Mortality?

I wrote this on Tuesday, but wasn't allowed to publish it because the family hadn't been contacted yet...

I’ve only been in West Africa for three days, yet my sterile understanding of life and death has already been somewhat soiled. Today at around 4pm, while I was drying operating instruments in the sterilization room of the onboard operating theatre, an announcement came on summoning the emergency medical team to a room on the ship. The announcement was made a few more times, important people rushed around while the rest of us prayed in groups, and an hour later we were informed that one of the security guards, an ex-military officer from Nepal who spoke more in smiles than in English and who was supposed to go home today, was dead. He had been diagnosed that morning with malaria, but the cause of his sudden death is unknown, possibly a heart attack; he had been found without a pulse.

It’s scary when a missionary dies. At devotionals just this morning, there was a reading about how “when two or more are gathered together in my Name, there will I be.” Well, there were about 300 of us gathered today to pray for this man, but it appears as though God missed the memo, like He did when Jim Elliot and his four compatriots were speared by the Alca Indians they were trying to reach in Ecuador (we just watched the movie last night). Or, perhaps, God knows more about these things than we do, what with having created the universe and all, and we should just let Him do His thing…

“'For your thoughts are not my thoughts, and neither are my ways your ways,' declares the Lord." -Isaiah 55:8

“Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of His saints.” -Psalm 116:15