An ordinary circumstance...

The woman brought the tiny bundle into St. Mary's Hospital pediatric ward. The child was still,.. pale,... emaciated, ...but alive. Quickly he was given Lactated Ringers intravenous solution. Ordinarily, a child brought to an American hospital would have been given intravenous lipid emulsions and total parenteral nutrition, the life saving, calorie rendering nutrients we administer in the U.S. healthcare system. As a sterile products pharmacist, I've prepared many of these life giving fluids. I've seen the miracle these medications can deliver. Under ordinary circumstances this child would be in the nursery intensive care unit. Urgent action would have been taken to measure vital signs, to determine weight, nutritional needs and weather or not social worker intervention was needed. Under ordinary circumstances this child would have been placed in an incubator with all modern bio-technology available and ready for use to revitalize an infant who was near death. Under ordinary circumstances. But this wasn't an ordinary circumstance. This child brought in by a woman, not his mother, but a woman worker at Imani Orphanage. Only doing her job and just carrying and delivering a package given to her by yet another (anonymous) person delivering this package found abandoned somewhere in Nairobi. The package? ... a barely breathing tiny human being. A child destined for St. Mary's Missions Hospital Pediatric ward on this Good Friday evening. By our western, civilized standards, this is no ordinary circumstance. For East sub-saharan Africa, it is all too ordinary. A child abandoned, a child found, a child delivered to a missions hospital, a child who died. No, we don't know the mother, a woman who doesn't know the fate of her child. We only know that on this Good Friday Evening, this child, God's child, has left no one to mourn except a hospital staff who has Lactated Ringers and a small gurney for this child to spend his final moments. Oh, and we didn't know his name,.. but we do know he died on the same day that we commemorate the death of Jesus. So maybe we can envision Jesus, you know, the guy who said, "Today you will be with me in Paradise", receiving this infant child into His bosom, and in that, there is good fortune for this child at the end of this ordinary circumstance. So let's call him Bonaventure,... child of good fortune.

Then there is Pasaka, also nameless, but called Pasaka by Dr. Johnson the M.D. on call. Pasaka is kiswahi for Easter. Earlier in the day, Pasaka was also brought in from Imani orphanage after being found abandoned somewhere in Nairobi. Also given an electrolyte and salt solution, as was Bonaventure, but Pasaka has so far survived the torments of dehydration and malnourishment. Even without an incubator or high fat/high calorie fluids, Pasaka lives on this Easter eve,..as Jesus lives.

Life in any circumstance, in any environment, is tenuous. We all live by the day, if not the hour. In Kenya, life occurs sometimes in minutes. These two children were brought to St. Mary's Hospital hours apart,... one lives, the other dies. One child will return to a home, even if its an orphanage,... the other spent the night in a hospital mortuary. Jesus said "Suffer the little children to come unto me and forbid them not, for such is the Kingdom of Heaven. In Kenya, it seems that it is ordinary for children to suffer abandonment, dehydration and malnutrition, all products of extreme poverty, and in this we forbid them from coming into God's kingdom here on earth and life plays itself out sometimes in the hours and the minutes. Life is tenuous and random it seems. Its a matter of time and a matter of place, for if you were born in Kenya and don't arrive from the orphange in time, you could die.

So,... thus far in my most recent visit to Kenya (I've only been here for two weeks), we've seen two children die, unnecessarly,... a pleathora of assorted cancers and infections,... and untold numbers of suffering human beings that would not suffer,... under "ordinary" circumstances. During the Easter season, our ordinary circumstance is that traditionally, our children wear new suits and dresses to Church to sing praises to Jesus. Generally, we don't think about dying children. This Easter, as I sing praises to Jesus, Bonaventure and Pasaka have taught me about death and resurrected life in its real sense,... its close, and its personal. The way Jesus wants to relate to me. If we are open to God's lessons, the death of one infant on Good Friday, and the revitalization of another on Easter Sunday, can have profound,... and lasting impact. An ordinary circumstance at St. Mary's Hospital in Nairobi, Kenya,....A profound and extraordinary implication for how we live our Christianity.