Thanks for the wonders of a God Who gives good things:

412. Encouraging words

413. Happy memories

414. Snow crystals on tree branches

415. Silence

416. Broken dreams

417. Ministry

418. Peppernuts

419. Working with other Christians

420. Good friends

421. Evening walks

422. Opportunities to love

See, esteemed reader, how abundantly God answered our prayers, and how plain it is that we were not mistaken, after we had patiently and prayerfully sought to ascertain His will. Be encouraged, therefore, yet further and further to confide in the living God.

-From Release the Power of Prayer
by George Muller

403. Little girls with big smiles.

404. Living in the real world.

405. Knowing the teamwork of compassion.

406. Being right in the middle of things.

407. Not knowing what the next day will hold.

408. Finding grace everywhere.

409. Being constantly under the shadow of the Almighty.

410. Finding joy outside of the rat race of the world.

411. Seeing compassion chip away at crusts of hatred.

I recall conversing with a coworker a few months ago about pay raises. We had both figured out that we probably weren’t getting one this year. The conversation ended with that, but one thing was certain, for myself as well as the other nurse. We weren’t going to change anything. We wouldn’t be looking for other jobs. We weren’t in it for the money. In fact, we would do what we were doing even if we weren’t paid at all.

It is difficult to explain what I do, especially since the very nature of my work requires me to protect the privacy of extremely vulnerable individuals. Some of my skills are not the kinds of things you want to hear about at the dinner table! I have discovered that nursing takes me into places I never knew existed, both dark places and happy places. There is darkness when you see things that make you want to close your mind, yet great happiness when you realize you have made a pain-racked life a little better.

I have learned not to confine my practice to a certain set of skills, but rather to seek to be the hands and feet of Jesus in all circumstances. There is danger, I think, in separating our professionalism from the words of Jesus, “Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.”

When you minister to the very “least of these”, there are a few things you must understand. It isn’t cool, glamorous, or even exciting. At times, it can be absolutely terrifying. It may not improve your general reputation.

It’s the best work in the whole world.

Why? Because you are working with Jesus, touching wounds that He touches, participating in His healing work. You see grateful eyes looking back at you, and you know that you have made the right choice, that you wouldn’t trade this work for anything in the world, that it doesn’t matter what you get paid, because you would do it anyway.

And that’s my passion.

396. An almost clean room!

397. Valiant words.

398. Time with family.

399. Freedom from slavery to the American dream.

400. Books that tell the truth.

401. Changes in plans.

402. Good memories.

Consider: let us view ourselves in the light of that most awful Sacrifice. Do we believe in Calvary? What difference does it make that we believe? How does this belief affect the spending of our one possession – life? Are we playing it away? Does it strike us as fanatical to do anything more serious? Are we too refined to be in earnest? Too polite to be strenuous? Too loose in our hold upon eternal verities to feel with real intensity? Too cool to burn? God open our eyes, and touch our hearts, and break us down with the thought of the Love that redeemed us, and a sight of souls as He sees them, and of ourselves as we are, and not as people suppose we are, lest we sail in some pleasure boat of our own devising over the gliding waters that glide to the river of death.

-From Overweights of Joy by Amy Carmichael

“Of course you’re not guilty! Would they have given you ten years if you had been?”

Ten years imprisonment and five years in exile. The penalty for being innocent.

Eugenia Ginzburg, a 30 year old Communist idealist and card-carrying Party member, received this sentence in 1937 for failing to denounce a purportedly “Trotskyist” colleague. One of the victims of Stalin’s blood-crazed purges, she joined millions of her peers on a journey through the Soviet Gulag, a system of prisons and labor camps that far exceeded the Nazi Holocaust in size and number of victims.

In Journey into the Whirlwind, Mrs. Ginzburg recounts the story of her arrest, initial imprisonment, and transport to Siberia in a train car labeled “Special Equipment”. Her ability to remember events and conversations and turn them into a page-turning narrative reveals her exceptional skill as a writer, a skill that the Gulag did not take away from her. In this first book, however, she is somewhat restrained in expressing her thoughts and feelings. She paid lip service to Communism in hopes that the book would be published in her own country, which did not happen in her lifetime.

Within the Whirlwind continues the story of her life in the Gulag in the Kolyma region of Siberia, an extremely remote area in the far east. In this book, published only after her death, she is far more open about her disillusionment with Communism, the horrors of the Gulag, and her emotions about the evils she saw daily. She shares detailed accounts of the horrors she saw and experienced, yet without being crass. Throughout her story she maintains a sense of dignity that sharply contrasts with her circumstances.

Her chance of surviving to be released was greatly increased by becoming a nurse at a camp hospital. This protected her from the deadly combination of exposure to the elements and back-breaking work that most camp inmates had to endure.

“Sometimes mad thoughts occurred to me: What about crossing out the words “History of Illness,” instead writing at the top “History of Murder”? But I, of course, did not have spirit enough to do that. Besides, whom would it have helped?

Mrs. Ginzburg goes far beyond simply narrating events. She digs deep into the emotions of things, describing how she experienced the Gulag as a woman, a wife, and a mother. This is perhaps the most human book about the labor camps I have ever read. In spite of years of continuous exposure to brutality, she never lost her ability to see and feel the humanity and personhood of those around her. She puts a face to this decades-long Holocaust, and an expression to the sorrow that those of us who know the Man of Sorrows must be willing to feel ourselves.

When she heard that Stalin had died . . .

“I collapsed on the table, sobbing loudly. My body shook. It was my unwinding, not only for these last months spent awaiting my third arrest; I was also weeping for two lost decades. In the space of a minute the whole procession of events swept by before my eyes. All the tortures and all the prison cells. All the long files of those who had suffered the final penalty, and the countless legions of those who had been made to suffer. And my own life destroyed by his diabolical will. And my boy, my dead son . . .

“I must confess that I was sobbing not for the monumental historical tragedy alone, but most of all for myself. What this man had done to me, to my spirit, to my children, to my mother . . .”

392. Wide green fields.

395. Peace.

385. Musty old antique stores.

386. Enjoying nature.

387. Poetry.

388. Knowing that where there is Christ, there is love.

389. Music that lifts me to God.

390. The solid foundation of God’s Word in this murky world of deception.

391. Being surrounded by God’s beauty every day.

Note: This post is based on my experience with numerous patients and is not intended to reflect the identity of any particular individual.

“Lift your arms! Show me how you lift your arms up high!”

I plead cheerfully, coaxingly, to the wide-eyed child as I adjust the pillow under his head. He gives me a bored look, then, with a big sigh, lifts up his arms for a moment. “Good job! You make me so happy when you do that!”

Today, I am happy because a little boy moved his arms when I told him to.

In my world of cribs not made for babies, of walking right into the lives of those who some see no value in, the results of my work sometimes elude me. I know I put myself in a controversial position sometimes. Not everyone likes what I am doing. How did my day (night) go?, people ask me. What do I say?

How do you describe a glimpse of Christ?

I do not speak this lightly. “If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men most miserable.” (I Cor. 15:19) This truth is no stranger to the path of life I’m walking. If tired feet, crying eyes, and scrubs that would make a good illustration for an anatomy class about body fluids were all I had at the end of the day . . . then what?

What is my reward? Some days my work goes out the back door in a body bag. In that eternal moment before you pick up the phone to tell someone that their loved one is, yes, dead, you realize that there is no possible earthly compensation for what you are doing. Sometimes when you reach out to the utmost rejects of this world, the object of your compassion will turn and attack you. You choose to turn your face towards those that others edit out. Uncensored pain.

This is hard compassion. Compassion that wears a crown of thorns. You will bleed.

Remember Who you are caring for . . .

You cannot see the beauty of Christ until you learn to touch the broken, to see through to the soul. This is the Gospel to the poor, the brokenhearted, the captives, the maimed, the lame, the blind. The Gospel spoken with hands.

Foot-washing.

Anyone can do this.

I leaned over the bed to say goodbye one day. He turned and looked at me, his eyes struggling to focus on my face. Looking out of a hopelessly broken body, he met my eyes. In that moment, I saw a soul. A soul that was not broken.

That, in itself, is a reward.