Tuesday, October 31, 2006

Comfort Care vs. Heroic Care

I've heard these terms used to describe what is done in the hospitals in America for patients facing critical medical conditions. An ethicist might define these as what extent care and services are used to maintain life versus quality of life issues. I can't begin to comment on that. Greater minds than mine wrestle with those issues daily. Here in Swaziland there is not much of a debate on comfort vs. heroic care. Most people are grateful for any care.
That’s on the physical side. What about spiritual? I think Jesus gave heroic care. Comfort care is what we give when we give a watered down gospel or platitudes so as not to offend. God's wish is that none would perish. Jesus gave everything he had and was rightfully his that we might have a relationship with the God that created us. Dying on a cross as our atonement is heroic. Being slapped, beat, scourged by your own creation is a love that is heroic. There was nothing comfortable about what Jesus taught.
There are people here in Swaziland that give heroic care. Our Bible Club leaders and teachers give heroic care to the children at the CarePoints. There are friends and neighbors who will sit for days with a small child in the hospital to provide comfort, companionship, and love. There are women who cook every day for hundreds of children (not their own) at each CarePoint. These are the heroes here in Swaziland. Taking what little they have and making it an offering to the God that loved them first.
My prayer is that we would not miss the opportunities to be heroic. Not for applause or the limelight, but to be able to hear one day: "Well done good & faithful servant." Take the gift God has given you and be heroic where God has placed (or sent) you.

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