We are both “internal processors” of emotion, so we took a break partway through to get some coffee and decompress. Sitting quietly in the cafeteria, we talked absently about the photographs. “It reminded me of Ecclesiastes,” she said, and I thought about all the futility and sorrow and frustration encompassed in that book: [Read more…] about What Shall We Remember?
Ecclesiastes
In Its Time
[The third post in a series on becoming a Christian physician. Earlier posts are Do You Want to Be a Doctor? and Helping People Is Not Enough].
![Enjoying Breakfast](https://blog.emergingscholars.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/pancakes2.jpg)
After working 24 hours on call in the pediatric ICU, I was exhausted. I wanted to sleep, but friends had recently been reminding me of the health benefits of breakfast, so I dragged myself to a local diner for breakfast and sat at the counter next to a father and his little daughter. “We graduated from the booth to the counter,” he was explaining to the waitress, trying to hide his pride. The little girl looked shyly up, swiveling playfully on the rotating seat as she stretched up to rest her elbows on the countertop. I tried not to glance at them too much, but I was overwhelmed and fascinated by many simple things: the widening of her eyes at the stack of pancakes, the delighted silence as she chewed her way through the syrupy mess, the polite sips of tart orange juice from a well-worn cup.
The hospital tends to “stick” or creep into the outside world. That weekend I had been having nightmares, imagining what it would be like to suddenly find that my eight year old daughter was brain-dead, or my ten year old son was killed in a car accident, or my brother’s cold turned out to be leukemia.* Â Random and otherwise innocent sounds would make me think of beeping monitors and noisy breathing machines. It seemed difficult to completely extract myself from the hospital. Even when I went to the DMV, the inspector saw me in scrubs and asked, in an attempt to connect, “Do you work in the hospital? Â Have you seen dead people? . . . Are some of them children? That must be hard; I can’t imagine.” [Read more…] about In Its Time
Finding Calcutta: What is My Legacy?
![Funeral Procession](http://www.ket.org/elliswilson/images/gallery_funeral.jpg)
Probes:
- How would you articulate the gulf between a secular legacy, one of the world’s primary measures of a life’s work, and faithful fulfillment of Christian calling?
- How have you received affirmation/fulfillment in the blessing of Christ’s call and following Christ’s call?
Defining legacy
1. Law. a gift of property, especially personal property, as money, by will; a bequest
2. anything handed down from the past, as from an ancestor or predecessor: the legacy of ancient Rome – From Dictionary.com.
The world focuses on what can be experienced directly – what is seen. It is a great temptation to make that the measuring stick of our life’s work, our impact on the world. We are called to trust in God with a belief that he is working through us toward what He knows we can and will become eternally.
There is a Christian legacy for those who know and follow God. Abram’s calling shows this in God’s promises (Genesis 12:1-3).