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Have you seen our new library? There
are books on the shelves, furniture is starting to arrive, and it is
looking good. I invite you to walk in the library and just look
around. As you do imagine that it is a metaphor for your life. In
there is everything that has happened to you and everything that will
happen to you. There is a section that explores your life as a little
child and one book that tells about you when you were so cute! There
is even a volume entitled, “Hurricane Ike”. Of course, there are also
biographies of all the people that have entered your life. They vary
in their level of recognition - there are biographies of your parents,
grandparents, and the guy who stood in front of you at the grocery
store last week. As you look through the shelves, where is the volume
of your faith?
Several months ago we were asked to
rate on a scale of 1-10, “The degree to which your faith impacts
how you live your life.” As you know that one question has really
got me to thinking. I mentioned last week that I believe faith is an
essential element of life that is often treated as if it were
extraneous. Where did you find the volume on faith in the library
that is your life? If faith matters, and I believe it
does, perhaps the entire library is faith. The very environment -
that we stand in, breathe in, live in - is faith.
One of the great dances of life is
faith and medicine. Often we encounter the medical profession when we
are in need of some help, some relief, some diagnosis of what is going
on in our body. Curiously, this is also the time when we seek God,
who many refer to as the Great Physician. Even in times of relative
health this intersection of faith and medicine is an interesting one.
Listen to how the psalmist described this convergence thousands of
years ago in Psalm 139. Hear now the word of the Lord:
13For it was you who formed my
inward parts; you knit me together in my mother’s womb.
14I praise you, for I am
fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works; that I know
very well.
15My frame was not hidden from
you, when I was being made in secret, intricately woven in the depths
of the earth.
16Your eyes beheld my unformed
substance. In your book were written all the days that were formed for
me, when none of them as yet existed.
17How weighty to me are your
thoughts, O God! How vast is the sum of them!
18I try to count them—they are
more than the sand; I come to the end—I am still with you.
This is the word of God for the people
of God. In this passage the psalmist declared to his Creator, awe and
appreciation. It is clear from this psalm that for many when it comes
to our physical bodies, faith matters.
I have invited Dr. Nancy Dickey to
share with us today how faith matters in her profession as a
physician. Physicians frequently are called upon to navigate through
the territory of medicine and faith. Last week as I was flipping from
one football game to the other I came upon an educational channel that
was broadcasting a lecture by Elizabeth Johnston Taylor entitled, “Should Clinicians
Dabble in Patient Spiritual Angst?” I started watching the show with
interest and right in the middle of the show the channel switched over
to a “Curious George” cartoon. Fortunately, I was able to find the
lecture on the internet.
Faith and medicine do meet each other
frequently. I have seen it as a pastor and I am confident that Dr.
Dickey has seen it as a physician. Dr. Dickey is another individual
that I heard of long before we met. When I served as pastor of St.
John’s United Methodist Church ten years ago, I frequently heard of
Nancy Dickey. I actually heard more about her ministry as a youth
counselor than a physician who was at the time serving as the
President of the American Medical Association. She is currently the
President of the Texas A&M Health Science Center and a member of a
little church on Highway 6 that we helped start in 1995. Please
welcome Dr. Nancy Dickey as she comes to share with us how faith
matters in her career.
Below is an outline of Dr. Dickey’s
remarks. For the complete reflections of Dr. Nancy Dickey, go to
http://www.am-umc.org/podcast.htm September 14, 2008 podcast)
My
faith has been my strength and vitally intertwined with my life – my
personal and my professional life. As a physician, it is
inconceivable to me that one could practice medicine without having a
deep and abiding faith…and not a faith relegated to a box or component
but rather tightly intertwined in all that I do.
1. Like
anyone prayer that He will be with me – before a test, in a tough
situation – common prayer,” help me out of here Lord”.
2. My faith
has allowed me/helped me when dealing with difficult issues – death,
pain, what seem to be senseless losses.
a. Help me
find the right language to talk with family (the prayer that when I
speak it be His words not mine that flow forth)
b. Help me
“hear” what patients or families are saying – sometimes underneath
their words or between their sentences – what are they really
asking?
c. Prayer
that I can have peace about whatever is happening…
3. Provide
hope for patients even when things seem nearly hopeless…because there
are miracles and there is new science and there are unpredictable
turns of events. My faith helps me hold out hope for patients even
when my science would suggest there is little to hopeful about.
a. Perhaps
especially when a cure is unlikely at comes at too high a price in
terms of suffering, my faith helps me reassure patients that we can
deal with any outcome – it is easiest if they too have a faith but
even if they do not, they at times lean on my faith.
4. As a
result of many years of study and writing and lecturing on medical
ethics, I feel strongly that my faith directs my interactions with
patients but I also strongly believe that my exam room is not a place
for me to proselytize – I must follow the lead provided by my
patients – respond to their questions, speak overtly if they request,
but not allow my beliefs to dictate their decisions
5. For most
of us faith is supposed to be …well, faith. Not provable but there…to
be called upon. But, for many, the ability to point to “evidence”
seems to be important. As a physician, I have found one of the
fascinating things in my less than adequate study of the Bible has
been the medical and public health lessons that are key parts of the
Biblical Old Testament law…
The Jews were told to circumcise their
male infants on the 8th day. Now, really, did it matter
whether it was the 4th or the
12th or the 8th day? Centuries later as we are able to study
dynamics of the blood, it turns out that after infants are born their
blood goes through a period of transition from womb to the world and
on the 8th day
it is generably hypercoagulable…it is more likely to clot quickly than
at any other time. So, the 8th day
circumcision was written in the law…and saved infants from excess
bleeding.
Easier to abide by the law when you
have evidence? Maybe, but how about, reason to have faith in the
Biblical message because it proves out…again and again and again. For
me, it is my strength when I am weak; it is my hope when things look
bleak; it reassures me that He will put the right words in my mouth
when my patients need reassurance or when they need encouragement or
when they need explanation; my faith provides me peace when dealing
with tragedies that pain my spirit.
Strength, hope, wisdom, encouragement,
assurance, peace – these are sought by patient, physician, pastor,
friends, and families.
Faith matters from beginning to end. Faith matters in the beginning. Last week
we had a problem with a system that was installed in the church.
Solution: Call the installer. Sure enough he came out looked at the
system and guided us in understanding how to operate the system. That
is what the psalmist did. He began this portion of the psalm by
acknowledging that God knew him, God knitted his being into existence.
Faith matters from beginning to end. The psalmist declared that God’s eyes had
beheld his unformed substance. The image is that of a stack of wood
delivered for a special project, perhaps rebuilding what Ike had
destroyed. To most of us it just looks like a stack of wood, but the
Creator sees so much more. The Creator sees life, every day of it and
the psalmist is amazed. My seventeen year old son is starting to look
quite seriously at where life will go after high school graduation.
My 22 year old daughter is trying to figure out what graduate school
she will go to next year. They are a couple of stacks of wood. The
picture is not real clear, not yet, but how amazing it has been to
watch their lives form before my eyes. I was amazed the days they
were born and continue to be in awe. God sees it all – every day that
was formed for you.
Faith matters from beginning to end. The whole picture is not clear to us, not
visible, but here’s the good news – we don’t have to see it all. The
psalmist reflected, “How weighty to me are your thoughts, O
God!...I try to count them – they are more than sand; I come to the
end – I am still with you.” I have to admit when I first read
verse 18, I was a bit confused, then I let the poetry be poetry. I
was confused by that last line, “I come to the end – I am still
with you.” Some commentaries say that the psalmist is speaking
about the end of his life. He spent his whole life counting the
amazing thoughts of the divine and then in the end he was with God
forever. Other commentaries say that the psalmist started to reflect
on the greatness of God and grew so weary that he fell asleep only to
awake and find himself in the midst of the goodness of God.
Keil-Delitzsch wrote, “He falls asleep pondering upon the thoughts
of God, wearied out; and when he wakes up, he is still with God, still
ever absorbed in the contemplation of the Unsearchable One, which even
the sleep of fatigue could not entirely interrupt.” That’s when I
felt the reassurance that Nancy spoke about this morning. We will
never fully comprehend, but we don’t have to. Let us rest assured
that we are still with God and God is still with us from beginning to
end. In the midst of triumph or tragedy; in the midst of problems or
praise – I am still with you. It is this kind of assurance that
convinces me that faith matters from beginning to end.
Amen.
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