QUIETLY a cheerful nurse slips into a patient's room and whispers, "Good night! Would you like me to offer a little prayer for you before you go to sleep?" How welcome these words sound to the apprehensive patient who has just been admitted. How prayer helps to calm the fears and bring comfort to troubled hearts that have been asking, "Is it a tumor, and if it is, will it be malignant? If they operate, will they discover that I am a terminal case? If I am to die, what should I do in preparation?"
All these questions and many more are being asked all the time in our Seventh-day Adventist medical institutions. Will they go unanswered? Not if we can get devoted Christian nurses and technicians!
Then a patient gets to the radiology department an X-ray technician quietly talks to her, assuring her that she need not fear. He patiently explains to her the procedures to expect. The cold machine above her, directing its piercing rays into the very recesses of her being, seems like a friend now.
Then there is the medical technologist, the physical therapist, the inhalation therapist, the dietitian. There are others too. These are men and women who have been trained to serve and bring blessing to others. They have been trained not only to carry out the technical aspects of their profession but to saturate their duties with the milk of human kindness and understanding. These skilled medical servants have been trained in our schools to meet our objectives! They know how to establish a pattern of Christian medical service that will meet the challenge of the gospel cornmission. With their rich background of training to meet the aims and objectives of our medical institutions, it seems unfair for our hospitals to look elsewhere for help.
Great miracles have happened as men and women of good will have contributed millions of dollars toward our medical work. Community after community has become fascinated by the medical service of Seventh-day Adventists. Great barriers of prejudice and suspicion have been demolished as the entering wedge has done its part. But while these wonderful doors of opportunity have opened, we search, and often in vain, to find men and women trained in medical skills who are willing to join our team of medical evangelists.
Highly Paid Missionaries
During the depression years it was not difficult to persuade our young people to dedicate themselves to denominational work. Parents and teachers urged them to prepare themselves for service in denominational institutions. Have the needs of the church changed? Have our obligations to the entire world field been lessened? Is our work closing with decreasing strength? Where are our professional and skilled young people today?
Postwar years opened new horizons for our talented youth. In non-Adventist institutions demands for medical skills have rapidly increased and wages have spiraled upward. Many of our young people have been led to rationalize thus—missionary obligations can now be met outside of our organized work. How easy it is to do missionary work with higher salaries and with a more exciting social life! Does it seem fair, proper, or consistent that while we do our missionary work outside the organizational structure our own medical work is forced to appeal to non-Adventists, not of our denominational training, to help us meet the challenge of our church medical program?
Talents Needed Now
Ponder carefully these words:
It behooves every soul whose life is hid with Christ in God to come to the front now. Something is to be done. We are to contend most earnestly for the faith once delivered to the saints. The spirit in which truth is defended and the kingdom of God advanced must be as it would be if Christ were on this earth in person. . . . We are now to unify, and by true medical missionary work prepare the way for our coming King. Medical Ministry, p. 22.
Our medical work throughout the world —at home and overseas—is meeting unprecedented challenges. Doors heretofore shut tight are being flung open as the gospel thrusts its mighty "right arm" into action.
Medical missionary work brings to humanity the gospel of release from suffering. It is the pioneer work of the gospel. It is the gospel practiced, the compassion of Christ revealed. Of this work there is a great need, and the world is open for it.—Ibid., p. 239.
Open and Closed Doors
Some doors once opened are now closed, while others never before open urgently beckon our medical evangelists. Men and women blessed with unlimited finances are looking to Seventh-day Adventists to take their money and establish centers for a ministry of healing and human relief. They appreciate our objectives, our standards, and our commitment to treat the whole man. This cannot be done without dedicated and qualified young men and women who with a vision of the gospel commission will join our medical program whenever and wherever they are called.
Heaven is waiting to bestow its richest blessings upon those who will consecrate themselves to do the work of God in these last days of the world's history.—Messages to Young People, p. 26.
