A Friend of Mine

The product of randomly interspersed night shifts over the past several weeks has been an inability to sleep like a normal person. This is nothing entirely new. But that is where I sit, right now, not sleeping but with a pen & paper scribbling away in the ladder hours of the night & into the meekness of the morning this Good Friday.

Tonight, I a rummaging around with a question. Almost everything is different in my life as I look in the rear view through the years past; the season, the people, the relationships, the career, but has anything really changed? Sometimes I fear living a life where everything is different but nothing has really changed inside of my heart; a life of running away to new places with new loves but carrying along the same broken ways & the same selfish habits. If something has changed, what is it?

Work has been exceptionally trial-some as of late. Training has begun for the expansion of our medicine unit into a second inpatient tower at he University of Colorado Hospital on the outskirts or Denver. The expansion will provide an additional 276 beds, making UCH one of the biggest hospitals in this region of the country. Such an expansion has called for more employees, more flexibility in schedules, more teaching, more education hours; all of which I am immensely thankful for but increasingly tired because of. Like a flood there have been continued influx of computer training modules, mock codes & dummy resuscitations. Compounding all of this is the fact that lately I have seen more staffing shortages, code blues, strokes & medical emergencies than in all the combined months prior. Without need for further explanation, it is not a stretch to sat the demand from work is high which is often accompanied by  increased stress. What I notice out of this is unusual in the world, however. Love is everywhere. I see my co-workers stepping up & laying down their spare minutes to help me, to help others. I see mercy in excess with a patient population that can be difficult to love. I am thankful for my friends at work, they are teaching me elements of sacrifice & discipline I could have never dreamed of. The other day I noticied this plaque at work given to staff by a previous patient, it read:

Nurses are a blessing-

'Blessed are the merciful,

for they will be shown mercy.'
(Matthew 5:7)

I saw this verse & then looked around my work place as if for the first time. I have never seen so much mercy, I smiled in this moment.

Early this night I returned home from a fitness ministry run by a few close friends of mine in Downtown Denver. After the work out we we strolled a few city blocks to have a burger, a beer & a few laughs. There is so much thanks to be had in sitting with a group of friends I love & I know love me. We blessed the meal, talked about life, laughed & shared stories about Christ. I see in my friends the greatest love, a willingness to lay down defenses & take up Jesus's cross. They are teaching me what it is to live with a full heart, what it is to be made new.

It is Good Friday, a day that has passed me by for years with no recognition. A day where I tried endlessly to understand why God would send His son to die? & then I thought of all my friends, from today, from the past & what they may be one day. Then I thought of Christ & how all my friends are showing me a reflection of His love.

Jesus tells us, there is no greater love than than one who lays his life down for his friends & then He calls us friends.

"My Command is this: Love eachother as I have loved you.

Greater love has no one than this, 

that he lay his life down for his friends."

(John 15:12-13)

His crucifixion on this day 2,000 years ago was the perfect manifestation in all of history of the greatest love ever conceived. He lay His life down, not for one but for all; not for just me but you. He calls us His friends, not servants, & asks us to do the same for one another. His command is simple, that we should love each other as He loved us. Let us not be so distracted by our differences & of the world that we forget to do this, let us be reminded this day & everyday what our Friend did on that cross. Would I see the crucifixion the same if I looked at Jesus as a friend of mine? Jesus, is our friend, He took our place.

So when I ask myself if anything is different, I know it is. My Friend lay His life down so we could be free, greater love has no one than this.

let freedom reign

We fight for it every second of our lives. The battle rages in our world for release from tyranny & in our hearts from selfishness. For centuries poets have contemplated it's depth & appearance, politicians have argued over it & soldiers have died for it. In every facet of our history there is a tale of liberation or oppression, our lives do the same. Freedom, it is a noble pursuit, for the most part & everyone seems to have a thought or some insight speaking to it, this is mine.

Freedom will never exist, personally or globally, in absence of wisdom & truth. We often do not have truth or wisdom because we do not ask for it & if we do ask for it, we do not believe in it when it is offered to us. We are a wave of the sea, blown & tossed by anyone who shares a truth more comfortable than the man before him. We look for truth from the parched dirt of the earth, our wishful eyes pointed down thinking we will see it grow miraculously. But truth falls from the heavens like rain & without it nothing good would grow. There are imposters selling us truth & they are everywhere, feeding us lies with a rotten heart & a tempting exterior. There are people preaching to & teaching us with eloquent & articulate words that are empty of love, resolve & morals, we are convinced this is wisdom. Do not believe for one second that a lie can offer you ever the slightest hope of freedom. We must be careful what we allow to take root in our minds & we must guard our hearts fiercely, it is where life begins.

While physical freedom in this world is a beautiful thing, one that I am wildly thankful for, it is not the most important freedom we can obtain. We must exchange the fear of losing freedom in this world for a passion for spiritual freedom. Our lives here are nothing but a mist & in a second we will be gone from this place. Yet our fears keeping us from caring for our neighbor, from new adventures, from exploring the human spirit, from love. We use our freedoms as a means of extending our lives, forgetting the reality that we will, in fact, die one day. We lock ourselves in the illusion that our greatest freedom lies is complete independence from everything; no help, no relationship, no support, no love, no God. We find ourselves lonely, dead inside, & we wonder why.
 
My big brother shared this thought at the end of his thesis, "Even for all the difficulties in a wounded world, man is not without hope, because he is not without means of living the life of God even now." Even if all in the world was taken away, we could still have hope & freedom would still reign. 

That is all for now.

“The greatest disease in the West today is not TB or leprosy; it is being unwanted, unloved, and uncared for. We can cure physical diseases with medicine, but the only cure for loneliness, despair, and hopelessness is love. There are many in the world who are dying for a piece of bread but there are many more dying for a little love. The poverty in the West is a different kind of poverty -- it is not only a poverty of loneliness but also of spirituality. There's a hunger for love, as there is a hunger for God.”-Mother Teresa