Christian Living

Urgent and Emergent

by Terry Barlow
02/08/14
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   Listening to someone define an emergency recently caught my close attention. An emergency is some threatening situation or danger that is EMERGING, getting bigger, getting worse instead of better. I had never thought about why that verb "emerge" is right at the heart of the word "emergency". It makes perfect sense. My wife remembered her nurse training distinguishing between what is an urgency and what is an emergency. What is urgent has the POTENTIAL to be life threatening but hasn't yet arrived there. The situation may be headed in that direction though. An urgency is a pressing situation, that is, a pressure is beginning to be felt from it. A plea that is urgent calls for immediate attention. Whereas an emergency calls not only for immediate attention but also some kind of action flowing from the attention. An emergency poses an active threat to life and so calls for an active and immediate response. What we are considering then are varying degrees of danger, the lower degrees constitute urgency and require a closer look and the formation of a proactive plan, the higher degrees constitute emergency and require the immediate implementation of the plan, and, hopefully one is in place. A friend of mine senses that he has been on a spiritual "high alert" of late where our nation's economic and moral well-being is concerned. That speaks to me that morally and spiritually we are passing,  and perhaps already have passed,  from what had already been an urgent condition to what is a bona fide national emergency. So what kind of action(s) does this state of emergency call for and require? Certainly we as believers are to be praying as never before. That almost goes without saying. We are to be pleading for God's mercy and confessing the nation's sins as our own as Moses and other prophets did, not pointing fingers.