April 25, 2016

Emergencies

Bill and I were in the waiting room of the regional medical oncology center when an 84-year-old man on oxygen crumpled and fell to the floor. The lobby became a whirlwind of no less than 20 nurses, doctors and aids who were equipped with a wheeled blood pressure monitor, a defibrillator, and an oxygen mask.  Once the man regained consciousness and was able to speak the EMT’s, who were dispatched from across the street, arrived with lights and sirens ablaze. It strikes me that mature believers, who are certainly equipped to handle a spiritual emergency when someone falls into sin, could take a lesson from our medical counterparts. Paul said, “Brothers, if someone is caught in a sin, you who are spiritual should restore him gently. But watch yourself, or you also may be tempted. Carry each other’s burdens, and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ” (Gal 6:1-2 NIV).

1 comment:

Steve Corey said...

Gail;

-----This is a world of limited resources. Sometimes it is perplexing how those resources get allocated when considering spiritual truth. I shouldn’t think this way, but the investment we make in firehouses, fire engines, ambulances, and the expensive salaries paid for crews to mostly sit around waiting for things to go wrong, and in hospitals and wealthing doctors to their luxurious hilt, and bevies of nurses and orderlies and administrative folks, and laboratories manned by crowds of costly scientists to probe every nook and cranny for the next tidbit of relieving drug, and an army of policemen, sheriffs, and deputies burning off oceans of gasoline in exorbitantly expensive squad-cars, each better equipped than Capt Kirk’s Enterprise. We divert a flood of productive capacity into straightening up the messes people make and fall into, pandering to the public panic over death and disaster. Yet, with the exception of a “don’t start forest fires” ad here and maybe a “stop texts, stop wrecks” ad or two there, we spend comparably nothing to influence the public to honor one another and worship God. Pouring the same unlimited resources into well thought inspiration for maintaining a culture of honor and worship would produce far more benefit than flooding wealth into this gigantic janitor crew for cleaning up after a country full of spoiled, undisciplined brats given to hardly a thought about restraining themselves for the good of another.
-----Of course, even the thought of our government promoting the most general idea of worshipping God raises a deafening uproar from the godless left. It isn’t good enough for them to drive their own souls into Hell, they must make culture itself become the highway to there before they can rest “peacefully“.
-----And they have well done it. Harvard, Princeton, Yale, and you know the rest, were all founded as Christian Universities. The first involvement of government into education was the production of a “reader” drawing heavily from scripture. The first act of Congress was made in the meadow before little St. Joseph’s Church dedicating this new country to the purpose of the Almighty God. And no, it didn’t lead to no need of any investment in the emergency industry. But the necessary amount of that investment was greatly reduced, until the godless left caught up with us. Now look at what the government makes sure education serves to our children: evolution, LGBT, self adulation, victimization, and collectivism. Oh, boy! Oh, my.
-----”Unless the LORD builds the house, those who build it labor in vain. Unless the LORD watches over the city, the watchman stays awake in vain. It is in vain that you rise up early and go late to rest, eating the bread of anxious toil; for He gives to His beloved sleep.” (Ps 127:1-2) In spite of more fire crews and hospitals and police than ever before, it seems that life’s product is moldier than ever before. My proposal is that we start allocating some resources away from our “emergency clean-up crews” and into promoting the “being God‘s beloved” culture. But then my proposal will not even begin to scale the hardened prison wall the godless left has twisted the First Amendment into being.


Love you all,
Steve Corey