Marketplace medicine

John 2:16. Stop turning my fathers house into a marketplace. 

Many institutions initiated in holiness have mutated into marketplaces. The insidious creep of commercialism has overgrown their original intentions and now they are a masquerade. Hospitals, schools, orphanages, old age homes, day care centres, monasteries, hostels for women, colleges, the list is endless. Famous names and places now are enrolled, each having an inception in idealism, but they have been transformed gradually into temples to mammon. How did this happen? How can any institution guard itself from the virus?

It is always good to lack something, to want for something, not to have all that is needed. This keeps our eyes on Jehovah Jireh. 

He then remains as the focus, and not the collation of works that becomes an institution. 

The aim then is not that the institution survives, or prospers, but that His will is done. 

All profit is not profitable in His book. 

There always is another way in His mind. 

There is never any desperation on His boat. 

A door shut means a door will open on His watch

Everything that is good may not be beneficial. 

All profit comes from Him and should be returned to Him. 

From Him comes the yield of field and fruit tree

From Him comes the ability to make wealth

Wealth is a currency of His kingdom when used for His purposes and leads to life. 

Wealth is the only currency of the world which leads to death

Expand in His purposes, and in His time. 

Don’t expand because it is the “sensible” thing to do, or the need of the hour, or the means of “survival”, or the way to cover overheads. 

Wait on the Lord. 

Look!

Who am I? 

Reading: John 1

The crystalisation of our identity is a process of working out at first what we are not. We have many pseudo identities which are bestowed, assumed, and taken for granted. If that identity is taken away we realise that we are more than what we had assumed we were. A useful mental excercise is to remove those “assumed dentities” and examine the result in our lives. For example, If I were not be able to practice as a doctor/surgeon, would I be any different? So how can I say my identity is in being a surgeon? 

John 1: 12 says to all those who received Him, who believed in His name, He gave the authority to be called the children of God. 

Can this be my only identity? What does being a child of God really mean? How can i fill this identity?

As a hospital we need to know first what we are not: we are not a corporate show. We are not a business. We are not here for fame or money or comfort. These are all our false identities which need to be stripped away. 

John saw Jesus and said – “Behold the Lamb of God” and Later.. “Look, the Lamb of God”. 

This is our identity, to point to Him, to witness what he is doing. Look. Oh the searing siren call to shout out “look! Look!” How my heart yearns to shout this out. Give me language, give me a song, give me words and a mechanism to do this loud and clear. Look! Its Jesus!