Would I? Do I?

On the journey of faith, the questions don’t get easier.

On Monday I wrote about a young man who died from complications after surgery. He was 31. On Tuesday, I heard about a St. Louis reporter who died from pancreatic cancer; I had known him and worked with him since 1984. He was 63.

We are blessed to live in a society with some of the best medical care in the world. Death is something we tend to associate with old age, although we’ve all known young people and children who have died. But still, life expectancies in the United States have been increasing for more than a century, and it is largely due to advances in health care treatment and prevention.

Then there’s a country like Uganda. Life expectancies are not long. Disease is common. Preventable disease is common. The death of a child is not an uncommon thing.

It’s a place where we might all question God about what exactly is going on here.

A mother brings her four-pound, four-month old daughter to Katie Davis for help. Four pounds. They rush to the hospital, and it turns out the little girl has a hole in her heart. Her mother can’t afford the corrective surgery.

The little girl is named Happy. Happy dies. Katie mourns.

Friends and supporters of Katie in the United States decide to adopt Josephine, a little girl that Katie is caring for. Katie’s ecstatic. Everything is going well until it’s discovered that Josephine is HIV-positive. Plans are turned upside down. The adoption may not proceed.

The friends end up adopting Josephine anyway.

I ask myself, would I have that kind of courage? Would I have that kind of faith?

In the midst of all this, 20-something Katie says something that strikes me as very wise. And wise beyond her years. “We aren’t really called to save the world, not even to save one person; Jesus does that. We are just called to love with abandon. We are called to enter into our neighbors’ sufferings and love them right there.”

I ask myself again, do I have that kind of courage? Do I have that kind of faith?

Led by Jason Stasyszen and Sarah Salter, we’ve been reading Kisses from Katie: A Story of Relentless Love and Redemption by Katie Davis and Beth Clark. To see more posts on this chapter, “He Sets the Solitary in Families,” please visit Sarah at Living Between the Lines.