Day 13: From Medical School

A med school stu­dent refuses to study on the Sab­bath, even if his grades suf­fer. This is the email he sent me a few days ago:


When I started Med School, I decided I wouldn’t study on Sun­day. Ever. It’s some­thing I felt I should do–but it’s been very difficult.

In med­ical school, your per­for­mance is largely based on how you com­pare to your class­mates. Doing well here means doing bet­ter than every­body else. Reguard­less, I knew I needed to put the Sav­ior first in my life, even if that meant that I would get worse grades.

Shortly after mak­ing that deci­sion, I real­ized that all of the tests were sched­uled for Mon­day morning–and I knew that would make it even harder.

I hon­estly expected God would some­how make things eas­ier for me–as a reward for putting HIm first. I imag­ined hav­ing end­less capac­ity to learn and under­stand, being the smartest stu­dent, and get­ting the high­est scores on all the exams.

I’ve found, how­ever, that quite the oppo­site was true–the first exams in didn’t go as well as I would have liked. My scores were hardly the best. One night, I sat in my room feel­ing frus­trated, and prayed to ask why I hadn’t received any help. That ques­tion went unan­swered that night.
So my next train of thought was–if I wasn’t going to be blessed for doing it and if it was going to hurt me…than why was I prompted to do it in the first place?

The answer to that ques­tion came today as I sat down to visit (home teach) one of the girls in my ward (congregation)–I played your song for her and gave a mes­sage about mak­ing room for the Sav­ior– She cried and said that she really appre­ci­ated the mes­sage and that this, along with the mes­sage I had shard with her the pre­vi­ous week, had really helped her out.

So the bot­tom line is this—had I been focused on school, I would never have taken the time to think about what I would share with that girl in my ward, and I would have never been able to deliver the cor­rect mes­sage for her–For me this makes it worth it–to be able to serve God and our neigh­bor is more impor­tant that indi­vid­ual dis­tinc­tion and honors.

Now–for fear of short-chang­ing the Lord, let me point out a few things—

1) my room­mate con­tracted some sort of viral infec­tion. He was totally out for an entire day. The next day my other room­mate got the same infec­tion with the same result. The fol­low­ing day, my last room­mate got it–day four I was my turn, but I didn’t get sick–coincidence? I say no.

2) most of my class­mates have lost the desire to study–they’ve become burned out. I have never felt burned out once. Coin­ci­dence? again I say no.

Shadrac, Meschach and Abed-nego knew that the Lord was able to save them…but if not, they still wouldn’t wor­ship the Idol. The same goes for me: I believe the Lord can help me in med school, but if not—I am still will­ing to serve him.

Gary, I love your story, and what a great way to make room for the Sav­ior. Good luck in Med School — I know you’ll be blessed for your faithfulness.