I love the fall. I wake up each morning and let the cool air come in my window and great my warm lungs. I let the smell of the season fill my nares and the changing colors brighten my eyes. Eden was never meant to experience autumn and I find it curious that I enjoy it so much. I do not like the winter, the bitter biting cold that we have here in Iowa. All the green disappears to grey, brown and white. But the fall, the fall is wonderful. It is like hating death while reveling in dying.
I spent the week thinking about Philippians 3:12-14. It was our topic of discussion at Christian Pharmacist Fellowship. I like the way the New Living puts it; “I press on to possess that perfection for which Christ Jesus first possessed me.” The idea is that this life is spent striving for something we will never achieve, yet we continue to strive. That’s the way that God has always intended it to be. God has grabbed hold and changed the direction my life was going. He directed me toward perfection. The kicker is that I can’t get there, ever, at least not here. It’s not even one of those, “with God’s power I can be who He is calling me to be” type of moments. What God want is us to strive toward perfection, not to possess it now. So I must ask why? If sanctification was accomplished at the cross, why must I press on to possess that perfection? The cross was just the start of it. The cross is the door for me to choose to walk through. Sanctification will be accomplished after this life. If any of you have read through my past blogs, you know that I have struggled and continue to struggle with who I am and who I want to be. That’s it, that is what Paul is talking about. I want glory. I want to be who I will be in glory. I get it when Paul says to live is Christ, but to die is gain. To die is to possess what Paul spent his whole life as a Christian pressing on to achieve. This week I have started to realize this. It makes enjoying living a life that is short of what it is suppose to be a little easier because I know it’s the way it is meant to be. God wants us to work out our salvation in fear and trembling. Realizing who we are and who we are meant to be and fighting for get there. Once this veil is lifted, and we experience the truth, we will finally have what we have fought for. I don’t know why God wants us to fight for it. It is not about salvation or heaven or anything like that. It is just how He has structured the life of a person once they are a Christian. I think it is because once perfection is gained in glory, He will be glorified that much more for our fighting and pressing on for it. We will appreciate who He always intended us to be and what it took to get us there. It is a lifetime of autumn leading up to a winter I won’t have to suffer. It is an eternity of spring and summer, life and beauty, joy and peace.
The part that really gets me fired up is when Christians are the last people who can sin, or churches where it’s the last place where you can be a sinner. It anyone should understand sin is should be Christians. We should know the human condition better than anyone. Yet we have churches all over where Sunday best is so much more than a summer dress, shirt and tie. It’s like we are children playing dress up once a week and act like we aren’t who we really are. We act like what we think we should be. Let’s just be honest everyone and act like what we really are. If we are all screwed up inside, shouldn’t the fellowship of believers be the place where we get that all sorted out? Not in these Churches where sinners don’t seem welcome. How backwards does that seem. Church needs to be a place where we are encouraged to keep pressing on to perfection, not acting like we already have it.
I have really gotten into this band Mumford and Son’s this past week as well. They have some great, soul grinding stuff. I love it when music makes me feel that way. I went to the Iron and Wine concert a couple weeks ago and it was like that. If you get a chance, check them out or Grooveshark them.
Saturday was a rough day for me and the rest of Hawkeye nation. I was right up at the field in the student section hawks nest. It was a crazy game and a ton of fun to watch, just a rough finish. I spent the morning tailgating with my former boss Roger Maharry and some of his friends and family. Roger is a pharmacist who is pretty close to retirement but he gets what is going on in pharmacy better than most and has so much wisdom I have been blessed to learn from him. I know I am going to be a better pharmacist because of his influence on me and I thank him for that. He knows many of the problems pharmacy is facing and wants the profession to move forward as badly as I do. That is not something you usually find in a pharmacist who is in his position and his age. We are in a difficult situation right now. Those of us graduating from pharmacy are over educated for the positions in community pharmacy. The option is to take a job that pays too much for doing too simple of work, or get paid to little to do post doctorate work and get a job that actual utilizes the complete skill set of a pharmacist. And while this is the situation now, as central fill, mail order, and automation become more popular, pharmacists will lose their jobs because we are too expensive. Eventually those community jobs will become fewer, and likely even less clinical. I will do a post doctorate residency for many reasons, but one of them is I worry that someday I will need it or I will lose it to a robot vending machine. I want to do more that what pharmacists are allowed to do today. There are plenty of pharmacists out there that I wouldn’t want doing more though. They have become complacent making six figures doing final verifications and reading monographs to patients. In many cases that is fine, they have paid their dues to the profession and are content with their jobs. I just don’t want their existence to hinder the progress of the profession. I really get pissed when new graduates are content with that as well because that will hold the profession back. We cannot advertize that’s all we are good for.
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