The following is a short exhortation I wrote for our CMA orientation picnic. Though it was not initially intended for an audience outside of CMA, I believe it can serve to encourage any believer.
Do you know what the Lord says about us? Do you know what he thinks of you and me? We are the apple of his eye. Do you believe that? When all of creation was completed and the angels marveled at it all, God was just getting warmed up. His most precious creation is and always has been us. He created us in His image, to be like Him, to see the world and all its beauty the way He does. We are the Lord’s inheritance! Think about that. Jesus dies on the cross, and for his inheritance he asks for us! All the text books in the world couldn’t come near to describing the depths of the human soul and the mysteries of creation – yet that is exactly where our Lord is. He abides in the secret place, and as His beloved, He is constantly calling us, even pleading with us to come and see – to join Him and to work and play in His reality. Around every corner, every question, every heartbreak, and every side-spitting laugh, the Lord is revealing His mysteries to us… mysteries about Himself and about us. This world is drenched in our God. As believers in the one True God of Heaven and Earth, as his children, He says, “My son, my daughter, everything I have is yours. It always has been.”
See, some of us don’t share this vision of faith, some of us want to, but we’re afraid of dreaming too big, and some of us have this kind of faith – but only sometimes... that's where I fall.
Let me tell you what CMA is about. In medical school, we are pounded with information about the human body. It’s fascinating, isn’t it? I mean, even the process of swallowing is so intricate and precise. As we’ve learned, it only takes a little "departure from the normal" for us to aspirate our food and get pneumonia… but in most of us, it works perfectly. It’s amazing!
But, you know, somehow it loses its awe-inspiringness, doesn’t it. Like somehow the joy of exploring the Lord’s awesomeness gets suffocated by … oh I don’t know, the volume of the material, the blandness of endless black words on white paper, the fact that many our professors don’t convey any glimpse of awe or wonder when they speak about these things - like they are just putting in their time. Even our own bodies are reduced to impersonal facts. There’s no mystery. There’s no passion. What should be thrilling and awe-inspiring ends up killing us. This is where CMA comes in:
What did the Lord tell the Israelites over and over again?
Remember.
Remember what I did.
Remember who I am.
And remember who you are.
This is so true of us. Do you remember who you are? The apple of the Lord’s eye?! The one He calls into His secret place so He can show you Himself and how he is reflected and present in all of His creation. Our God is a God of awe and wonder and passion and wisdom and unending mystery. We will spend eternity with our jaws on the ground. Do you realize that? It is the joy of His heart to reveal Himself to us. But He doesn’t want to wait until we die… he has so much for us even here at this place, at this time.
CMA exists to remind.
When we are with each other, we remind each other of the beauty and mystery in the world and in each other. When we get together we can remind each other of the truth about ourselves and our Lord. We can remember together who we are… our identity in Jesus. Break off the lies that strangle our passion and awe. This world is relentless in trying to kill the fire that the Lord has put in each of us. The enemy knows that when our fire is blazing, it changes the world. He doesn’t want that. CMA is not just a student organization, really, by the very nature of the fact that we are children of the God of the universe, it’s so much more. Of course, you don’t have to be in CMA to be in on it all, in fact, I really encourage you to get involved with a church and spend time worshiping the Lord on your own. But those of us in CMA share this unique and challenging experience of medical school too. We are on the same road for this short time, and no one understands what you’re going through like the one who’s right there with you.
So, this is CMA: sons and daughters of the Lord of Hosts who remind each other that this is true and that it is amazing.
Thursday, September 08, 2005
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