What would we do…

What would we do…

Friday, September 4, 2009 – It is still early in the day.  I’m sitting here, after a fourth sleepless night with a sick child.  My wife has decided to take him back to see the Dr. today because he is in so much pain.  It will be his third such trip in the past five days.  As I sit at his bedside and watch him writhe with pain as the swimmer’s ear and subsequent infection sends painful bolts of lightning up and down the side of his head and body, I think of how completely helpless I feel…

And then it occurs to me that we have had him to the Dr. not once but what will soon be three times in five days.  As helpless as I feel, I suddenly realize how blessed we are that we can choose to seek help for him without having to choose between that and the rent, the mortgage, the house, food, etc.; any of a hundred other things that would have to go by the way if we were to seek medical help under any other circumstances.

Helpless… I think not.  Praise God, I do not currently have to know the feeling of helplessness that millions of Americans must feel today and everyday when they or, even worse, a loved one becomes ill or injured.  Now that is helplessness… Add to that despair and thoughts of worthlessness and inadequacy.  I cannot, again I say “Thank God,” know what that must be like. So why must anyone face such circumstances when we are arguably the greatest nation on the earth; perhaps the greatest in the history of the earth.

This nation was begun with the notion of forming “a more perfect Union.”  Are we now so perfect there is no room for further improvement?  Or is it that we have forgotten the context in which our founding fathers had such notions.  Those were desperate and revolutionary times indeed.  Those were the times that “tried men’s souls.”  Well, these again are such times.

It is time for us to look deeply into our own souls and do what is right.  “And what is right?” you may ask.  We wear out little bracelets that ask, “What Would Jesus Do?”  Well, he already addressed that question… Matthew 25:43 – “I was a stranger, and you did not invite Me in; naked, and you did not clothe Me; sick, and in prison, and you did not visit Me… I tell you in truth, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.”

Seems very straight forwad to me…