On Being Accountable

I went in response to a revelation and set before them the gospel that I preach among the Gentiles. But I did this privately to those who seemed to be leaders, for fear that I was running or had run my race in vain.

Galatians 2:2

“Do you have any weaknesses?”, she asked me, looking me straight in the eye, unblinking.

I gave an uneasy giggle, trying to read her face. It was serious. Dead serious. All the joking and jabbing stopped here as Dr. Logan stared me down. Her pale face was framed with wiry strands of blond hair in need of a comb and her thin lips were pursed, unsmiling. It was hard to believe that this was the same person who minutes ago had been churning out one-liners a mile a second.

“Uhm… yeah…” I stuttered, my mind going into overdrive. Everyone has weaknesses, I thought. Is this a trick question?

A mere 24 hours before I had first met this wiry middle-aged lady as I sat at a desk poring over a poorly patient’s latest bloodwork. “Hi, I’m Dr. Logan,” she said, thrusting a sinewy hand in my direction, “Julie. I’m going to be your clinical supervisor for the next six months.”

Indeed I had been looking forward to meeting her for a couple of weeks now and here I was, finally in her office, for our first official encounter. The meeting had started with a quick and easy interrogation as she got a quick run-down of my medical training up to this point and a feel of what I wanted to achieve in this particular stint in geriatric medicine. She was easy to talk to, all nice and smiling, even jabbing the odd elbow in my direction every once in a while. But now, as she asked that question, her countenance had all but changed. And I felt it. This, here, was the question that mattered the most.

Indeed, like she had already noted, I have quite a bit of experience in clinical medicine and the best way she could help me to make the most of this posting was to know what my deficiencies are - how best she could help me along. And so she asked, “Do you have any weaknesses?” No, it wasn’t a trick question.

Mariam and I have recently had the pleasure of reading Paul’s terrific diatribe against the church at Galatia. In his letter he outlines how he became entrusted with the true gospel by revelation of Jesus Christ and how he preached it faithfully to the fledgling congregation. However, midway through his missionary sojourns in Asia Minor, Paul took a major detour to return to Jerusalem, the city where it all started - where the Jesus he preached was crucified and died. While there, he made no assumptions as to the truth of his own message but set it plainly, as he understood it, before the Church elders. His intention was to find out if indeed what he had been speaking was the true and complete gospel (Galatians 2:1-10).

Is it not wonderful that men like Paul, established as they were in the Word, would stop long enough to make themselves accountable to others? That they would seek to refine their message and become even better than they were? Is not that the purpose of having someone to whom one could turn - some person to hold you accountable?

In medicine it is prudent, if not vital, that while I remain in training, someone has the responsibility to see that I develop myself; that my weaknesses are identified and dealt with. Students have their professors and apprentices have their mentors. Oh, that we would have Christian men and women to whom we could turn and say, “I have a weakness…”.

A big thank you to all who have served this purpose for me through my life. You know yourselves. God bless you.

With love, Doosuur.

At the Pelican Crossing

I know your deeds, your hard work and your perseverance... Yet I hold this against you: You have forsaken your first love. Remember the height from which you have fallen! Repent and do the things you did at first.
Revelations 2:2-5

I was sitting in the back row, taking in the sights of Scarborough in the evening, as our number 10 bus idled at a red traffic light. Out of the corner of my eye a quick motion caught my attention and I turned just in time to see it. A young man, sixteen or seventeen perhaps, with an oversized jacket full of so much color it would have made Joseph green with envy, and jeans riding oh-so-low, was approaching the pelican crossing, bopping his head to the music emanating from his extra large headphones. He took a quick step towards the pedestrian barriers at the crossing and in one fluid motion vaulted the steel barricade and then walked off with, oh, so much swagger. He had hardly broken stride from approach to scale to push off. Wow! It would have taken three or four more steps to walk round the steel bars and cross the proper way but that was so uncool, wasn’t it? Who does that when there’s a three foot fence to jump over?

I suppressed a snicker as I quickly realized it would probably have been more of a sneer borne out of my jealousy that at a measly thirty-odd years I have neither the spunk nor the sprite to do such a thing. It was all in a days work for him; for me and my growing paunch, it would take a few weeks plotting. You could excuse him and call it youthful exuberance but you’d look at me and call me downright foolish. He had hardly expended any energy, I would be lucky to get away with my front teeth intact. But oh, how I wished I could do that again!

And it’s not just him I envy. I look at our friend John’s new baby, sleeping calmly and I wish I hadn’t a care in the world! I watch my nephew trying his hand out on some Lego® and I wish I could put my creative instincts to such idle work. I have such nostalgia for secondary school and the legendary experiences I had there which we will talk about till the day we die. Can you feel me here? There are many things I did once upon a time and will never do again. But then there are some that perhaps I should!

Like just sit and read the Word and love it. Like drive off to nowhere and bask in the presence of a mighty God while I watch the beautiful sunset. Like go on my knees and pray my heart out.

Do I read Scripture? Oh yes I do. Do I pray? To be sure! But when I remember the passion and desire with which I did these once upon a time there is more than just a hint of nostalgia. I wish I could go back and do those things again with the same energy and excitement and ... and love! I want to rediscover the love of Christ that held me, the truth of God that inspired me, the grace of Jesus that thrilled me. These truths are as real to me as ever, but perhaps I do not just stop and enjoy them as often as I once did. Now I am older and wiser but surely that must enhance my worship, rather than hinder it, no?

As we grow in Christ we must stop often, take stock and, like John through the Spirit advised the Ephesian church in our verse today, “do the things you did at first.” So here’s to reliving our early Christian experience. Share with us! What did you do once upon a time that you would love to do again? You just might have a great idea that will inspire somebody’s worship and help an old Christian grow young again. Go ahead, share it with us!

With love, Doosuur.

Mini-Mental State Examination

Be joyful always; pray continually; give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.
1 Thessalonians 5:16-18

They were more like the scratches of a mother hen in the loose soil, the barely legible scrawl of her scrawny hand. She had taken the piece of paper out of my hand in response to a question I had just asked and the ball-point in her small hand quivered as she held on to it, a little too tightly.

This lovely eighty-something year old lady was gaunt and unkempt, her tousled silver-gray hair framing a pale and wrinkled face with jutting cheek bones. It was clear to anyone who cared to look that she had once upon a time been quite the stunner. Her beautifully angled face would most certainly have turned a few heads in her day. Her arms must have been strong and her feet nimble. But those days were far long gone. And today, while she sat with me, in a hospital bed, I wondered how much of her life gone by she could remember. Not very much, I presume. Because the reason I was sat there, interviewing her with a string of statements I had prefaced as “silly questions”, was that the Consultant, on the rounds the day before had described her as “increasingly confused.”

I was given the rather pleasant task of conducting a mini-mental state examination on this lady in order to, if you will allow it, find out just how with it she really was. “Do you know where you are now?”, “What month of the year is it?” I asked her in turn.

She would score a respectable eleven out of thirty, but she got full marks for her response to my question, “would you please write a sentence for me? Any sentence will do.” As she took the pen from my hand and began to write I honestly did not expect her to come up with anything. What a pleasant surprise, then, when I noticed she was trying her darnedest to make out a letter “T”. Well now, I thought, perhaps there is something to hope for - a little comprehension to hang onto.

Next came an “h”. What now? Hmmm... Perhaps “The quick brown fox...?”

But then, “a”, each letter taking five or more seconds to carve out, her handwriting more like a chisel in granite than an ink pen on paper.

“T-h-a-n-k ...” It was by now obvious where this was going, but as I smiled, I let her finish. It might take me five minutes to get this sentence out of her but I would let her speak her piece.

In the end the words, “Thank you very much” had been not so much written as cajoled out of the pen but how very pleased I was. Not so much that her gratitude was towards me, indeed it most likely was not because I had done nothing deserving of thanks, but that her “any” sentence would be one of thankfulness. What did she have to be grateful for? Her beauty had been taken from her. And then her strength. And even now, in the twilight of her days, she could feel her very life ebbing away. But as ever, the one phrase she could muster was “thank you very much.”

I smiled as I took the paper and pen from her hands and leant in close to whisper to her, “No, Thank You.” She had given me a gift because I had caught a glimpse of joy within her suffering body, of beauty yet residing within, of gratefulness for a full life even when that life was at its end.

Indeed, everyday, in every moment, there’s always a reason to say thanks. Look around you now and see what God has done for you. And then say “Thank you very much”.

With love, Doosuur