Easter Thoughts

I looked at the CT Scan results with a sinking feeling.  There was a mass in the head of my patient's pancreas.  That was bad enough, but worse, it looked like some of the nearby lymph nodes were enlarged, as well.

The man whose CT Scan results I was looking at, Jim, was a sixty year old man who had come in to see me for vague abdominal pain and some weight loss.  He didn't really have time to slow down as he was caring for two special needs children.  You could see in his eyes how much he loved them and could feel in the air how much they needed him. 

I shook my head, afraid of what the future held for them all.

As I picked up the phone to call Jim, I asked myself how I was going to share his results with him and still give him hope -- without being dishonest.  Fortunately, I suppose, I don't know the future and it is easy to fall back on that uncertainty to give someone a little light in an otherwise dark diagnosis.

I suppose the thing that keeps me going in medicine is the fact that those sorts of phone calls are few and far between.  It isn't usually all that hard to bring hope into a situation.

There are people who believe that the Bible is a book full of good teachings.  They think that it contains philosophy that enhances a person's life.  They just can't seem to believe the miracles that line its pages.

If I am honest, the Bible is a book that passes a death sentence on every person.  It is full of verses like "For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God."  In a sense, it is like a doctor who walks into each room to give a terminal illness as the diagnosis and then walks out, taking all hope with him. 

No treatment.

No cure.

That is all the Bible would say, except for one thing.

The Resurrection of Jesus Christ.

For, one day, two thousand years ago, one man conquered sin and death.  There is an assurance that because His tomb is empty, Jesus has power over death and that His promises are certain.  There is forgiveness and pardon and hope for all.

Because He lives we can too.

There's a Pill for That

I looked across at the older gentleman sitting across from me.  "What?"  I said in a surprised voice.

"I'm not helping you, am I?"  He repeated.  "I mean, I'm taking the medicine you prescribe me, but look at me,"  he gestured with his hands.  "I'm a hundred pounds over weight and I'm not exercising.  I'm not doing the stuff I know I should do to get healthy.  And you're supposed to make me feel better with pills?"

I sat back a little.  Roy knew the right things to do, but his tone was already defeated before he had even started to try to do them.  "Roy,"  I told him.  "You don't need to lose a hundred pounds.  But you do need to start setting some goals."

"I would just like to see you take small steps to improve your diet and start exercising -- slowly at first and gradually building up from there.  You'll probably lose some weight, but more importantly, you will start to feel good again."

We continued our conversation, but I kept thinking about Roy's statement and his question.  Is there a pill that will take the place of healthy living, diet and exercise?

The answer is, unfortunately, "No."  There are diet pills, there are personal trainers and gym memberships, but in the end, it is up to each one of us whether we will do things we know to be healthy.

The problem is not usually education -- most of us know what we should do -- the issue is motivation.


Over and over again, I struggle with this in my own life -- not with lack of knowledge, but with lack of motivation.  How do I make myself want to do the things that I know I should do?

In the end, this motivation is the difference between living in victory or struggling with defeat and no one can take responsibility for it except for me.

Knowing My Pilot

I really don't like flying.

There is something about strapping yourself into a metal device that propels you up to bounce above the clouds that just seems unnatural.  If God had really intended for us to fly, you would think He'd have given us wings, not these spindly things we call arms and legs.

I think part of the issues is that I don't really know who's flying the plane.  To me, the pilot is just a disembodied voice saying things like "We're expecting some turbulence for the next forty-five minutes, so please return to your seats and fasten your seat belts."

If I knew the pilot and co-pilot, maybe I would trust them to take me from one end of my journey to the other -- regardless of the weather we might face in the middle.

Of course, I have no chance to get to know these fine folks, but when it comes to life, I have opportunity to get to know my Pilot -- if I choose to do so.

You see, Jesus is not my co-pilot, He is my Pilot.  I trust He will guide me as He wants, but there are plenty of times when Jesus takes my plane and steers it directly into a hurricane with gale force winds.  Only because I know Him can I believe that He knows what He is doing and will fly me out the other side.

I am afraid that many folks choose the middle of the storm to throw themselves on God's mercy.  Then, when the clouds finally clear, they forget about the importance of a pilot in their life.

I have found, that to have peace in the storm, I need to know my pilot before hand.  Only then can I have the confidence to know that He will carry me through -- whatever I am facing.

Learning Patience



 

It wasn't a particularly clear day as we boarded our flight headed from Baltimore to Louisville, Kentucky.  The clouds weren't particularly ominous, but neither was the sun visible.  However, we quickly rose above the clouds after take off and could see the sun beaming down on the tops of the puffy clouds.

It seemed like an amazingly short time that the captain came on the intercom to announce that we were going to be descending into Louisville and that the flight attendants would be confiscating our garbage and make us sit upright and put our tray tables away.  I glanced at my watch.  We were a half an hour ahead of time!

When we landed and docked at our gate, there was no cheering for the early arrival time.  Instead, every one got up and started pressing to get off of the plane.  Being early certainly didn't give any of the passengers patience.

Watching people drive gives another clue, for there are plenty of folks who would cut off their mother in traffic, if it meant that they would arrive at their exit one car length sooner.

Of course, there times when one has reason to be in a hurry -- a real emergency of one kind or another, but I am afraid in general, we just are in the habit of hurrying and can't be bothered to slow down.  So often, we rush like crazy only to run into a traffic jam or, some other block in our day that stops us in our tracks.

It may be human to hurry, but it brings peace to learn patience.  Just learning to calm my spirit a moment or two, to slow down a little and absorb the beauty around me, helps get me where God needs me to be.

For, in my experience, God isn't interested in getting me to hurry, but rather to slow down enough to pay attention to Him and to see the needs around me.  And if He has to put a traffic jam in my way to get me to slow down, He'll do exactly that.

The one thing I can guarantee is that you'll never learn patience in a hurry.