I have been thinking about our salvation. There are essentially two salvations: a spiritual salvation and a physical salvation. God is Spirit but we are physical beings. We have been spiritually redeemed, we have a relationship with God by which we call him Abba! Father! But we are waiting for our physical redemption, the redemption of our bodies, the resurrection from the dead on the last day of this present world. The already aspect of spiritual redemption and the not yet aspect of physical redemption is present in both Scripture and in the world. There are people who are not walking according to the flesh but according to the Spirit, yet the redeemed and the unredeemed alike physically die.
One aspect of my profession that I do not like, in fact I hate it; that is keeping a body alive beyond the bodies ability to live. However, most aspects of critical care nursing is good. Take for instance one of the patients that I cared for yesterday. This man developed pneumonia from covid-19. He spent many weeks on the ventilator because his dependency on a ventilator became lengthy; he received a tracheotomy, a tracheotomy is a hole placed in the neck by which a person might be ventilated and breath rather than having a tube in the mouth. He also received a tube through the wall of his abdomen into his stomach, by which he might be feed. His lungs remain damaged. He has a hole in one of his lungs; therefore, he has a tube in his chest to allow the air to escape, otherwise the lung cannot function. In the past, this man would have died but now he is alive and talking because of these medical interventions and the nursing care that he received for the past two months. Then there are others who are in multi-organ failure and their tissue is rotting but the interventions are giving an appearance of life when there really is not. The person is essentially dead except that we are able to keep the heart beating by extreme measures and the family hangs on hoping that they get better.
This is not the hope that Paul spoke of in his letter to the Romans or in any of his letters. Our hope is not in this world but in the world that is to come. The resurrection of the body and the life everlasting. Our hope is a new body, as spiritual body, a body that is not subject to disease and death. There is a spiritual redemption now but we are waiting for the redemption of our bodies.
In Christ alone,
Michael Peek
The Nurse Theologian
