Is The House Half Full or Half Empty?

Today, I moved my oldest of two children into his college dorm. As we were driving home, I began to wonder whether my house was half full or half empty now. I have always been the type of person who believed that the glass was half full instead of half empty. But today I started to think more like the pessimist when thinking about my house. In three more years, I will see my daughter off to her dorm wherever that may be and my house or I should say my children's rooms will definitely be empty.

I'm not sure how I am going to like the empty feeling. Of course, Bill Cosby says they all come back home again so maybe this is a half full kind of moment since they will be back.   Or maybe, the glass is half full and my house is half empty.

When Is Mission Work A Mission?

I am preparing to go on a trip to Mexico to do eye exams. I am going with a S.V.O.S.H.(Student chapter of Volunteer Optometric Services to Humanity) from Southern College of Optometry. This year, I will be the staff doctor and will lead a team of optometry students with a colleague who graduated with me back in the dark ages.

This will be my first trip as a staff doctor. My third and fourth year of optometry school, I ventured to Quesada, Costa Rica to perform eye exams on S.V.O.S.H trips. We would stay in the homes of Lion's Club members in the local community and venture out to do eye exams during the day. Once we got to our destination, there would be hundreds of people lining up for eye exams and glasses. Many walked or came on horseback. Usually we were in old run down medical clinics, churches, or schools. We helped many people and it was just as rewarding for me educationally and spiritually.

Several years ago, I was speaking fondly of my trips to Costa Rica to a colleague. I was talking about the importance and need of medical mission work around the world. My colleague suggested in our conversation that medical mission work apart from the church was somehow different. My interpretation was that he thought this type of work might not be as important as medical mission work that was somehow affiliated with a religious call to conversion. He went on to say that those who receive this type of medical care must know the hand who feeds them.

Being Presbyterian, I must confess, I view medical mission work differently. I think the words in the bible "Love Thy Neighbor As Thyself" means exactly that. While I realize that there is a call in the Bible to spread the gospel, I am not sure that I see medical mission affiliated with that call as being different. I view medical mission work as an acting out of one's faith.