noun: tri•age /ˌtrēˈäZH/
the process of determining the most important people or things from amongst a large number that require attention.

Google English Dictionary, powered by Oxford languages

I was in college when a professor I worked for gently but frankly commented one day that, when he gave me just “one task too many”, he could visibly see me entering overwhelm mode — mind racing, eyes widening in panic.

Thirty-odd years later, I still have a pretty narrow bandwidth — though I have learned a few things along the way. Mainly, to take a deep breath (or three) and then move into triage mode: figure out what is most “life-threatening”, set everything else aside, and focus on that one thing.

Elisabeth Elliot is quoted as saying: “When you make a choice, you accept the limitations of that choice. To accept limitation requires maturity.”

So I guess I can take some comfort in knowing that moving into triage is a way of accepting limitation, and an indicator of (some) maturity.

Funny thing is, a few years back — in a challenging season of caring for my stepmom as she descended into dementia — I realized I was taking that same triage mindset into my prayers.

Meaning, if I couldn’t reasonably label my need or request as “life-threatening”, I was hesitating to “bother” my heavenly Father with it. Or feeling guilty if I did, like maybe I was pulling His attention away from someone else’s more urgent need.

Then one day it hit me… God doesn’t have to do triage!

He doesn’t have to choose.

• Between comforting my momentary disappointments or a friend’s ominous diagnosis.
• Between responding to my anxiety over bills stacking up or the anguish of those who have lost loved ones in Lewiston, Maine.
• Between addressing my (often petty, but still deeply troubling) conflict with a colleague or the life-altering conflicts in Palestine, Ukraine and so many other places.

He doesn’t have to choose… because He is not limited!

I love how Jesus demonstrates this in the bundled stories of Jairus’ daughter and the woman with constant bleeding (Mark 5:21-43). He didn’t have to choose between hurrying to the girl or pausing for the woman, between saving a child or saving an adult, between the desperation of the father about to lose a life or the desperation of the woman who felt she already had.

He didn’t even have to choose between just letting the woman be physically healed by her clandestine touch or seeing her completely healed and restored to community by his tender but public acknowledgement of her faith and healing.

Those stories give me hope.

They help me really believe Psalm 27:23, that the LORD “delights in every detail” of our lives.

And they give me courage to follow Paul’s instructions in Philippians 4:6, to “pray about everything.”

Everything!

I can pray about everything, because — unlike me — God doesn’t have to do triage.

And that is really, really good news.

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The wonderful thing about praying is that you leave a world of not being able to do something, and enter God’s realm where everything is possible. Nothing is too great for His almighty power. Nothing is too small for His love.

Corrie ten boom