God's Pharmacist: Opportunity

It’s been a while since I’ve blogged. I guess I haven’t been overwhelmed in the last while with any emotions that have stirred me to want to share my thoughts. Life has been relatively even keel. Spiritually I feel like I have been in a place of living off of the past. God was so very present when I cried out to him in our time of miscarriage. But in the last weeks, I feel like I haven’t learned anything new about God. We became members at our church and my testimony spoke of all the things I learned of God over the last months. But here I am feeling like if I’m not still learning, and if I’m not still hearing God’s voice, then where am I? I think of the story of Gideon in the bible. He was a man who started his journey with God well, but in the end his passion faded and thus his leadership failed. I want to start well, continue well, and finish well. So I suppose I am learning! I am learning that I need to daily call out to God and ask for Him to speak into my life, even when life is traipsing along well.

Aside from my relatively neutral heart lately, I have been provided with opportunity. The position of pharmacy manager became up for application a few weeks ago. I hesitated to apply. I wasn’t sure the extra responsibility was worth the promotion. However, after much encouragement at work to apply for the position I sat down and talked with Ryan and his wise words reminded me that when opportunities are granted we ought to take them. So as of September I will be pharmacy manager at Walmart pharmacy! This comes in the month when I was expecting to go on maternity leave. The dichotomy that I was looking forward to this year away from work to focus on other pursuits (family!) and here I am ready to pour myself into my work more was difficult at first as the congratulations started coming my way (this was not really a big deal to me and not what I had hoped to receive congratulations for)! However, I’m sure it’s an irony not lost on God, because he has been showing me that He uses opportunities, in fact He creates them! Go figure. As we wait to become pregnant, as we wait for a family, God has other plans. I am now interested to see how these plans will unfold and I am trusting that God will provide me the ability to manage well.

Speaking of my role as a pharmacist, I want to share something I wrote last December. It’s about how God has called me to be His pharmacist.

Revelation 22:2 “The leaves were used for medicine to heal the nations.”

I am a pharmacist. I deal with drugs and medicine on a daily basis. I see how people want medicine to heal them. Often times it’s a desire for something to heal them so they don’t have to put any effort in. My blood pressure is high, but if there’s a pill that can bring it down so I don’t have to exercise - great! I don’t like to see this. I like being healthy and promoting healthy living so as to minimize the need for medicine. And then to have the option of medicine when lifestyle is not enough or when misfortune has it that it is required (I think of my father). (But even when we do all the right things, guess what? We are human and so lifestyle and medicine will always fail in the end…it’s inevitable. We can’t live forever, even if we exercise, live balanced, eat organic and treat our ailments.) But God has a medicine to heal. And he has a medicine to give us eternal life. And it doesn’t even require any work on our part. Isn’t that exactly what more people are searching for? (Think of weight loss in a pill.) God’s medicine is healing for the soul; it is the message that we are loved and forgiven of all our wrongs and failures if we only choose to accept. God’s medicine is the acceptance of a Saviour who is awesome, who is revolutionary, who is relevant, who is God himself. God’s medicine requires no effort. (This is good, because effort has ended in heart ache and failure all too often for so many people.) Simply believe. I need to get in the business of being God’s pharmacist, dispensing God’s medicine to all the sick, hurt, lonely, depraved people out there. Hmmm. That’s exactly what my “job title” is as Christ’s follower.