One of the challenges when you’re assigned the role of triage nurse is moving between the triage station and the ER desk, more specifically, passing through the waiting room.
The seats are filled, there’s chairs setup in the hallway. Critical patients being treated in the rooms, some requiring the care of half our staff. The patients have been waiting for hours.
All eyes are on you as you pass by…every time.
They watch if you’re getting a chart and who you’re calling in next; thinking (and asking) how much longer it will be, why that person got to go in before they did, and where they are on the list.
Patients are eager to be seen and those eyes follow your every move.
Our parenting is like that.
So is our shepherding.
And our witness.
When eyes are on you, what do they see?
For those who love and follow the Lord Jesus, we are named His ambassadors. We represent Him to the world, before our communities, our families, and those we lead in ministry.
Scripture reminds us to continually grow more like Christ. By His grace He transforms us into that image (2 Cor 3:18), but it’s with our participation. We put off daily what was part of our old nature and put on the new, keeping in step with the Spirit to illuminate the world with His fruit of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness and self-control (Gal 5:22-23).
But when is the last time we considered if this is the picture we portray?
Peter also tells us, “for this very reason, make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue, and virtue with knowledge, and knowledge with self-control, and self-control with steadfastness, and steadfastness with godliness, and godliness with brotherly affection, and brotherly affection with love. For if these qualities are yours and are increasing, they keep you from being ineffective or unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ” (1 Pet 1:5-8).
Not only is our character a reflection of our Saviour, it also determines the quality of our ministry and the disciples who follow. The Lord has chosen and appointed us to go and bear fruit, to be disciple makers in our world, bearing fruit that will last and start it’s own cycle of seeding, planting and harvesting.
So, on whom -or what - do you have your eyes?
Is it the next leadership opportunity? Comparing to the one serving alongside you? Focused on everything that’s wrong instead of what’s right?
Setting our eyes on the Lord Jesus, with prayer and His Word, putting the tension between striving and abiding before Him. He has equipped us with everything we need for a life of godliness “through our knowledge of Him” (2 Pet 1:3) and as we fix our gaze upon Him and learn His character it will come to reflect our own.
Not overnight, but day by day.
May we be those who find our belonging, our sustenance, and our purpose in Him who has planned and equipped us for the ministry He wants to do through us in the world for His glory and the good of others.