Triage

 The shadows grow long, and the day is almost done. It’s something everyone is feeling to a greater or lesser degree. Perhaps it’s just my circle of friends and the people I interact with, but I have yet to meet someone over the last couple of years who believes that the world is headed in the right direction or that the church is doing what it was tasked with to its fullest.

The night comes just as Jesus said it would, and of late, I’ve been wrestling with the question of how to best redeem our time before the moment comes when no man can work. That’s another thing Jesus said would happen: no man can work when the night comes. It’s a heady thing to consider that at some point in the near future, it will become impossible to carry out our duties, work, and be effective for the Kingdom. It’s not like we will have lost the desire; it’s that we will be unable to.

Imagine the sort of control that will blanket the world, both in real life and on the interwebs, where everything will be censored to such an extent that the algorithm will shut you down the moment you say anything deemed inflammatory, divisive, or unacceptable. The technology already exists. They’re just waiting for the right moment.

While mulling over this most important of questions, I got an e-mail from someone I hadn’t heard from in a long time. We used to run into each other often when I lived in California, and every time the conversation would turn to faith and God, he’d make some snide comment about spaghetti monsters, zombies, and all the other things immature petulant children say about things they possess no understanding of.

Even after I moved, from time to time, I’d write him an e-mail reminding him that he needed Jesus. While most of the time, he wouldn’t reply, when he did, it was with the same worn and stale lines the formerly chic and currently pathetic and underwhelming atheist class regurgitates at the drop of a hat.

Then, around a year ago, I stopped. No more e-mails. Cold turkey. I have enough on my plate on any given day that I only get half done, and I realized that try as I might, there was no getting through to him.

Then, a few days back, I opened my e-mail folder to find an e-mail from him titled, ‘You stopped writing.’ The e-mail itself was congenial enough, asking how I’d been and if I was still on the Jesus train, then he asked why I’d stopped writing and telling him that he needed Jesus. Not that he’d do anything about it, mind you; he was just curious why I’d stopped.

I wrote him back, letting him know I was well enough and that we’d just returned from a trip to the home country; then, as far as why I hadn’t reminded him he needed Jesus was concerned, it was because he already knew. I’d said it often enough in enough ways with enough passion and pathos that there was no confusing the message.

There comes a point where you’ve done all you can, and it’s time to shake the dust off your feet. I realize this may sound calloused to some, but it’s a matter of maximizing your time and resources, and to do that, sometimes triage is necessary.

As with most things in life, this, too, is situational because a mother will never stop praying for her son, nor will a father stop praying for his daughter, but that’s not what either I nor the Bible is suggesting.

It’s one thing to pray for someone, asking God to intervene and show them the truth; it’s another to approach them daily with the same message only to be rejected and mocked. The time you spend repeatedly intreating the same individual to no avail could be allocated to telling ten other people about Jesus, one of whom might just repent and surrender their life to Him.

Matthew 10:14, “And whoever will not receive you nor hear your words, when you depart from that house or city, shake off the dust from your feet.”

Jesus didn’t say that if someone refused to receive or hear your words, you should camp out in front of their house and remind them of what you said the previous day for as long as it takes. Our duty is not to bang our heads against an iron heart, hoping it will soften over time. Although He didn’t say how long we were supposed to try, He made it clear that there would be a time to depart, and when you do so, shake the dust off your feet.

It’s a big world with many lost people; some just want to roll in the mud without accountability or a desire to change. It’s like the person who goes to the doctor only to be told they need to change their diet and lifestyle if they want to live past the new year, and they go home and continue doing the exact same thing. Upon going in for their follow-up, the message is the same, and still, there is no change. Eventually, they’re just wasting the doctor’s time and their own because they are unwilling to make the necessary changes.  

I don’t know who this was for, but it was for someone. Yes, there comes a time when you depart and, upon so doing, shake off the dust from your feet.

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr.