5pointers

Two years ago I was performing my EMT clinicals.  One of the EMTs gave me a word I haven’t forgotten.  When we waited in the break area between calls, I skimmed a medical book and commented that the hardest part of the job for me would be to see the more grotesque injuries.  I’m ok seeing my own blood, but wince at someone else’s injuries- avulsions, contusions, open fractures, lacerations, etc.  The EMT answered me, but I didn’t think he’d heard.  He said, “The patient is the one with the problem.” 

The pateint has the trauma.  You treat them.  You are not the one with the overdose or trauma at the end of the day.  It is someone else.

The praticality comes when applying this to theology.  As I’ve put my ear to the culture and listened to doctrines, more influenced by the spirit of the age than the Spirit of Christ, I’ve come away feeling the maladies.  Denial of Hell, diplomacy on the virgin birth, denial on the penal substitutionary atonement, mitigation sin, mitigation of the deity of Christ, etc.  I’ve come away feeling queasy myself.  Then I remembered, at the end of the day, the patient has the problem.  I remembered, you don’t defend a lion, you turn it loose; you loose the cure for all maladies of theological traumas, the Word of God, and let it speak itself.  God’s breath cuts and pierces and treats these maladies better than any surgeon’s scalpel.  I don’t need to address every scoffer that comes around, but I need to be ready to turn the scalpel loose on those who would here and be quickened under its power.

I went for a run yesterday and on my way back, around 5 pm, I saw a dove under some shrubs with a worm in its mouth. That’s interesting I thought. A little later I went for a walk and saw a robin with a worm hanging from its beak after 8 pm. The second bird made me think about this again. I guess it disproves that old adage, “The early bird gets the worm.”
What conclusion could we draw from this? Well my first thought, being the overly analytical, overly spiritual man I have been called, has been to point to one of Christ’s parables. Jesus, in explaining the reward of heaven, showed that the workers who toiled in the field all day (the birds getting up early) would receive the same reward from their Master as those workers who had just started tending the field before the day ended (the birds getting their worm at the close of the day). The essential thing is that they enter Christ’s labor field. So, whether you have been a Christian 2 weeks, 2 months, or 2 years, your reward is enterity with Christ in heaven, and the “least in heaven” is greater than the greastest man born of a woman (Luke 7:28). Though this passage sparks a tangent and could well be material for another or several more blogs- Christ’s words that the least in heaven implies that there are degrees among those in heaven. This is extremely subordinate to following Christ, but what causes one to be greater or lesser in heaven?
The limiations to these parallels are obvious- the birds getting up early do not have to toil all day once they find their food and also, the birds getting up early receive their reward before the other birds even start to labor, while in the parable the first workers got paid last. However, I was suprised to see the late bird getting the worm and wanted to share my excitement.

I breathed deeply as I looked ahead. I stared out a glass pane in front of me, transfixed by our speed of ascent; the ships in port grew smaller and smaller. The ground began to shake beneath my feet as we rose. Inches of metal beneath my feet separated me from death.
As I went to the top of the Space Needle in Seattle, I found myself reliving my hatred of suspended heights. How could the workers in it and the rest be so oblivious to how the observation deck swayed at the top? Of course it was constructed with safety in mind and sound engineering principles, but being 500 feet from land still does not allow the amount I am convinced in my mind to transcend into my stomach. But then I remembered that just the day before I sat inches from the window of the airplane at a height of 40,000 feet and temperature of -80 F! A break in that glass and a giant pressure vacuum ensues, temperature plummet in the cabin, Oxygen becomes scarce, and a life threatening situation is imminent. Yet this caused me the least concen.
The fact is this: every single day we live, we are given the breath of God. Greek mythologies devised their own philosophy to comprehend this phenomenon. They created three muses: one drew out the cord of life, the second measured it, and the third cut it. Christ asked his followers, “And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life?” (Matt 6:27). We are to live to God as best we can. Somewhere above, the days of our lives are measured out. We may have the security of the ground beneath our feet or be only inches from death, but neither the danger of the one nor the safety of the other is any final guarantee; God will take us when he takes us. By knowing God, we may know our fraility, but by knowing that and knowing God, we may rest content more than the workers on the top of the towers who trust in man’s strength, having an eternal assurance.