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Friday, January 4, 2008 … and he became their savior in all their distress. St. Joseph's Hospital in Marshfield publishes a monthly magazine for the employees of the hospital. Michael Kryda, MD, who is the Chief Executive of the hospital, usually offers some reflections. Last July he wrote about the future of health care. The United States graduates about 16,000 medical students a year, a number constant since 1975 while the population in thirty-two years has increased by 100 million, and has aged remarkably. Forty percent of the present doctors are over the age of fifty and thinking about retirement. With the eight to ten years it takes to prepare physicians, a crisis is already unavoidable. Parallel situations can be found in the fields of pharmacy and nursing. Dr. Kryda writes, "A new generation of health care workers needs to be developed." Such wonderful understatement! Until then, access to health care will diminish, first in rural areas and then elsewhere. This and other problems we face are really huge disasters in the making. There are many besides crises in health care. There is the world we know, and the world coming. Near the end of the collection of writings that is Isaiah there is a vivid description of God's vengeance. This is followed by an intercessory prayer, a part of which has been the Old Testament text in our week together. It begins with a recounting of God's gracious deeds, an invocation of coming acts of redemption. Placed where it is, the invocation anticipates that redemption has not come to an end. Take heart. We live in two worlds, one dying and one just being born. God comes in flesh.
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