What sort of world is this?

Guest Post:  ~by Dianne Eldridge

My boss shut the exam room door quietly and looked at me.

"His dad died recently, I mean really recently, of Carcinoid Cancer.

And this guy is 24 and has all the symptoms of Carcinoid Cancer."

He set his computer on the counter. I waited as he absent-mindedly typed out his report. It took a few minutes before he looked up again, his normally confident, cheerful face filled with deep sadness.

“The labs are all positive.
            He doesn’t want to go through what his dad went through...

He’ll commit suicide.”

Pausing, he looked down and tried to keep his composure.

Then two tears rolled down his cheeks,

“He’s so young and so smart.

I wish... I wish he could go into the medical field.”

Anguish washed over me.

For death has come up into our windows;

it has entered our palaces,

cutting off the children from the streets

and the young men from the squares. (Jeremiah 9:21)

That night I dressed in scrubs and clocked in at the nursing home.

I fed a woman pureed birthday cake.

It was her one hundred and second birthday.

I chided and consoled my elderly residents throughout dinner.

One wanted to eat her napkin.

One whimpered because she missed her daughter.

One didn’t know who she was.

One kissed my hand every time I passed.

One shouted obscenities at illusions.

One perpetually hummed a tune.

One demanded the time every five minutes.

Lifting an elderly man from his wheelchair to his bed, I remembered the young man’s hollow cheeks and lifeless gaze as I handed him his invoice.

Such a change from when I had checked him in, when his twinkling eyes and flirtatious comments had impelled me to hurry through height, weight, and vital signs.

What sort of world is this?

Where young men die before proving their intelligence, and old men outlive their wits?

I guess it’s a fallen sort of world.

We just need Jesus… desperately.

He will swallow up death forever;

and the Lord God will wipe away tears from all faces,

and the reproach of his people he will take away from all the earth,

for the Lord has spoken. (Isaiah 25:8)