Yes, believe it or not, I am still alive, despite my complete lack of comittment to this blog. And, oh man, do I have SO many stories to share and pictures to show. But, alas, it shall wait. Just wait. Like all the rest of the things in my life before I started nursing school. Today I went to the grocery store AND the pharmacy and I felt like I was in heaven. That's one cool study break. My reading these days consists of my Med-Surg Textbook that is at least 8 inches wide (seriously), Fundamentals, Pharmacology, Pathophysisology...and I'll stop boring you now...and giving myself a slight panic attack.
Nursing school is THE hardest thing I have ever tried to accomplish. And...so far...by the grace of God, I'm making it, one class at a time. And I will make it. Because I said so.
But, and my apologies if this is TMI, I get to escape to the bathroom, and sometimes even spend a little longer than usual reading something that ISN'T a textbook. Now, don't get wrong, sometimes it's just a little light reading or a lovesick novel. But on my way to the bathroom a couple of days ago, I happened to pick "The Jesus I Never Knew" by Phillip Yancey, which was on my "college textbooks shelf." I figured it would serve it's purpose for the moment, and I'd pick up something else.
But I am so intrigued....
It's not an easy read, that's for sure, but it is SO thought-provoking, which is nice when most of my thoughts are centered around the names of drugs and deep suctioning trach tubes.
Today, I think it might have been especially good to read this:
pages 160-161
"One question, however, no longer gnaws at me as it once did, a question that I believe lurks behind most of our issues with God: Does God Care? I know of only one way to answer that question, and it has come through my study of the life of Jesus...By no means did Jesus eliminate all suffering--he healed only a few in small patches of the globe--but he did signify an answer to the question of whether God cares.
Three times that we know of, suffering drove Jesus to tears. He wept when his friend Lazarus died. Grief, I found, is not something you get used to. Grief hit like a freight train, flattening me. it left me gasping for breath, and I could do nothing but cry. Somehow, I find it comforting that Jesus felt something similar when his friend died.
Another time, tears came to Jesus when he looked out over Jerusalem and realized the awaiting that fabled city. He let out a cry of what Shusaku Endo has called mother-love: "O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing." I sense in that spasm of emotional pain something akin to what parents feel...or the pain of a man or woman has just learned a spouse has left...the pain of a jilted lover. It is a helpless, crushing pain of futility, and it staggers me to realize that the Son of God emitted a cry of helplessness in the face of human freedom, Not even God, with all His power, can force a human being to love.
Finally, Hebrews tells us, Jesus "offered up...loud cries and tears to the one who could save himself from death." But of course, He was not saved from death. Is it too much to say that Jesus himself asked the question that haunts me, that haunts most of us at one time or another: Does God care? What else can be the meaning of his quotation from that dark psalm, "My God, my God why have you forsaken me?"
Again, I find it strangely comforting that when Jesus faced pain he responded much as I do. He did not pray in the garden, "Oh Lord I am so grateful that you have chosen to me suffer on your behalf. I rejoice in the privilege!" No, he experienced sorrow, fear, abandonment and something approaching even desperation. Still, he endured because He knew that at the center of the universe lived his Father, a God of love he could trust regardless of how things appeared at the time.
Jesus' response to suffering people and to "nobodies" provides a glimpse into the loving heart of God. God is not the unmoved Abslute, but rather the Loving One who draws near. God looks on me in all my weakness, I believe, as Jesus looked on the widow standing by her son's bier, and on Simon the Leper, and on another Simon, Peter, who cursed him yet even so was commissioned to be found and lead his church, a community that always finds a place for rejects."
I think it's not so much just about me anymore.
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