Poor Jesse Sheidlower, editor at large of the Oxford English Dictionary—he can’t even show up at a holiday party without being cornered by another distraught denizen of the English-speaking world with the query, “What are we supposed to call the decade that’s now ended?” Pretend you’re the editor of the dictionary—how would you answer all those emails? After all, we call the 80’s the 80’s and the 90’s the 90’s. But what shall we call the 00’s? The Zeroes? Hardly. How about the Aughts (English for the number 0)? Or the Ohs? Or the Oh-Ohs (I like that one!)?
Fact of the matter is the English language isn’t going to melt down simply because we can’t come up with a word for the decade that’s now behind us. And it won’t be a philological crisis if we never do. “‘It’s really amusing to me,’ said Dennis Baron, a University of Illinois linguist and curator of a Web site that decodes language in the news. ‘People think if we don’t have anything to call the decade that maybe we will forget it, that it will be some kind of orphan decade, that it won’t exist. But it’s simply not true’” (SBTribune 12-28-09). As it turns out there are other words we’ve been missing for a long time. What do you call former in-laws? (Perhaps it’s best not to call them at all.) What about a romantic friend of an older adult who isn’t married? “Girl friend” sounds too teenager-ish, doesn’t it?
And what does God call the decade that is now behind us? Interestingly enough, he uses a non-chronological term. A word that isn’t bound by the passage of time. A single word that is both descriptive and proscriptive. One word that transcends the idiosyncrasies of the English language . . . or any other language, ancient or modern, for that matter.
Just one word. But in it is contained the divine DNA of the gospel we still call everlasting. The word? Forgiven. That’s it. Forgiven. Because two hundred decades ago “on a hill far away” God from his cross forgave this rebel race of all our sins (there being no shortage of adjectival modifiers and synonyms in the English language for that very human reality that is all ours—sin). “Here is a trustworthy saying that deserves full acceptance: Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners—of whom I am the worst” (I Timothy 1:15). Forgiven. God’s one word to describe the decade of your life and mine that is now past. And the one–word reason for you and me to bow down this New Year and worship him. Forgiven indeed. Thank God!
“I complained to God that I had no shoes, until I met a man who had no feet.” That dusty line from Thanksgivings past finds fresh meaning in Derek McGinnis’ new book, Exit Wounds: A Survival Guide to Pain Management for Returning Veterans and Their Families. November 9, 2004, Navy corpsman McGinnis was in Fallujah, Iraq, racing in an ambulance to pick up injured Marines, when a Mercedes Benz packed with homemade explosives crashed into his side of the ambulance, severing his left leg above the knee and exploding shrapnel into one eye. After years of rehabilitation at Bethesda Naval Hospital, Walter Reed Army Medical Center, and the Palo Alto Veterans Hospital, 32-year-old husband and father Derek is focusing his life now on assisting other veterans and families who are having to pick up the pieces and cobble together a life beyond the war. A consultant with the American Pain Foundation, he is spreading a message of hope beyond adversity. “It’s OK to have mental pain, it’s OK to have physical pain. There are methods to have a productive life” (SBTribune 11-18-09). The proof hangs in the McGinnis garage at home—the racing bibs of a long distance runner: the 2006 Marine Corps Marathon, the 2006 Army 10-Miler, and the 2007 Alcatraz Challenge. All of the races run with a flexible prosthetic left leg replete with a neatly-laced running shoe at the end of the metal post. Derek McGinnis is grateful to be running at all.
Amen to AMEN! Karen and I had the privilege of joining several hundred physicians and dentists and their families this past weekend in Gatlinburg, Tennessee. You should’ve heard their stories. Here they are—medical professionals in the thick of their careers across this nation—pursuing Christ in the marketplace of health care. Or, as dentist Dusong Kim described it, it was Christ in hot pursuit of him, as the Cessna twin engine he was piloting in the dark over an invisible patch of California below, dropped out of the night sky, its engines shut down. Clutching the stick in desperation, his mind racing, his wife and two small children strapped in beside and behind him, this dentist at the apex of a lucrative practice recounted those life-altering moments as he blindly crashed the craft into an orchard of almond trees. But out of that survival, his testimony described a redirected career, ignited by a new passion for God and his mission. Or there was young orthopedic resident Joshua Drumm, who discovered that his lifelong ambition to become an orthopedic surgeon was tanking, simply because he refused to attend the residency application interview on Sabbath. The drama of his pleading before God, the subsequent rejections from elite orthopedic residencies across the nation once his Sabbath conviction became known, his refusal to compromise his commitment to his Creator, the Philadelphia hospital orthopedic chief’s repeated attempts to persuade Joshua otherwise—his was a shining testimony of trust in God for all of us who listened, medical professionals or not. Today Dr. Kim and his family are missionaries in Bolivia. And Dr. Drumm and his wife are in a successful orthopedic residency in Philadephia. “Faith in practice”—the weekend theme for this retreat—is more than evident in the lives of these many medical professionals. And on this campus of over 3500 young adults, how many of them, how many of you, will also hear the call of Christ to follow him as a medical missionary? Perhaps not to some foreign shore, but nevertheless you are being called to be a missionary for the kingdom right here at home in this nation. Massive student loans, society’s drumbeat to reflect the affluence accorded your medical station in life—there will be myriad pressures to turn a practice into a lucrative career. But I was impressed with this hotel ballroom full of medical professionals who have chosen to reject societal norms and instead plunge into a self-sacrificing life of healing our broken world in the name of Jesus. You can be one of them one day. Why the name AMEN? Because it stands for Adventist Medical Evangelists Network. Doctors, dentists, health care professionals as evangelists? Why the surprise? After all, God had only one Son—and he called him to be a medical evangelist. Could you be in better company?
“20 reasons America has lost its soul and collapse is inevitable.” Not exactly the sort of headline that CBS’s staid economic website, MarketWatch.com, is used to running. In a sobering, columnist Paul B. Farrell opens with the pronouncement, "We've lost 'America’s soul.' And worldwide, the consequences will be catastrophic." He suggests it’s a gut sense we all have: "You know something’s very wrong: A year ago, too-greedy-to-fail banks were insolvent, in a near-death experience. Now magically, they're back to business as usual, arrogant, pocketing outrageous bonuses while Main Street sacrifices, and unemployment and foreclosures continue rising as tight credit, inflation and skyrocketing federal debt are killing taxpayers." His indictment of Wall Street is biting. It "has lost its moral compass." Farrell outlines twenty top reasons why he believes American capitalism is doomed—from the life cycle of empires to today’s financial disparity (where "America’s top 1% own more than 90% of America’s wealth") to the explosion of the federal debt from $11.2 to $23.7 trillion. He concludes, “The coming collapse [with a “high probability by 2012”] is the end of an ‘inevitable’ historical cycle stalking all great empires to their graves. Downsize your lifestyle expectations, trust no one, not even media. . . . [T]here’s absolutely nothing you can do to hide from this unfolding reality or prevent the rush of the historical imperative.”
Television is huge on hospitals lately, have you noticed? “Three Rivers,” “House,” “Trauma,” “Grey’s Anatomy,” and of course the ubiquitous “ER” reruns—the entertainment industry is in the health care business, it seems. Why? Because everybody loves a healing. Third millennial life on the edge (the real thing) can get as messy as an emergency room, can’t it? So what’s not to like about a fifty-eight minute show that ends (more often than not) with a fractured life put back together, a broken body (or heart) healed just before the final credits roll? Do you suppose that’s why people go to church, too? Hoping against hope for a healing, a mending, a broken life reset, a heartsick spirit rejuvenated and cleansed? Having spent a few nights with my mother-in-law in an emergency room, I’ve learned—though I don’t have a medical bone in me—that ER’s can be messy places, sort of the soiled and stained “living room” of the hospital. It isn’t hard to figure out why. Because people who come to emergency rooms are in the grip of a crisis. That’s why you can experience the coagulating odors of vomit and urine and blood and Lysol-like antibacterial agents wafting in the frenetic air of that saving place. Gurneys and beds once wrapped in sterile white sheets are now splattered and contaminated. But that’s OK, because everybody that works and lives in a hospital knows: “This is why we exist—why we’re here—to get dirtied and stained and exposed, while we scramble to save another life.” Isn’t that true about the church, too? The well-worn yarn about it being a hospital for sinners more than a haven for saints still rings true, worn or not, doesn’t it? Because the community of faith is also a community of love. Radical believing is matched by a radical and sometimes countercultural kind of loving that doesn’t insist on political correctness, but rather embraces the broken life and the fractured soul for who he, for who she is—another earth child of the Father in desperate need of healing and wholeness. So of course we or they come to this community in the grip of crisis—that’s what an ER is for. Who defines crisis by esthetic beauty? The non-virtual reality of human life is defined by its urgent need for urgent care. Which was Jesus’ point: “‘It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners” (Matthew 9:12, 13). Heterosexual sinners, homosexual sinners, all of us in the grip of life’s survival crisis are the very ones for whom Christ raised up this healing community we call church. That we come as we are but do not stay as we are is simply a shining tribute to the transforming power of the Physician who drew us to him and to each other in the first place. Which still makes this the best place for the Doctor in the House to practice his healing work, doesn’t it?
What if praying were as contagious as the swine flu? My newspaper, South Bend Tribune (10-7-09), did a piece (replete with graphics), tracking an imaginary family (John, Karen and Billy) through the hazardous world of the H1N1 virus. John’s feeling great, as he heads out of the office for lunch. But while he’s gone, an office worker sneezes in her hand and then picks up his phone to make a call. (66% of office viruses can survive for an hour—33% surviving for up to eighteen hours.) John lunches at a fast food joint, paying for his meal with a contaminated five dollar bill. (Flu viruses can survive for up to ten days on paper currency if someone sneezes on it.) John spends the evening with his family, unwittingly passing on to them the viruses he’s picked up from the phone and money. Billy hurries off to school the next day, contaminating his classmates. Kissing John good-bye, Karen is now a virus carrier. You get the picture. In less than 24 hours, John and Billy have come down with flu symptoms, spending three miserable days in bed and waiting to be symptom-free for another 24 hours before returning to school and work. Oh the joys of contagion! (BTW—to avoid living that story, keep the 3 C’s in mind this flu season: clean your hands with soap or a sanitizer often; cover your cough/sneezes in your sleeve—if you use your hands, wash them immediately; and contain the flu by staying at home until you’re 24 hours past your fever.) Wouldn’t it be great if praying were as contagious as sneezing . . . if whenever you prayed, those all around you caught that spirit and began praying, too? Maybe prayer is infectious! I got an email from one of our university coeds this week who told me about a prayer group that she’s started with friends at 5:30 every morning. That’s right—5:30 a.m. I won’t be surprised at all if that contagious faith in Jesus through praying spreads. Because sometimes, all some people need is an invitation from a friend or colleague to join them for a few moments of prayer. It can be that contagious. And it doesn’t have to be at 5:30 a.m. every day. It could be at noon once a week. Or at 5:30 p.m. when the office is closed for the day. It could be a Friday evening gathering with a few kindred spirits in a living room or a dorm room. And what should we pray for? Why not claim God’s promise: “I will pour upon you a spirit of grace and supplication” (Zechariah 12:10). If we banded together to seek that spirit of asking, of petitioning God, can you imagine what would happen if prayer groups sprang up all over the campus and around the community? Can you think of one reason why God wouldn’t want that spirit of prayer to be as contagious as the flu? So go ahead—spread your prayer virus—and see how many you can infect for Christ.