Urgent Life

The Lord has been teaching me so much about life during my time here. He shed more light on some of these lessons while I was home in the States for Christmas. 


There is an urgency to life here that I never noticed before in the States. Knowing that a third of my patients are dead, despite using the best medicine that we have available here, bears a deep impression on my spirit. Every chance to show someone love must be taken. 


Along with that sense of urgency, that sense that we must live and love right in this moment for we may never have this opportunity again, comes a sense that somehow we're meant for more than this. I feel robbed when my patient who seems to be doing so much better suddenly dies in the middle of the night. Why do I feel so bereft, like someone broke in and stole their years and their life? Shouldn't an 8 month old live so much longer?


In the book of Ecclesiastes, it mentions that God has "set eternity in the hearts of men" (Ecc. 3:11) He designed us with an ache for more time, an ache to live for an eternity. He created man to live forever with Him. After the fall in the Garden, we got robbed. We have an enemy, and he introduced death into this world. But after death comes eternity. There is more than this world. Don't you feel it when a loved one dies? That perhaps they're not really dead... that perhaps there should be something more?


During Christmas, or the celebration of Jesus' birthday, I was thinking about how Jesus is called Emmanuel, or God with us. God sent Him, His only Son, to be with us on earth. That made it possible for Him to face death victoriously, conquering it by raising from death itself to bridge the gap for us back into eternity. He provides the way to enter life forever, even after death, with God, if you let Him... 


The urgency of life here urges me to seize every opportunity, every sliver of a chance, to share with people this incredible news! Every moment I get to share of God's great love for them, that would compel Him to send His Son to bring us into eternity with Him, is a moment I must share. For that moment may be their last one this side of eternity.