Seth Barnes - It's Time to Respond to Pain with Courage

Heidi from Swedish Hospital in Seattle filed the following report from the frontlines last night:

"Our floor has been transformed from a regular ortho floor to complete chaos. Every day I come into work I am worried that I may become infected with this virus and expose it to my family. As a unit we are tired and out of our comfort zones."

In the throes of massive global change, it's important, as I shared yesterday, that we embrace the discipline of taking personal inventory.

So, how are you? Tomorrow we resurrect with Jesus into a new world. Pay attention to the part of you that is still dying and needs to finish being buried so that it can resurrect.

Here's what I find when I take a deep look: On a personal level here in rural Georgia, I am toggling between the day-to-day tactics required in a world turned upside down and cultivating a more robust interior life.

Daily I face the requirements of bill-paying and survivalist living. And daily I need to find the courage I will draw on to help respond to all that is painful and needs leadership around me.

What is it around you that is in pain and needs leadership? It is time for those of us who follow Jesus to recover our voice and our place in society. For too long we have been cowed and have retreated to safer places. Let's find the courage to move more boldly in embracing pain.

Heidi, reporting from the chaos of the hospital says, "Sometimes I leave my shift, walk to my car, and cry before I drive home."

When we touch the world's pain as she does, we become God's nerve-endings. We throb and we cry and then we heal and help others to heal.

If we die well, there will be resurrection. As Heidi says, "There are positives that have come from this experience though. My fellow nurses are able to find moments of joy through our shifts and we have become closer as a unit."