Divide my family expenditures between “luxuries” and “necessities”.Regularly ask God, “How can I give sacrificially to the underserved?”.Since my natural drift will be toward my family, when I plan to spend on my family, I should consistently hold up the poor in my decision making.Accept as God-given my dual responsibility to care for my family and to care for the poor.What guidelines can we use to walk through life with God, with money and without a constant anxiety caused by choosing between our families and the underserved? Let me list a few: At the same time, I believe I honor God when I share wonderful dinners with my wife and spend time with my children on family vacations and provide them all with a comfortable home. I suspect that the more our hearts and money reach out to the underserved, the closer we are to God’s heart: not only because we help the poor He loves, but also because we are more likely to trust Him with other aspects of our lives when we don’t depend on our own financial capabilities to gain what we want in life. How do we decide where we should live and give along that line? It’s not easy. Most of us reside somewhere along the continuum between the two. Others minimize the importance of caring for their families and almost exclusively use their money to care for those in greater need. Some reject their responsibility to the poor and almost exclusively use their money for those they love. My observation has been that Christian doctors seem to reside somewhere along a continuum. As Christian doctors we walk through life with a continuous tension between using our money to bless those we love, and using it to help those in great need. The Scriptures portray a special place in God’s heart for the poor and down trodden. Jesus spoke about money far more than he spoke about many topics that we stress in our faith, such as sexual fidelity and personal evangelism. At the same time, in the same real world, I realize that the dollars I spend for the wife I love might be life saving dollars in places like Haiti, where thousands have died and hundreds of thousands are homeless. I have neglected her a lot over my many years of practice and it feels good to provide for her extravagant experiences that we can share. One of our real pleasures on such excursions is to eat at fine restaurants and view the bay or the mountains as we enjoy really good food. My wife of 36 years and I were spending a weekend at a medical educational meeting. “Go, sell everything you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. If you struggle between the two, you are not alone! I do believe God is passionate about the poor and desires to use us to bless and show them His love, but also believe that God blesses us to bless our families too. I find this constant battle between my family and the poor especially after having a child. I subscribe to Christian Medical Doctors Association's devotional, and wanted to share today's. Being compassionate isn't an option, no matter what time it is. Listen without judgement and open-mind.Ģ. I know I was another white coat in a long stream of clinicians he's encountered, but I hope he felt God listen and care about his pain.ġ. How quickly one can half-listen, counting patients as a drug seeker, but feel God gave me this patient to hold onto compassion. Watched him brace pain as I palpated his spine and paraspinal muscles, his eyes misting up when he thought about how he's unable to lift up his little boy anymore, and could see the frustration he has had with the numbers of doctors he's seen, but no firm diagnosis. I listened to him, without judgement, and believed he was in real pain. I learned a few lessons from this patient. The diagnosis is intractable back pain, and reading the ED spread it said "only IV Dilaudid helps." No clinician wants to hear these words whether it's 3 in the afternoon, let alone 3 in the morning. I'm off to see what feels like my 100th patient, but in reality, only my 7th. About 3am I am wishing I can snuggle in my own bed with my husband. I recently worked an overnight shift without getting rest prior to the start of my shift, it was a busy night, with almost 25 patients waiting in the waiting room.
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