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.