The Sunday Sermonette – Merthiolate, a Lesson in Life! 

  

     For those of us who are a wee bit long in the tooth, a bottle filled with an antiseptic-smelling, red-orange liquid is more than just a nostalgic scent. It’s a time machine that whisks us back to summer days filled with scrapes, scratches, bites, and stings. That little brown bottle, a staple in almost every home that housed children in the 1950s, held a potent healing elixir that often felt more painful than the injury it treated. That bottle contained Merthiolate, the bane of many a child’s existence in those days of long ago. Alas, I was no exception.  

     After falling off my Western Flyer tractor, my knees were generally the first to be inducted into the Merthiolate Hall of Pain. Mom would gently remove embedded gravel and dirt from my wounds. She cleaned my scrapes with warm soap and water. Then, from the mirrored medicine cabinet, she took out a bottle, unscrewed its cap, and pulled out the glass stick connected to its lid. Red-orange liquid oozed down the stick, globing at the end like a teardrop. By then, I was hollering like a banshee and dancing a jig, knowing what would happen.

     As Mom applied the Merthiolate, it felt like my wounds were filled with liquescent volcanic lava. My eyes watered, and my face crinkled in agony. The cooling balm of Mom’s breath helped some, but not much. Merthiolate’s fiery sting was one that no mortal lung could extinguish. Yet, in those few moments, I learned a valuable lesson—Life can be painful but can be endured.

     We’ve all endured the scrapes of malicious gossip in our lives, which wound and often resurface when we least expect them to. Life’s scratches, inflicted by a friend or family member, can take a long time to heal. Vicious bites of deception in the name of love can dig deep into our psyche. Stings of depression and illness can sap the soul of its will to live. And like Merthiolate’s orange-red stain, these scrapes and scratches can stain our lives, as well.  

     The cure for these stains—medicine, drugs, surgery, therapy—can be expensive and time-consuming. When we are lacerated by the hurt and pain of Life, sometimes all we can do is depend on the promises of Father God to those who believe in Him. We must try to never give in, never give up, and never forget that Father God Himself marches before us down Life’s painful road. He will always be with us. He will never leave us nor forsake us. He whispers from Heaven: “Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged.”

     Yes, dear ones, Life hurts, and the cure isn’t always pleasant. But after it, the splotchy, red-orange tattoos staining our skin will show the world how brave we were and that we survived the Merthiolate of Life—smiling on the outside, wincing on the inside—but so happy to tell its tale.

     Ponder this and go forth.