The Reason for the Season

It was a busy evening in the emergency department.  Patients with chest pains and coughs and weird rashes were waiting for test results and hoping to leave before midnight.

In the midst of this semi-organized chaos, an ambulance pulled up with a four year old boy who had experienced a seizure at home.  As the EMS crew wheeled him in to the department, he went into another seizure.  As the emergency room physician gave some orders, the boy's father arrived.  "Doctor," he said plaintively.  "Why is he seizin'?  Why is he seizin'?"

"I don't know yet,"  the doctor told him, even as he choked back the desire to tell him, "Don't you know that Jesus is the reason for the seizin'?"

Christmas is a busy time.  It is a time of working extra hard to get a few days off,  a time of baking cookies for folks in jail and for neighbors, and a time of visiting people in nursing homes.  There is an awful lot of "good" busyness this time of year and in that, it is awfully easy to forget the Reason for the Season.

Of course, Jesus is the Reason for the Season and while He came to earth as a little baby, He didn't stay a tiny child.  The Incarnation was just one little step on a long road that lead to a cross and then to a victorious morning, three days later.  Without any of these steps, there would be no salvation.

I was reading the words to the poem "I heard the Bells on Christmas Day," recently.  It is easy to forget, in this time of terrorism and these days of chaos that there have been other dark times.  Longfellow penned these words during the American Civil War, when Longfellow's son had been seriously wounded and his wife had recently died.

I heard the bells on Christmas Day
Their old, familiar carols play,
And wild and sweet
The words repeat
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

And thought how, as the day had come,
The belfries of all Christendom
Had rolled along
The unbroken song
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

And in despair I bowed my head;
"There is no peace on earth," I said:
"For hate is strong,
And mocks the song
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!"

Then pealed the bells more loud and deep:
"God is not dead; nor doth he sleep!
The Wrong shall fail,
The Right prevail,
With peace on earth, good-will to men!"

In these words, I find hope in this time of darkness. For, I know that Jesus did bring peace -- not to the world as a whole, but to the hearts of those who trust Him.

What You Don't Know...

"What happened?"  I asked the middle aged gentleman resting in the hospital bed.

"Well, I guess my sugar got a little high," Clifford told me.

"How did that happen?"  I asked him.

"Well, it's a long story.  I guess it started because my sugars were so good.  They were always less than 150.  So, I decided to go off my metformin and I started drinking regular pop.  And everything was going great, except that I had to urinate all of the time and I was thirsty a lot.  So I just started drinking more."

"You were drinking regular soft drinks?"

Clifford looked a little sheepish.  "Well, I was drinking a gallon of whole milk a day, too.  Anyway, my girlfriend thought some of my symptoms might have been related to my sugar going up and so I decided to check my sugar and it just read high."

At the Emergency Department, his sugar had been 764 -- much higher than it was supposed to be.

If "ignorance is bliss, tis folly to be wise."  Perhaps denial is simply the pursuit of ignorance despite all symptoms to the contrary.  Somehow, deep inside of us, there is a feeling that what we don't know can't hurt us -- at least very much.

Perhaps one of the things I can really do as a doctor, is to shine light on to the areas where folks really aren't very healthy and encourage them to do better -- sometimes with medication, sometimes with healthier lifestyle choices.

We have come to a time of year where we remember Jesus' birth. 

When John wrote about Jesus, he described Him as a light shining in the darkness.  Certainly there is plenty of darkness around us, but worse yet, is the darkness that is inside of us.  There are places inside that we don't want to look at, don't want anyone else to see and Jesus came to shine His light on them -- not to hold those areas up for ridicule, but to provide healing in a way that no one else could.

The easiest thing is to say that we don't need healing, that everything is fine.  There are a lot of other people in worse shape out there.  But beneath the surface, we all know that we aren't OK and people wouldn't accept us if they knew who we really are.

Jesus does know.  That's why He came to earth.  And if our sin is exceedingly dark, His light is infinitely more strong than it is.

What you don't know can hurt you and denial can certainly land you in the hospital.

Just ask Clifford.

A New Language

It is hard work to learn a new language.

It still remember when, at the age of eighteen, I landed in Guatemala City and disembarked from my plane to do six months of voluntary service work.  Looking at the signs and hearing people chattering away in an unfamiliar tongue was disconcerting.

I knew almost no Spanish at all.  I could ask people how they were, what was their name, or where the bathroom was, but odds were I would have absolutely no idea what they told me in response.  I had a Spanish-English Dictionary and a desire to learn.

I eventually did learn Spanish -- at least enough that I can get around pretty well in Central America.  I found in that time, that it takes a lot of practice to learn a new language.  In the beginning, you have to translate everything in your head into your native language and the reverse when you are speaking.  It is so easy to get lost two sentences into a conversation, because you are stuck on a word back somewhere in the first sentence.

Eventually, you stop translating and just start speaking the new language.  You think in it.  You even dream in it.

It seems to me, that Jesus came to earth to teach us a new language.

Prior to His ministry, the rule was an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.  Jesus came to teach us to love our enemies.

The language of love, as Jesus taught it, is a tough language to learn.  It involves seeing people in need and reaching out to them.  It involves giving until it hurts and then, giving some more until it stops hurting.

In the beginning, when we are learning the language of love, we have to translate everything into this language.  For me, it means asking the question, "How can I show love to this patient I'm seeing?"  The answer often translates into more time spent and more listening.

I can't say I'm very good at speaking this language.  I fall back all too easily into my old, self-centered behaviors, but with practice, it will come.

Jesus said:  "By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another."

It is hard work to learn another language, but anyone can do it, if they will only practice.