The Best and Worst of Times

How can it be possible to be living in a place where it is so good to be, even while it is so hard to be there?

Here I feel more than ever that I have a purpose. Everything I do is something that may not be done if this hospital were not here. In the US, the system is such that ultimately I both feel (and am) replaceable. There is always someone else to take my place if I am unavailable. Here, I am unique, and my purpose is clear. And that makes this place one of the best things that has ever occurred in the course of my life.

On the other side of things, there is the boy with shrapnel in his brain who isn't going to live, the traumatized child with bilateral amputated legs, the stories of starvation and cruelty that leak out of Mosul like vitriol and eat into my heart even while I try to separate my knowledge from my emotions, so I can still do my job. It is hard to be here, able only to react and sometimes not even able to stop the pain or save the life in front of me. It is hard to care for the bomb-maker and the leering man who is most certainly Daesh, while the child in the next bed over sobs as he speaks about his dead family members. These are the worst things I have ever seen, the worst stories I have heard (on par with the horrors of the Holocaust).

And then there is the question. The one that I knew he was going to ask even before he spoke and wanted to know whether or not the bad things that happen to people are a result of their turning away from God. And if they are not, then why does God allow such things to happen? Not only in reference to Daesh and Nazis and wartime slaughter of human rights, but in reference to natural disasters. Why do they happen at all? Why does God let people die?

This question is not an easy one. And the answer isn't easy either. In fact, without an understanding of God's character, the answer is impossible to take. To begin, one must understand absolutely that God is good, and that God is perfect and just. He is never one without the other. He is a complete and perfect whole. Therefore, if God allows something to happen, or even causes it as is the case in much of the Old Testament, then it must be right for it to happen. To some this might sound horrifically naive, but I can assure you that this is not a simple Sunday school answer, although it would be if you just stopped there and never thought any deeper about it.

Going deeper, I have to look at the facts. First, if God decided tonight to wipe out everyone on the planet with some natural or supernatural disaster, it would be well within his rights to do so. He is the creator of the universe. He is so holy that even looking at his face would kill me. And I am not. I am a sinner, to my core, only clinging to life and hope because of the blood of Jesus Christ. God owes mankind nothing, and he already gave them everything.

Starting in that frame of mind, and with the premise that God is good and just, then I can look at events and see what possible good or justice might come out of such things. Of course, my view is still terribly limited. I cannot see what will happen in three generations because a famine caused this family to move from one country to another, or because persecution caused these Christians to disperse into the surrounding countries, or because this typhoon opened the door for Christian NGO’s to get into this country. Or because the sudden, horrific violence of one religion made thousands of followers realize it was not the true way. But I can extrapolate from what I have seen of God in the past and say that it will all work for God’s ultimate plan, which is the salvation of humanity.

This is the basis of faith, believing without seeing---hoping for what we are sure will come.

Sometimes, I do believe, it is only through the worst of times that the best things in life can be seen for what they are.

Impressions of Mosul through the Eyes of an Observer

Bombs drop through hazy air
Onto streets already full of rubble
On homes and people
Huddled together inside walls
That fall and shatter and turn to dust
While outside the battle rages
They remain
Prisoners of their own law
Turned sour and rancid
Destroying hope and peace
In one swift move
The bullets fly
Across the water
A girl stumbles to the ground
The air, hot and dry,
Fills with smoke and sand
Thick as the choking lies
That make these men despise each other
Each life
And here is the safe place
Built on the rock
Creating a beachhead 
Untouchable, irrefragable
On the plains of Nineveh
The temporary is shaking to pieces
As the bombs fall
And only the permanent remains

Notes from a War Zone

I've spent the last month in an emergency field hospital (EFH) located near the ongoing battle against Daesh (ISIS) in Mosul, Iraq. And, not surprisingly, it's been a difficult month, both in ways I expected but also in ways I did not.

The gore and trauma, for instance, was a given. Otherwise, what would be the point of a flying thousands of miles to a field hospital? And the gunshots and sounds of mortars and explosions in the distance were also fairly routine.

But there were other things that took my by complete surprise, like the sucker-punch attack of self-doubt in the middle of the first few days that made me certain I had been wasting my life up to that moment because everyone around me was so much more exciting and so much more interesting and definitely prettier (for what that matters). Or the boy who I cared for all shift without trouble until I suddenly realized he was the same age as my youngest brother, and I didn't think he was going to make it through the week.

All of these things combined to make this one of the most difficult experiences of my life. And now that I'm leaving it all behind, I feel almost as if I've taken the easy way out since there is still so much work to be done.

Almost daily since the beginning of this trip, I've had to remind myself that God called me to this place. Me. And I followed his voice. And I am enough. I am enough to do the task he has given me, because he has prepared me for it and because his strength continues to fill me. I am never alone.

The other thing to remember is that God is in control. He's in control when the child is miraculously unharmed by the bullet that went through his neck. And he's in control when an eight-year old loses both legs. And he's still in control when a ten-year old dies from wounds sustained while fleeing Mosul with his family.

These are hard lessons to remember. Hard things to live through. Especially when combined with sleep deprivation and the overload of having to learn fifty new names in a day. But leaving is even more difficult.

Here, in the middle of chaos and the unknown, I have felt more at peace with God than I have for years. The difference I can make here is so evident that it's almost tangible.

Going home I have to remind myself that I am not really leaving the war zone. Although there may not be mortars dropping on my hometown or bunkers and barricades and soldiers surrounding my bedroom, my town is no less a war zone than Mosul. Some of the wounds that people sustain here---that we treat in the EFH---are obvious, easily identified, but they carry inside them the exact same brokenness as every single man, woman and child in the USA who doesn't know Christ.

This whole world is a war zone, and the enemy---crafty and clever as he is---uses different tactics on different fronts, but that does not change who he is or his ultimate goal. In Mosul, the enemy uses Daesh to destroy hope and take lives. In America, he is so much more subtle. He uses social media, drugs, pride and even education in an attempt to destroy our ability to believe our only hope of salvation.

I suppose that is why, even when I've seen the children who've been shot by snipers, that I can't feel anger toward Daesh. All I feel for them is sorrow. I truly do not comprehend the kind of brokenness that would lead someone to shoot at women and children. So, please, if you are reading this, take a moment to pray. Pray for Iraq and it's people---the rich and the refugees. Pray for Daesh---that their guns would miss and their souls would be saved. Pray for America and its decadent decay, and pray for those of us who are living in the middle of it all just trying to save a life.

Deep calls to deep at the roar of your waterfalls; all your breakers and your waves have gone over me.

By day the Lord commands his steadfast love, and at night his song is with me, a prayer to the God of my life.

I say to God, my rock: “Why have you forgotten me? Why do I go mourning because of the oppression of the enemy?”

As with a deadly wound in my bones, my adversaries taunt me, while they say to me all the day long, “Where is your God?” 

Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you in turmoil within me? Hope in God; for I shall again praise him, my salvation and my God.

Psalm 42:7-11