Responding to Crisis

Natural disasters so easily touch our emotions, though I dare say we're often selective about which ones we choose to attach ourselves.  Some become deeply empathetic with the situation in one nation, yet are completely unresponsive to suffering in other parts of the world.  As Americans, I fear we too often direct our money at a problem and then feel we have done our part.  As believers we're called to go a step further, to look beyond physical needs to eternal ones.  We're called to direct our thoughts towards eternal realities ... even when there isn't a natural disaster involved.  Of course we should address physical need as God enables us.  But we must be cautious to not stop there.  There is a deeper crisis, a deeper need we dare not ignore.  Let's not limit Christian service to an emotional response to the Evening News, as tragic as those events may be.  Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones (1899-1981) left the medical profession to become the pastor of a mission church in Wales, a choice often misunderstood by others.  His response gives insight into how we must never lose sight of man's deepest need, the need of a Savior able to offer eternal peace with a holy God.

"It is not often that I make any kind of personal reference from this pulpit, but I feel this morning that I must speak of an experience which bears on this very subject.  When I came here, people said to me: ‘Why give up good work – a good profession – after all, the medical profession, why give that up?  If you had been a bookie, for instance, and wanted to give that up to preach the gospel, we should understand and agree with you and say that you were doing a grand thing.  But medicine – a good profession, healing the sick and relieving pain!’  One man even said this, ‘If you were a solicitor [lawyer] and gave it up, I’d give you a pat on the back, but to give up medicine!’

‘Ah well!’ I felt like saying to them, ‘if you knew more about the work of a doctor, you would understand.  We but spend most of our time rendering people fit to go back to their sin!’  I saw men on their sick beds, I spoke to them of their immortal souls, they promised grand things.  Then they got better and back they went to their old sin!  I saw I was helping these men to sin and I decided that I would do no more of it.  I want to heal souls.  If a man has a diseased body and his soul is all right, he is all right to the end; but a man with a healthy body and a diseased soul is all right for sixty years or so and then he has to face an eternity of hell.  Ah, yes! we have sometimes to give up those which are good for that which is the best of all – the joy of salvation and newness of life."

[Martyn Lloyd Jones, The First Forty Years]