You may know that my friends in Iraq at PLC have recently completed "Remedy Mission," a project where they partnered with doctors and technicians from around the world to work for 2 weeks in order to perform heart surgeries on about 25 kids in their hometown.

To put this in perspective, it would take PLC almost a year to save that many kids "the old fashioned way" (by sending them out of the country to Turkey to have the surgery). In addition, the local doctors are being trained. The hope and goal is that Kurdish/Iraq doctors will be self-sufficient in heart surgery in 5 years.

The wonderful news is that, due to a lot of hard work and a lot of generous people, the project was a huge success and many families are now celebrating a life that was previously considered lost.

However, not all stories have happy endings. Click here for a challenging glimpse into the world of PLC.

Is this going to be on the test?

I've been reading Matthew lately. For a while, actually (there's a lot in there). Today, I read the story of the rich, young ruler. Remember that one? The guy that asks Jesus how to get to heaven and then is disappointed when the Lord tells him to sell everything he owns... It's Matthew 19:16-26.

Today, this passage brought to mind a lot of questions, like:

* When the man asked how to have eternal life, why did Jesus respond with "keep the commandments"? Why not "believe in Me and the One who sent Me", or something really faith-based like that?

* When the man asked which commandments to keep, why did Jesus respond by listing SIX of the 10? What about the other four?

* After this exchange, how did the man know that he was still missing something? He claimed to have done all that Jesus required, so why didn't he think he was "in"? How did he know he was still lacking?

I think that maybe the answer to these questions could lie in the original question from the young man: "What do I need to do to obtain eternal life?"

I think he was asking the wrong question. Could it be, that to Jesus, this question is equivalent to "Is this going to be on the test?" The young ruler's motivation wasn't glorifying God, proclaiming His Name, or helping his fellow man; it was simply his own destiny.

Maybe, it could be that when my desire is to please God, to follow God, to glorify Christ, then I see my eternal salvation as simply a by-product... not the main course.

Not rocket-science theology, I admit. But even if you agree with this statement, you have to admit that as Christians, we do an awful lot of stressing eternal life as the "end-all" goal of evangelism. Which raises the question of how does that attitude affect our daily life and our theology of interacting with a lost world?

The more I think about it, the more I'm forced to admit that I've been doing it wrong for a long time...