Faith and patience

I read this morning in Hebrews that we should be diligent to not become sluggish in our faith but rather follow the example of those who've gone before us, "who through faith and patience I inherited the promise." Faith and patience. It's easier for me to have faith than patience personally. Once God shows me something to believe for, I have no trouble. He can do the impossible! It's the waiting,the patience, that is harder for me. I think the best example is probably Heaven. I am already a citizen of my true home, the kingdom of God. I have the faith to look forward to it and it's where my hope is. But what I experience of Heaven now is only a shadow. So often I long for Heaven on Earth. I want every one of these patients to get up out of their bed totally healed. I hate having to watch their mom's grieve when they die, and I love rejoicing with them when they improve. But the complete promises of God are inherited with faith AND patience. Not all of his promises are immediate. Not all of his healing is in this world. All of my patients will be healed, but for some I have to be patient to wait and rejoice with them in heaven. 

I'm not sure if that makes sense to you. My heart is heavy today because another one of my patients died last night. She was a really sweet 14yo female with Lupus. She came in with renal failure as well as a pleural effusion and seemed to be doing better clinically. We cant get many labs here and the turn around time is really long, so we didn't have a perfect picture of everything. She started bleeding in the night though and the physician on call couldn't resuscitate her. I'm not sure if she had such bad nephrotic syndrome from her Lupus that she was hypocoagulable or if her lung disease was so severe that she had a pulmonary hemorrhage. Families don't do post-Mortem autopsies here so I will never know. It breaks my heart. I will have to patiently wait for Heaven to see her healed.

Another example is just being here at Kijabe. It has stretched my faith to follow God's leading us to Africa (the only place I was sure I wasn't called to go about a year ago). Now that we are here, I have had my heart so enlarged for not just the patients but the medical students who are in need of teaching so much (another thing I was fairly sure I was not called to do... Academic medicine). And now that I have faith that God has purposed me for the mission of caring for the really poor and training up physicians, it's time (almost) to go home. It's time for patience. 

So for today, faith and patience in every arena of life is what God asks. I am patiently waiting to see Ruth again in heaven. And my heart is full of faith, knowing that God has fulfilled his promise to heal her because she is his child.  My heart is also being stretched for faith to believe that I am and can be  a missionary in a way i didn't think before now was for me. And I'm patiently wondering... when and how we will get to come back to Kijabe to continue the work we've started.