Canon Andrew White - Faith Under Fire: What the Middle East conflict has taught me about God

T here is really very little resemblance between my present life and the life I thought I would be living now. I began my adult life as a student at St Thomas Hospital, London, studying surgery and anaesthetics, and went on to become an operating department practitioner. I assumed I would continue to pursue a career in medicine, but God had other plans. The world I occupied then is completely different to the one I occupy now, but nevertheless I learned some valuable lessons not least the ability to react quickly in situations. When a patient goes into cardiac arrest you have to react immediately. When someone points a gun at you, intending to pull the trigger, you must also react immediately. If you have to think about dodging a bullet, it has already hit you. On the streets of Baghdad, my medical training has probably been more use to me than my theological training at Cambridge.

It was while working and training at St Thomas that God called me and set me on the path that eventually led me to Iraq. One night I was on call to deal with any cardiac emergencies as part of the hospitals Crash Team and stepped outside for a while to get some fresh air and to pray in the hospital grounds. I looked across the River Thames towards Big Ben on the opposite bank. I was thrilled to be at St Thomas and I remember thanking the Almighty that I had successfully completed my training. I was fortunate to be doing the very thing I had always wanted to do in the very hospital where I had always wanted to work. I asked God what should be the next step in my life. Like a thunderbolt the answer came to me, but it wasnt the one I was expecting. I felt very strongly that He wanted me to offer myself for service in the Church of England.

Remarkably, as a child of ten I had said that I wanted to be an anaesthetist and a priest. But that was then and this was now. I no longer wanted to be a priest; I was enjoying my work at St Thomas too much to give it up. Yet I knew, without a doubt, that God had spoken to me. For a few hours I struggled with His words, but eventually gave in and decided that obeying His will would be best. As I did, I was immediately aware of the presence and glory of God in a way I had never known before. As I returned to the operating theatre in the early hours of the morning, the Lord was there. When my shift ended and I went home, God was there also. He was at St Marks, Kennington, where I went to church, in the Christian Union at work and at my home group. I felt so acutely aware of Gods presence all the time, in fact, that I must have appeared rather strange to my friends. A few of them told me as much!

One friend who accepted me as I was, however, and never ceased to encourage me was Malcolm Mathew. We spent a lot of time together. Malcolm looked out for me, on one occasion coming to the hospital and forcing me to go home with him, knowing I had worked for forty-five hours straight without a break! Each Sunday he and I would take patients to the hospital chapel and afterwards we would go on to Speakers Corner in Hyde Park, where I would take my turn to preach. It was a fertile training ground for later in life when I would frequently be called upon to speak in public.

More than twenty years later Malcolm is a consultant anaesthetist at Kings College Hospital in London. He is still a member of the Territorial Army, as he was back then, and has often been in Iraq at the same time as me. Malcolm and his wife, Alison, are godparents to our eldest son, Josiah, and he remains one of my closest and longest-standing friends in life. Added to this, Alison and my wife, Caroline, are the closest of friends. Our friendship has been a double blessing: I have a friend who understands what it means to live out ones faith under fire and we each have a wife who knows what it means to have a husband with such a calling.

Fulfilled ambition

Whilst continuing to work at St Thomas, I commenced a long, slow journey towards ordination. Eventually I attended a selection conference to see if I was the right type of person to be trained for ordination, and I was selected and offered a place at Ridley Hall, Cambridge, to study theology.

I began to prepare studiously for this next step. I remember trying to learn Greek while still working at the hospital! In the end I decided to take a few months break before moving to Cambridge, intending to spend some time praying in a monastery, but first I wanted to visit the Kingdom Faith Bible Week to hear Colin Urquhart speak. Colin, himself a former Anglican priest, had made a significant impact on the life of St Marks, Kennington. I volunteered to serve in the clinic on site where several thousand people would be camping. I had a wonderful week there and our team saw a number of miracles take place in the clinic. It was an inspiring experience and I looked forward to what God might do next.

But for all my excitement about moving into training for ordination, I had one regret, perhaps better described as an unfulfilled ambition. I had not managed to achieve the one thing I had always wanted to do at St Thomas to run the Crash Team. I had been called to assist them on many occasions, and had even volunteered for unpaid duties to gain more experience, but it was my ambition one day to head up the team. God, in His graciousness, decided to lend me a hand.

This was in the days before mobile phones. I remember calling home to speak to my mother, as I usually did, and she sounded frantic. She told me she had been desperately trying to get in contact with me for two days. When I asked why, she told me that St Thomas Hospital had been trying to call me and urgently wanted me to contact them. When I called the hospital I discovered, to my astonishment, that they were having some serious problems in the cardiac emergency unit and had been forced to suspend most of the Crash Team. They asked if I would be willing to come back and run the team until they were able to resolve the problem. I didnt need to think about it I said yes immediately. I was being given the chance to fulfil my ambition! I returned to St Thomas for several months and experienced the most wonderful days of my entire medical career.