Monday, April 29, 2013

Understanding at MUMC



Today I’m sitting in a quiet corner at the McMaster University Medical Centre with no internet signal.  An older friend of mine needed to go in for a variety of tests and since I am fairly “portable” at this moment, I decided to take her.  Yeah, don’t get too excited about me doing a good deed.  There is no internet connection.  This might be the most focused two hours of my week.

Ecclesiastes 11: 5 “As you do not know the path of the wind, or how the body is formed in a mother’s womb, so you cannot understand the work of God, the Maker of all things.”  It feels a bit odd to be drawn to this verse at this research hospital – renown for its pediatric care and research and neonatal centre.  This is a big-deal hospital in Canada!  They know stuff here – and can tell us all with great detail of how a body is formed.  There may be a few doctors for whom this verse might not make much sense.  Yet even at MUMC, we are surrounded by mystery – how disease functions in our bodies, disease that resists treatment or is untreatable, progressive degenerative disease, and the miracles of healing.

“…so you cannot understand the work of God, the Maker of all things.”  I take a great deal of comfort from this statement.  Humans cannot know all things and we need to lean into and embrace this limitation with humility and grace.

Internet-less for the morning, a good cup of coffee at hand, and no other option for my procrastination but to write or sit and do nothing, I am hopeful for good progress.

No comments:

Post a Comment