Broken little toe of the church

1 Corinthians 12:12-14,26

Just as a body, though one, has many parts, but all its many parts form one body, so it is with Christ.  For we were all baptized by one Spirit so as to form one body—whether Jews or Gentiles, slave or free—and we were all given the one Spirit to drink.  Even so the body is not made up of one part but of many.

[...]

If one part suffers, every part suffers with it; if one part is honored, every part rejoices with it.

So, she was doing the children's story (with one [1] children), and the epistle reading for the day was the bit about many gifts, but one body.  So she was doing that, about how hands were useful for doing art, but if you had four hands and no eyes it'd be hard to do art.  And then she decided to get into the bit about if one part suffers, all suffer, and mentioned stubbing your little toe.

I have broken my little toe a few times: once on the left, and twice on the right.  Gloria broke her little toe regularly.  (Always on the right, and always on the same piece of furniture, and, since it was a piece that *I* had brought, it was always my fault.)

You know what you do to treat a broken toe?

Nothing.

Absolutely nothing.

Anything else that gets broken, you sling, or splint, or cast, to stabilize it so it can heal.  But we don't actually *do* anything with our little toe.  It just lies there alongside your other toes.  So it doesn't need to be stabilized, and it already kind of is.  Some doctors or emergency rooms might mention taping it against the next toe, or toes, and we tried that one time with Gloria.  But, in the first place, Gloria had trouble with tape adhesive, and, in the second place, replacing the tape was kind of painful.  So we just left the toe alone most times.

So, I am the broken little toe of the church.  I am the broken little toe of the Body of Christ.  If at all possible, other members of the Body try to avoid me, and wish I weren't around.  I understand that.  I'd avoid me, too, if I possibly could.

The one thing you do do about a broken toe is to try not to injure it further.  But you only do that if it's *your* toe that's broken.  If it's someone else's toe, you don't care.  You don't even think about it.  When Gloria broke her shoulder (her *right* shoulder), everyone, in seeking to comfort her, would pat her on her shoulder.  They always chose her *right* shoulder.

So I suppose it is no wonder that the churches always step on the broken little toe ...