I was listening to this tonight and thought that this was a good song to sum up my experience at SMI.  It's hard to live in the past, but what if the life you lived in the past was but a small glimmer of the shining brightness that the future holds?

Summer Medical Institute - In Brief

This photo sums up the essence of my summer medical institute experience. It’s one of my favorites, not because of the quality of the photo—it didn’t even make Dan Chen’s photo binge—but because of the stories behind it. They are stories that cannot be told in pictures (since they do not exist), stories that have altered my life, stories that I pray mark the beginning of a journey and not its end.
The photo was taken on July 9th; we were at a dinner/ice cream social that was hosted for the students and translators. As I was chatting with some of the translators I saw Dr. Leibert and flagged him down. I shared with him a story that began a work in my heart; it was the story of a little girl named Mayra.

We had one more house to see before our vans were leaving the Texas colonia. I prayed for our group as we walked up to the beautiful pink stucco home—it stood out against the stark backdrop of trailers and shacks. The inside was equally beautiful: clean tile floor, elegant furniture, and fine furnishings. We were warmly welcomed but within minutes our translator was occupied with one of the older girls and I was without proper communication with mother. When I asked to see if there was someone who could translate for me that’s when Mayra came out of a room in the back of the house. I asked mom a few health related questions and took her blood pressure. Thankfully our translator came back and started talking to mom. I was left with a little 11 y/o Mayra and struck up a conversation. As I struggled to find the words to say to bring this girl the gospel I got a Bible and began to read key passages. Her response: “I want Jesus to be my Savior.”

The photo was taking immediately after I shared this story with Dr. Leibert, he prayed right then that God would continue to develop this vision of bringing the gospel through medicine. God certainly did what he asked. Three days later I spent the day seeing patients with a doctor and translator at a fishing village. We prayed with every patient and brought each one the good news of Jesus.

That’s when 6 years of experience being part of a fast paced medical team in the ER became meaningless. All those cardiac arrests, aortic dissections, traumas, CVAs, and heroin overdoses faded out of my mind. I stopped thinking about the next best case to see, the next exciting drama-queen patient, or the once-in-a-lifetime condition…because medicine finally became satisfying that day.

We go through life chasing after the next best object, person, or experience, perhaps the summer medical institute was one of those experiences I chased after. But what God taught me wasn’t through a grandiose experience; it was a small flicker that few noticed, a slight shift in my life goals and direction, it was by living out the gospel through an activity that any medical person could perform. Medicine alone will be ultimately dissatisfying but medicine with a purpose—to give people as much Jesus as they will take—is eternally gratifying.

Will there be any lasting impact? Only God knows if this will be the end of a journey, but oh, how I hope that this is just a glimpse of the beginning!

“Whoever drinks of this water will thirst again, but whoever drinks of the water that I give him will never thirst. But the water that I shall give him will become in him a fountain of water springing up into everlasting life.”
John 4:13-14

Songs

I went home this week and rediscovered a few CDs that I had listened to back in high school yet never copied to my computer. Two songs in particular stood out:

Sure Shot (Supertones)

I wanna do the right thing.
I wanna be the sure shot.
I wanna have my mind straight.
I wanna have my point got.
I wanna be a good man,
I wanna have my act down.
I wanna be the future
and I wanna be right now.

Sometimes I feel
like I can change the world.
But I don't know where to start.
I dig and come up empty,
clutching an empty heart.

I wanna see a life change.
I wanna see a new man.
I wanna fight the good fight.
I wanna take the right stand.
I wanna be like Jesus.
I wanna pour my heart out.
I wanna pick my cross up.
I wanna hear the mob shout.

I'm wide awake
and thinking about the cross,
the Trinity apart.
I dig and come up empty,
clutching an empty heart.

I wanna do the right thing.
I wanna be the sure shot.
I wanna have my mind straight.
I wanna have my point got.
I wanna be like Jesus.
I wanna pour my heart out.
I wanna pick my cross up.
I wanna hear the mob shout.

Sometimes I feel
like I can change the world.
But I don't know where to start.
I dig and come up empty,
I'm wide awake
and thinking about the cross,
the Trinity apart.
I dig and come up empty,
clutching a sacred heart.


When Christ comes and changes a man, it doesn't mean that he will suddenly become unsuccessful, aimless, and unassertive. However, it does mean that he will want his see his life change, fight the good fight, take the stand on the right side, be like Jesus, pour his heart out, pick up his cross, and be prepared to hear the mob shout against him. The Supertones beautifully merged these two aspects of men together. Here is a picture of a man who takes initiative for his own future, a desire to change the world, and a passion for his life to be transformed by Christ. His heart is empty because it is sacred, it is poured out not for his own interests but for the interests of others.

Always and Forever (Raze)

The stars will shine
The moon will glow
The sun will rise
The grass will grow
Some things will never change
Just like me and you
Mountains high and valleys low
I have got to let you know
That I am here for you
Whatever you go through

Troubles come and get you down
I'll always be around to say

CHORUS:
I will be here always and forever
I'll be here for you
we will be friends(strong)
forever and ever

As far back as I can remember
Thirty-one days in the month of December
Life will still go on
But it's just not the same
Miles and miles and miles are between us
Like Earth to Mars and then on to Venus
Although you have gone away
I still see your face

And these memories linger on inside our
hearts always!

I will be here always and forever
I'll be here for you
we will be friends(strong)
forever and ever


When I ripped this song onto my computer the song title came up was "Always and Forever(Bff)." We live in a transient society and culture. Life changes in what seems the blink of an eye. Each of us yearns for something permanent, something lasting. This I believe is one aspect of a God-shaped hole in our lives. Eternal beings in a temporal world will inherently yearn for something eternal. Thus, our dissatisfaction with worldly things and a constant chasing after something more, something better.
Can friends last forever? I know a lot of people and I can go many places on the east coast (and even the US) to see people who are my "friends." But are they really friends? I spent time with them in the past, and I "did life" with them previously. I know an incredible amount of people within a 50 mile radius, but I can't say that I am truly friends with any more than a handful of them.

Why? Because I don't share life with them. They aren't the ones I confide with, share my troubles with, or those who are there for me in the hardest of times.
Why? Because they're not around anymore.

Maybe it's because I'm in a profession that endlessly demand time from me and I choose to pour myself into it and related activities. I wonder if I can actually be friends with someone forever. In 3 years I might be somewhere else on the planet. May I make the most of the opportunities I have now to invest and be invested in by those around me so that I may not live in the past but rather in the present with eyes that are focused on the future.

Plans...

"And he began to teach them that the Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders and the chief priests and the scribes and be killed, and after three days rise again. And he said this plainly. And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. But turning and seeing his disciples, he rebuked Peter and said, Get behind me, Satan! For you are not setting your mind on the things of God, but on the things of man. And he called to him the crowd with his disciples and said to them, If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospel's will save it. For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his life? For what can a man give in return for his life? For whoever is ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of him will the Son of Man also be ashamed when he comes in the glory of his Father with the holy angels."
Mark 8:31-38

The disciples maintained an ingrained mindset that the kingdom of God was a material, physical kingdom and the Messiah would come, rescue them from the heavy hand of the Romans, and reestablish the kingdom of Israel. So when Jesus, the very Son of God, declared that he would be rejected and killed it was too much for Peter to handle. I mean, how could their very Messiah be rejected by the chief leaders of the Jews? Killed?

I often relate to Peter. I have a vision of what God's kingdom is and what it looks like.
But is it God's vision?
Am I ready to be rebuked by Jesus when my thoughts are not His?
Am I willing to sacrifice my ideas of where God is taking me to God's eternal, sovereign, and loving plan?
Are my "kingdom" plans the plans of man and not of God?

Am I ready to see my plans rejected, cursed, spit upon, beaten, and nailed to a cross so that countless millions would enter the kingdom of God?

I hasten towards an hour
when earthly pursuits and possessions
will appear vain,
when it will be indifferent whether I have been
rich or poor,
successful or disappointed,
admired or despised.
But it will be of eternal moment that I have
mourned for sin,
hungered and thirsted after righteousness,
loved the Lord Jesus in sincerity,
gloried in his cross.
~Valley of Vision (Openness)

No Reserve, No Retreat, No Regrets

In 1904 William Borden graduated from a Chicago high school. As heir to the Borden Dairy estate, he was already a millionaire. For his high school graduation present, his parents gave 16-year-old Borden a trip around the world. As the young man traveled through Asia, the Middle East, and Europe, he felt a growing burden for the world's hurting people. Finally, Bill Borden wrote home about his "desire to be a missionary."1
One friend expressed surprise that he was "throwing himself away as a missionary."
In response, Bill wrote two words in the back of his Bible: "No reserves."
Even though young Borden was wealthy, he arrived on the campus of Yale University in 1905 trying to look like just one more freshman. Very quickly, however, Borden's classmates noticed something unusual about him and it wasn't his money. One of them wrote: "He came to college far ahead, spiritually, of any of us. He had already given his heart in full surrender to Christ and had really done it. We who were his classmates learned to lean on him and find in him a strength that was solid as a rock, just because of this settled purpose and consecration."2
During his college years, Bill Borden made one entry in his personal journal that defined what his classmates were seeing in him. That entry said simply: "Say 'no' to self and 'yes' to Jesus every time."3
Borden's first disappointment at Yale came when the university president spoke on the students' need of "having a fixed purpose." After hearing that speech, Borden wrote: "He neglected to say what our purpose should be, and where we should get the ability to persevere and the strength to resist temptations."4 Surveying the Yale faculty and much of the student body, Borden lamented what he saw as the end result of this empty philosophy: moral weakness and sin-ruined lives.
During his first semester at Yale, Borden started something that would transform campus life. One of his friends described how it happened: "It was well on in the first term when Bill and I began to pray together in the morning before breakfast. I cannot say positively whose suggestion it was, but I feel sure it must have originated with Bill. We had been meeting only a short time when a third student joined us and soon after a fourth. The time was spent in prayer after a brief reading of Scripture. Bill's handling of Scripture was helpful. . . . He would read to us from the Bible, show us something that God had promised and then proceed to claim the promise with assurance."5
Borden's small morning prayer group gave birth to a movement that spread across the campus. By the end of his first year, 150 freshman were meeting for weekly Bible study and prayer. By the time Bill Borden was a senior, one thousand of Yale's 1,300 students were meeting in such groups.
Borden made it his habit to seek out the most "incorrigible" students and try to bring them to salvation. "In his sophomore year we organized Bible study groups and divided up the class of 300 or more, each man interested taking a certain number, so that all might, if possible, be reached. The names were gone over one by one, and the question asked, 'Who will take this person?' When it came to someone thought to be a hard proposition, there would be an ominous pause. Nobody wanted the responsibility. Then Bill's voice would be heard, 'Put him down to me.'"6
Borden's outreach ministry was not confined to the Yale campus. He cared about widows and orphans and cripples. He rescued drunks from the streets of New Haven. To rehabilitate them, he founded the Yale Hope Mission. One of his friends wrote that he "might often be found in the lower parts of the city at night, on the street, in a cheap lodging house or some restaurant to which he had taken a poor hungry fellow to feed him, seeking to lead men to Christ."7
Borden's missionary call narrowed to the Muslim Kansu people in China. Once that goal was in sight, Borden never wavered. He also inspired his classmates to consider missionary service. One of them said: "He certainly was one of the strongest characters I have ever known, and he put backbone into the rest of us at college. There was real iron in him, and I always felt he was of the stuff martyrs were made of, and heroic missionaries of more modern times."8
Although he was a millionaire, Bill seemed to "realize always that he must be about his Father's business, and not wasting time in the pursuit of amusement."9 Although Borden refused to join a fraternity, "he did more with his classmates in his senior year than ever before." He presided over the huge student missionary conference held at Yale and served as president of the honor society Phi Beta Kappa.
Upon graduation from Yale, Borden turned down some high paying job offers. In his Bible, he wrote two more words: "No retreats."
William Borden went on to graduate work at Princeton Seminary in New Jersey. When he finished his studies at Princeton, he sailed for China. Because he was hoping to work with Muslims, he stopped first in Egypt to study Arabic. While there, he contracted spinal meningitis. Within a month, 25-year-old William Borden was dead.
When news of William Whiting Borden's death was cabled back to the U.S., the story was carried by nearly every American newspaper. "A wave of sorrow went round the world . . . Borden not only gave (away) his wealth, but himself, in a way so joyous and natural that it (seemed) a privilege rather than a sacrifice" wrote Mary Taylor in her introduction to his biography.10
Was Borden's untimely death a waste? Not in God's plan. Prior to his death, Borden had written two more words in his Bible. Underneath the words "No reserves" and "No retreats," he had written: "No regrets."

1Taylor, Mrs. Howard. Borden of Yale '09. Philadelphia: China Inland Mission, 1926, page 75.
2Ibid., page 98.
3Ibid., page 122.
4Ibid., page 90.
5Ibid., page 97.
6Ibid., page 150.
7Ibid., page 148.
8Ibid., page 149.
9Ibid., page 149.
10Ibid., page ix.

For more original content like this, visit: http://home.snu.edu/~hculbert

The day I saw true love

I remember one of the last shifts I worked in the little trauma step-down unit about 10 months ago. Patients there were still critical but did not require the intensive nursing care that the ICU demanded. Nevertheless, I’ve seen a number of patients deteriorate and die in that unit.

After my usual cruising into the department, finding a funny patient to joke around with and figuring out what needed to be done, I worked my way down to bed #9 which was a bit more private than the rest (it actually had a door). As I spoke with the nurse she explained what had happened to this young man—he had a tracheotomy so he couldn’t speak, and was recovering from major head and abdominal trauma following a serious car crash. He had been in the hospital for a few months now and was showing tremendous signs of improvement against all odds. As the nurse continue to give me the report on his condition, an incredibly attractive woman entered and entered the man’s room. The nurse said to me in hushed tones, “that’s his fiancé, she’s the reason he’s doing so well.” Intrigued by this statement, I stuck around a bit at the end of the unit. The nurse went on to describe the intensity at which she would visit: every day for the entire length of visiting hours…and sometimes the nurses would let her stay much longer because she was so helpful.

I was stocking supplies later on in the day and I saw her sitting on the side of his bed peacefully singing to him. I asked myself, “how do you do that? He can’t even talk to you—he hasn’t for months. Do you even know if he remembers you? He has a frontal lobe injury and his personality has changed, does that matter to you?”

Apparently not; for love does not consider those superficial characteristics.

What about the love shown to you by an infinite God?
Was it based on how you would react to God’s love?
Was it based on your choice of words?
Was it based on the emotion that you welled up inside yourself when you came to Him asking for forgiveness?
Was God thinking “oh, he must be truly sorry so I’ll love him!”?
No, it can’t be any of these, for it would debase God’s love to a level lower than this fiancé’s love for my patient. God’s love is so much higher and wiser than even the best expressions of love that we can construe. He loves us while we were “dead in our trespasses and sins”—he loves us when we can do nothing.

We think we know what love is all about, but we see it most clearly and for what it truly means when crisis arises.
It’s not some erotomania, it’s a God who comes to us as a human, He shows us the holes in his hands and feet and calls us to place our hands in his side. It’s not “I love you so I’ll give you a great feeling to live your life by.” Instead, He says, “Greater love has no man than this than that he lays down his life for his friends.” And He goes and submits an infinitely worthy life to the cross so that sinners like you and me can become the children of God. Our God is not all talk; he goes and does as much as it takes to know and love His own.

We love because he first loved us.

True Love Phil Wickham
Come close listen to the story
about a love more faithful than the morning
The Father gave his only Son just to save us

The earth was shaking in the dark
All creation felt the Fathers broken heart
tears were filling heavens eyes
The day that true love died, the day that true love died
When blood and water hit the ground
Walls we couldn’t move came crashing down
We were free and made alive
The day that true love died, The day that true love died

Search your hearts you know you can’t deny it
Lose your life just so you can find it
The Father gave his only son just to save us

Jesus is alive
He rose again