgiveness of sins. God has given us the task of telling everyone what he is doing. We’re Christ’s representatives. God uses us to persuade men and women to drop their differences and enter into God’s work of making things right between them. We’re speaking for Christ himself now: Become friends with God; he’s already a friend with you.

²¹ How? you ask. In Christ. God put the wrong on him who never did anything wrong, so we could be put right with God.

 (2 Corinthians 5:14-21 The Message, emphasis added)

I don't know about you, but God "got a rise out of" me, when He finally got it through my thick skull that living for myself was making me miserable, and living so that I would 

"...love the Lord [my] God with all [my] heart and with all [my] soul and with all [my] mind...[and] love [my] neighbor as [I love myself] (Matthew 22:37-39, bracketed material mine)...

was the only way forward to a life filled with joy and contentment.