Unprepared

A few years ago, I decided to become a nurse, because I felt that was the best way for me to gain some of the skills that I would need to be a missionary. When I finished school, I had hoped that I would be able to get a job that would prepare me for the kind of nursing that I would be doing on the mission field. The emergency room seemed to be the perfect choice. Working in an ER has proven to be a huge learning experience for me, just not the kind of learning experience that I had hoped for. You see, we, as a society, have learned a vast amount about the human body: how it works, what can go wrong, how to know what is going wrong, and how to treat it when it is not working right. Of course all of this knowledge is of great value. The problem is that there is so much that a nurse in my position needs to know. I have to be prepared to care for every patient, from the teenager who cut her finger in the kitchen to the middle aged man who collapsed in a shopping mall for no apparent reason and has been receiving CPR. I have found, time and time again, that I can not be properly prepared to handle every emergency that will come my way. In fact, I've been told that I could be an ER nurse for 30 years and still come across situations that I am not prepared for. I have also found that I am unprepared for some of the things that I should have already received training for. Thus, I am in a situation where I frequently experience "baptism by fire" or feel that I must "sink or swim."
I say all of this, not to complain about the stresses of the ER or to evoke feelings of sympathy from you all, but to draw some parallels with ministry, to write a parable of sorts.
I hope to be on the mission field in a couple of years, but am I prepared? Do I know about the ministry: how it works, what can go wrong, how to know what is going wrong, and how to treat it when it is not working right. Can I handle every emergency that comes my way? Have I learned as much as I can of the Bible? Do I have access to the vast amount of knowledge we have gathered about the human condition? I trust that God has given me the ability to bandage up some of those spiritual bumps and bruises, but what about the person who is teetering on the edge?
There's so much yet to learn in the next couple of years. "Baptism by fire" and "sink or swim" are not phrases that I want to use to describe my first couple of years on the mission field.

Lord, please cause me to be prepared for the ministry that you are leading me into.