Yesterday was Easter and a very emotional day for me at the Worship service. There are a few reasons that I think I was more emotional than usual. The first is the number of injured children I am seeing. The second is because of a very poignant story I heard about an 18 y/o soldier and the Lieutenant that tried to save him. Lastly, it is Easter and I am away from my family, not sure if I will ever see them again in this life.

Back to my thoughts about the Children of War, one of the reasons I have been deployed to the base I am at, is because of the increasing number of children we are we caring for who have been injured. I thought specifically about what is happening to them as I was reading in Proverbs, the seven things that God hates. Proverbs 6:17b states that one of the things that God hates is, “hands that shed innocent blood”. Side by side in the ICU are two children who were severely injured in an improvised explosive device combined with chlorine gas in Ramadi the other day. We have a one year old boy who had some glass pieces penetrate the back of his neck, but his main problem is the damage caused to his lungs from breathing chlorine gas. He has been on a ventilator for three days while we wait to see if his lungs recover. We are hopeful. The other child is a 13 y/o girl. As they were examining her in the ER the surgeon told me of how beautifully her toe nails were painted and she was found to be holding a flower when she was taken to the OR. She was taken to the OR to repair the left side of her face that was just about blown off. When I first saw her in the ICU her face was still covered with some blood and there was a patch of skin sown to cover where her left eye used to be. When you looked at her right side you could tell she was a beautiful girl, carrying a flower she had picked from a field. Now she will be forever disfigured. There is absolutely no doubt that these children’s bodies flow with innocent blood and the very fact that their blood was shed represents something God hates. I am wondering where Al Jazeera or CNN or BBC is to report this act of terror against children, or how they are being lovingly cared for by the “infidels”. Unfortunately, I am sharing about just two of a constant stream of children I see as a result of the terrorist attacks that continue to destabilize Iraq. That is one of the differences I see from the last time I was here. The number of injured US military is about the same, but the number of Iraqi civilians especially children has gone up dramatically. Where is the moral outrage? These attacks against the children at schools and markets were not aimed at the US military and if we leave the chances are they will only get worse. I asked my Muslim translator one day how believers of Islam can justify such attacks. He is very educated man and a devout Muslim. He explained to me why these types of attacks against Muslim children are not approved of by the Quran. I then asked him about what is the percentage of Muslims in the Middle East that feel the same way you do and he answered, “About two percent.”

As I stood and looked at these two children in the ICU I wondered what effect this will have on me when I return home. I am often asked how I deal with the difficulty of caring for severely ill children. I am able to process the tragedy of children born with heart defects, although there are still days I cry, much like Jesus did when He joined in mourning for Lazarus, even though he knew was going the raise him from the dead. John Chapter 11. I am also encouraged by the story of when Jesus is asked why a child was born blind and was it due to sin in the lives of the parents or the man. Jesus’ responds, “Neither this man nor his parents sinned; this came about so that God’s works might be displayed in him.” John 9:3 It is much more difficult to handle all of the carnage I am seeing. I think the ultimate answer is the same with the exception that man can do little to change the number of children with heart defects. However, man is directly responsible and will be held accountable for the innocent blood of these children.

What do I consider the ultimate answer? My ultimate answer I give for how I handle the suffering of children comes from five very important principles from my faith: 1) God is omniscient, omnipotent, and loving, 2) God knows the number of our days before our life begins “Your eyes saw me when I was formless; all my days were written in Your book and planned before a single one of them began.” Psalm 139:16, 3) Children who die go to heaven regardless of their parents faith or whether they have been baptized, 4) God is allowing things to continue that He hates, for a period of time, because of the fallen nature of man, and 5) Man’s intellect is too feeble to understand the permissive will of God. “Trust in the Lord with all of your heart, and do not rely on your own understanding;” Proverbs 3:5 Because of #5 I place all of my trust in #1.

The uniting scripture I can rest on is this “But when the perfect comes, the partial will come to an end. When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put away childish things. For now we see indistinctly, as in a mirror, but then face to face. Now I know in part, but then I will know fully, as I am fully known. Now these three remain: Faith, hope, and love. But the greatest of these is love.” 1 Corinthians 13: 10-13

You see, as a physician, I feel God allows me to take part in His plan but not to change the ultimate plan He has for His Glory. I do not believe that I save anyone’s life with my medical care. That is the business of God. I see my role as a Christian physician to direct parents and patients to give all healing credit to the Great Physician. As C. Everett Koop so elegantly stated, “I can sew two pieces of skin together but it is God who sends the fibroblasts to heal the incision.”

Easter is truly the high-holiday for Christians. Without the Easter story, Christianity is just a nice story about a man who died. With Easter we see the Creator giving his life as a sacrifice for those He created and His perfect life as a human allowed Him to conquer death for all of us and gives us hope. My faith gives me hope to trust in the love that ultimately saves me…….and the children who die in war.

Solis Deo Gloria