When I was a third-year medical student at UTMB in Galveston, Texas, I did a mandatory rotation on the trauma service there. The teaching hospital was a Level 1 Trauma Center, which meant it served as the lead facility for all the traumas in the surrounding nine counties.
The first time I did an overnight call with the team, I was warned that I shouldn’t expect any sleep that night. The chief resident confirmed this when she held up the call pager and announced to me and the other two medical students on the team, “This is the on-call pager for the trauma service. It never turns off. We answer every single page.” Then, as if to add an exclamation point to the end of her statement, that pager started beeping with the next call.
Now Gen Y and Z may not be familiar with what a pager is and how it works. People carried pagers all the time back in the 1990s and early 2000s. I’m sure there is a You Tube video about pagers somewhere.
Being on call for a Level 1 Trauma Center was no walk in the park. We got everything: the good, the bad, and the ugly. From every fall off a ladder to every head-on motor vehicle collision, all night long the pager would sound, and we would respond. The center and the team that ran it had to be accessible 24 hours per day, 7 days a week. Stop whatever you’re doing, ignore your growling stomach, and hold your bladder, because it’s go time.
Every. Single. Page.
I think the sound of a pager going off can still cause a spike in my heart rate.
The memories of those days started me thinking about accessibility and how important it is to have access. Remember when the pandemic created issues with shipments and our access to some goods? From poultry to toilet paper to juice boxes, we had difficulty at times acquiring the simple products we took for granted. When Hurricane Irma came through Florida in 2017, we lost power in our home for a while. We lost access to electricity. The AC turned off, and the summer heat and humidity became palpable inside the house. Eventually, teenagers started emerging from their rooms asking, “Did something happen to the Wi-Fi?” and “Why is it so hot?” It was just a brief loss of access, but it was uncomfortable.
We can easily lose access to the things we count on to always be there for us.
There’s one entity that we as believers have access to at all times and in all situations, and that is our Heavenly Father. We often take that access for granted too.
Not a prayer goes unheard and not a tear goes unnoticed by an Almighty God, who calls heaven His throne and the earth His footstool.
Many years after my training in medical school, I started a family and had two sons. One night, when they were younger, I woke up out of a dead sleep at the sound of my littler one calling out to me from his room, “Mommy!” I knew his voice and somehow heard it as clear as a bell. After I stumbled out of bed and checked on him (he was fine), I walked back to my room and was struck by how immediate my response to him was. As an imperfect parent – also drowsy and partially incoherent in that moment – I responded to my child’s cry without hesitation. That’s the kind of access we have as children of God. Our Father never sleeps. He is on call for us all the time.
Psalm 121:3 (NKJV) “… He who keeps you will not slumber.”
When we believe in Jesus Christ as our Savior, He connects us to God. Jesus bridges the gap between sinful mankind and Holy God.
Ephesians 2:18 (NKJV) “For through Him, we both have access by one Spirit to the Father.”
God is not hovering at 30,000 feet or hanging out at the far side of the building. He is closer than the air you breathe. You can call out to God today, whether it is a shout of frustration or a whisper of thanks. He longs to hear from you, His beloved child.
Nothing can separate you from His love for you.
Romans 8:38 (NKJV) “For I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities nor powers, nor things present nor things to come, nor height nor depth, nor any other created thing, shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
You can pray with me, “Father, I know I’m not always good about communicating with You and coming to You first with my day-to-day and in my situations. But You are near to me and with me, constantly accessible, even though I don’t always perceive it. You are always faithful to me. I thank You for the sacrifice Your Son, Jesus, made on the cross. He willingly laid down His precious life so that I could have access to You for eternity. In Jesus’ Name, we pray. Amen.”