I had a patient die this week. As a nurse, I have witnessed the deaths of many people. I have performed compressions on a five pound infant and an 80-year old man. I know for a fact that I was the last face a nine year old boy saw before closing his eyes for the last time. So this week’s experience should not have been that unique. It wasn’t, except that I perhaps I grieved more. As I have been consumed with thoughts of God lately, I wondered about his soul. There was no proof that his was an unbeliever. Still, I had to think about it.
Now, I am not the type of person who walks around, looking at the random stranger and wondering if they are saved. I have never approached a person at a gas pump, asking if they have Jesus in their heart. (This has happened to me.) But when confronted with death, I pray for that person and their family. I have been praying for the nation of Japan, choosing not to dwell on a statement made by a relative of mine that “they have no hope” because of their religion.
Whenever I consider the idea that I chose God, that I made a decision for Christ, I realize the folly of that statement. I was reared in a Christian home. Was told bible stories as history, not fable. This is the way things are. Never questioned it, until I was an adult. Yet I have questioned it. So think of a person not reared in the faith. How absurd it must all seem. Yet there are new converts to Christ daily. And their faith is strong. It has to be, considering how dangerous it is to be a Christian in some parts of the world. How is it that a person who grows up not even conceiving of the concept of Christ can choose to believe. To believe in something that their own relatives may kill them for believing. Christ chose us, not the other way around. He made me alive, when I was dead. Sometimes this fact just hits me out of the blue. To quote a line from a famous hymn, “I scarce can take it in.”
