I have several unforgettable faces of people I have no doubt that the Lord willed me to be assigned to care for this year during clinicals at the hospital. I have seen a lot of suffering this year. The suffering of the physical ill, the dying, the depressed, and the mentally ill. Cancer, PTSD, Schizophrenia, domestic violence, and the pain of death; these are some of my unforgettables.
Death has a distinct odor... A fowl one that is easily recognizable once experienced but not easily forgettable. Sometimes it is so overwhelming and causes me to want to just stop the care that needed to be done.
James 1:17 says, "Every good and perfect gift is from above coming down from the Father of heavenly light, who does not change like shifting shadow." Life is a gift...a good and perfect one from the hand of God. But sin...it brings hurt, mistrust, loneliness, confusion, despair. It bruises hearts, kills joy, and makes love go wrong. Guilt and shame will keep us chained if we let it.
Cancer, PTSD, paralysis, abuse, death, kidney failure, death. There not what we dream or have planned but they're real. When I look into the faces of those laying in that hospital bed, life looks meaningless and hopeless without Jesus in the picture.
So life is a gift from the hand of God, yes. But suffering? What to do with it?
What if suffering could be a gift too? A gift that can mold and make you and me if we receive it. Yes, I like that idea. Much better than hopelessness and the meaninglessness that pain, disease, and dying can easily have us believing. Isaiah 66:9 says, "Do I bring to the moment of birth and not give delivery?" says the LORD." God"s purpose through pain is for something new to be born.
Hope is that we have a Savior who sympathizes with our weakness.
"He grew up before him
like a tender shoot,
and like a root out of dry ground.
He
had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him,
nothing in his appearance that we should desire him.
He was despised and rejected by mankind,
a man of suffering, and familiar with pain.
Like
one from whom people hide their faces
he was despised, and we held him in low esteem.
Surely he took up our pain
and bore our suffering,
yet
we considered him punished by God,
stricken by him, and afflicted.
But he was pierced for our transgressions,
he was crushed for our iniquities;
the
punishment that brought us peace was on him,
and by his wounds we are healed.
He was oppressed and afflicted,
yet he did not open his mouth;
he
was led like a lamb to the slaughter,
and as a sheep before its shearers is silent,
so he did not open his mouth.
By oppression and judgment he was taken away.
Yet who of his generation protested?
For
he was cut off from the land of the living;
for the transgression of my people he was punished.
He was assigned a grave with the wicked,
and with the rich in his death,
though
he had done no violence,
nor was any deceit in his mouth.
Yet it was the Lord’s will to crush him and cause him to suffer,
and though the Lord makes his life an offering for sin,
he
will see his offspring and prolong his days," Isaiah 53.
Those faces are unforgettable to me because when I look at them Jesus says, "Remember because just as you do unto this one, you do unto Me."
I want to not just love those whom i can give it easily, but those whom need it the most. So I'll keep praying that Jesus keeps making me and breaking my heart for the things that do His
Comments
Post a Comment