God in a Shattered Mind

I transport patients with a variety of mental statuses. Some are near asleep, some are in a presistant vegitative state, some are groggy, some are grouchy, some are elateed because after the exam I take them to, they get to go home.

I transported a woman who really wasn't all there. She could talk, but her thoughts were extremely tangential, and she often kept asking me where we were going. I would explain to her again what procedure we were going to. We passed the hospital chapel, and her eyes lit up. She sat up straighter in the wheelchair and said, "You know, God doesn't want religion. He just wants people to love Him and His Law." The rest of the way going to the exam, we talked about who God was, she listed off the 10 commandments, and we talked about how much we loved God.

Through this, I saw past this woman's shattered state of cognition into her spirit that God had probably pruned (Jn 15:6) and sanctified over a lifetime. For a Christian, the body does deteriorate, but what remains is the soul wrapped in the glory of God. The grey matter of one's brain looses mass, the neurochemicals may be at a lower concentration, the neural pathways may start to become more disconnected, but the love for God was not present in this woman's mind. It was present in her soul, for she had accepted Him as her Savior, and in keeping His commands and remaining in His love, it was Him that sanctified her - and it was evident that He was her reality when she could make sense out of nothing else.

I look forward to the day where we may meet again in the new Creation, with whole bodies, but more importantly, in that unity with Christ that, by her love that reached beyond the capacity of her mind, she gave me a mere glimpse of.

Oh, God, may I love You so much more, that even when my cognitive abilities fade, my heart for You remains. I can't imagine the type of faith, love, and obediance this woman had toward You. May she be an example of what I hope to be - broken yet completely Yours.

The beauty of staph

Admittedly I thought it was weird: A scrub top print as "Pewter Staph." I am NOT making this up. Go to Smart Scrubs and brows under the clearance items, and ye shall find (and ye shall laugh if you like nerdy pre-med humor!) Yeah. Most definitely weird. Then I thought: Why would anyone make a scrub top design out of an organism that is a pathogen - lethal in some cases?

Bottom line, there is something aesethetic about those bacterial colonies branching out in all different directions. Just as there is something aesthetic about the human body - at the macro and microscopic level. There is beauty even among the most medically vruelent things. Such as the HIV virus: Google a picture of it, and you stare in wonder.

What does this say about God? Does even the deadliest bacteria and virus declare His glory - yes, even His beauty? If so, then something made it change from a beautifully complex entity to a beautifully complex deadly organism. Christians know that 'something' was sin. Was the Fall of Creation.

How much more beautiful will these bacteria and viruses be - assuming they are present in the New Creation? How much more will they reflect the glory of the One who made them if now, they are only a poor reflection of what He originally created them to be?

And that is how we are as well. Broken sinful people, aesthetically beautiful anatomically as Body Worlds II has shown us and still reflecting the fruits of the Spirit though inadaquately? Once washed by Jesus' blood and once comitted to walking in His way, in the New Creation, we will no longer be a reflection of the image of our Creator. We will be with Him and He will be fully reflected through Creation - incluuding us.