Triage!!

He went to him and bound up his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. Then he set him on his own animal, took him to an inn and took care of him. Luke 10:34

In medical circles, the word triage is defined as the assignment of degrees of urgency to wounds or illnesses to decide the order of treatment of a large number of patients or casualties. The triage consists of three degrees of cases; emergent, urgent, and non urgent. When a person arrives in the emergency room, the first step is assessment by a triage nurse. The nurse them evaluates the condition and determines the patient’s priority for admission to the emergency department and for treatment.

I began to picture God as the triage nurse in our lives. He sees each of us and assesses our state of need, then He admits us to His love and care and helps us through it. His triage is a place to stop the bleeding in life. No matter the severity of the need, He is like a doctor in a triage unit fighting to save us and never giving up.

Just like the Good Samaritan in the scripture above, we are all called to provide a triage for those among us who are hurting, not only physically but spiritually. It’s easy to pass on being the Good Samarian or the one to bind up wounds and care for others, but it’s something that’s required of us as Christians.

There are different kinds of wounds going on all around us in this strange new world. There is the wound of loneliness, the wound of isolation, the wound of enabling, the wound of depression, the wound of abuse, the wound of a debilitating disease, even the wound of an unforgiven past.

We might ask, “What can we do for these wounded? We are all wounded in some way ourselves.” That’s exactly the point. Because we are all wounded, we can offer the gift of understanding.

Luckily for me, I have only been in the ER a few times in my life and each time turned out to be a minor event. However, there are people every day in a triage with doctors and nurses tirelessly trying to save them. These people are the heroes of this day and time – the Good Samaritans.

My nephew is a resident at UAB, and he recently wrote something that moved me because it gave an inside look at what medical personnel face daily. It also shows the power of the Good Samaritan in us all.

“I experienced something new for me recently. I’ve been in medicine for eight years now. I’ve seen many patients die. I’ve seen many doctors, including myself, orchestrate the preceding events in the room surrounding a patient’s death. This is the first time I’ve seen a physician in that role ask the room of disheveled and exhausted people who just spent the last hour trying to prolong a person’s life if he could pray for the patient. He prayed for God to be present with this patient and to usher him into the next stage with peace and to give that same peace to his soon to be grieving family. I am thankful for his example and hope that one day I’ll have a doctor who does the same for me, and that I can be a doctor who is bold enough to do the same for my patients.”

Sometimes we tend to give up on ourselves and on others. No matter how bad things might be, we should never give up too soon. If we keep trying and don’t give up on ourselves and others, God will make us paramedics of His love, mercy and grace. God hasn’t give up on any of us and neither should we!

Rescue the perishing, care for the dying, Snatch them in pity from sin and the grave; Weep o’er the erring one, Lift up the fallen; Tell them of Jesus the mighty to save. Rescue the perishing, care for the dying; Jesus is merciful, Jesus will save. Fannie Crosby

Thank you to all our heroes!