Robin Murray

It’s been more than 15 years since Dr. Robin Murray worked as a nurse inside the Burn Unit at Mercy Hospital St. Louis. It was there that she cared for some of the most vulnerable of patients—and where she came to fully understand the intrinsic dignity and inherent worth of every life.

She’ll never forget caring for a patient, a male in his twenties, who had been badly burned after a methamphetamine lab he had built had blown up inside an apartment building. Across the hall from that man’s hospital room, she cared for another burn patient—a young girl—who Murray learned was an innocent victim of that meth lab explosion.

“It was my job and responsibility to take care of him with the same level of respect that I took care of that child,” Murray recalled. “Despite his actions, he still had the light of God.”

It’s on-the-job experiences like that one that Murray, now an associate professor of nursing at mbu, shares with her students to get them to begin wrestling with the many ethical challenges they will confront in the nursing industry.

Murray, who was one of the first faculty hired to teach at the mbu School of Nursing when it launched in 2018, is today part of a team of professors who not only have extensive experience working in the nursing industry, but whose belief in Jesus Christ informs the way they care for their patients—and teach their students.

“Here, not only can I talk about Jesus and make reference to scripture, but I am encouraged to do so,” Murray said. “Truly, the rewarding piece is realizing that I can impart those values and ethics into students who will work in literally the most trusted profession.”

Murray came to mbu after a seasoned career in the nursing profession. And though she first developed a passion for healthcare as a candy striper when she was just 13, before pursuing her nursing degree, Murray served her country in the U.S. Airforce after graduating high school at 17. In the Airforce, Murray worked as a cryptologic intelligence specialist—a position responsible for transcribing intelligence from other countries—for three years during Desert Storm.

Through the G.I. Bill, Murray’s service eventually paid for her Bachelor of Science in Nursing program, which she completed while also serving in the Airforce Reserve, at Indiana University. As soon as she began nursing school, she knew she would one day teach.

“I loved everything about it,” Murray recalled. “I loved the academic setting and the idea of preparing students to become nurses.”

After graduating with her BSN, Murray spent decades working in the nursing industry—whether it was as a home healthcare nurse, working in the Intensive Care Unit, or as a professor and administrator at two other nursing schools—building up invaluable experiences. While working, she completed a Master of Science in Nursing and a Doctor of Nursing Practice in Educational Leadership, which she earned this past October from American Sentinel University.

Perhaps not surprisingly, Murray’s doctoral capstone project addressed “civility in nursing and how to use education to promote it.” Since graduating, she has been asked to discuss the topic on a Sigma Theta Tau International Nursing Honor Society podcast series, along with other experts on the topic.

It’s an important conversation in today’s nursing industry, Murray believes. And, for her, the reason is driven by her faith.

“It is a great comfort to recognize that God is with you even during the hard conversations,” Murray said. “God guides us to self-reflect, ‘take out the beam in our own eye’ and then approach the person with whom we have conflict. Addressing incivility is easier said than done and it takes reflection, prayer, practice, and intentionality.” ■

What Time Is It?

We Baptists (and Evangelicals in general) have never been very good at keeping time. Our Separatist-Puritan ancestors were allergic to anything that smelled Roman, such as priestly garments, incense, prescribed prayers, and the liturgical calendar. Although most Baptist churches today celebrate Christmas (which the Puritans abhorred) and Easter, many continue our ancestors’ suspicion of the rest of the Christian calendar. Few Baptists organize their year around Advent, Christmas, Epiphany, Ash Wednesday, Lent, Easter, Pentecost, and Ordinary Time. Instead we often arrange our lives by a different calendar: New Year’s Day, Super Bowl Sunday, Valentine’s Day, Easter, Mother’s Day, Memorial Day, Father’s Day, Fourth of July, Labor Day, Veterans Day, Thanksgiving, and Christmas. There is nothing inherently wrong in observing this alternative calendar, but let us not deceive ourselves into believing we are following a “neutral” timetable.

Let us explore the oddity that is New Year’s Day. Wedged in the middle of the 12 Days of Christmas (between Christmas Day and Epiphany), we celebrate a “new beginning” on January 1. In preparation for the new year, we spend the final week of December awash in news articles reviewing the year that was: the best movies, the sloppiest celebrity breakups, the champions of sport (let’s go Blues!), the technological breakthroughs, and so on. We usher in the New Year resolute to make the forthcoming year better than the one before. With the New Year comes new hopes, new dreams, and new beginnings. The turn of a decade – such as 2020 – escalates these hopes of a new creation. How have we been deceived into thinking that the arrival of January 1 heralds new hopes, dreams, and beginnings? Had we so quickly forgotten the advent of the Messiah only seven days earlier?

The authors of the New Testament would be confounded by our hopeful celebration of another new year. Most likely, the fact that the world is seeing another passing year would have shocked, or even horrified, the apostles. To be sure, they almost certainly never expected the world to see the year 2020. The concept of AD 2020 would be as foreign to them as AD 4040 is to us. Our planet and its occupants labor beneath the threat of global pandemic, total nuclear annihilation or ecological disaster from climate change. Those of us who follow Jesus, though, likely expect never to see AD 4040 for the same reason that the New Testament authors found AD 2020 inconceivable: we believe Jesus will return any day now. The New Testament authors consistently speak as though they were living in “the last days.” Take Paul, for example: “Now these things happened to them as an example, and they were written for our instruction, upon whom the ends of the ages have come ” (1 Cor 10:11). Or the author of Hebrews: “God, after He spoke long ago to the fathers in the prophets in many portions and in many ways, in these last days has spoken to us in His Son” (Heb 1:1-2). Or John: “Children, it is the last hour ; and just as you heard that antichrist is coming, even now many antichrists have appeared; from this we know that it is the last hour” (1 John 2:18). So also Jude: “But you, beloved, ought to remember the words that were spoken beforehand by the apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ, that they were saying to you, ‘In the last time there will be mockers, following after their own ungodly lusts’” (Jude 17-18). The authors of the New Testament knew, channeling R.E.M., “It’s the end of the world as we know it.” In fact, some early Christians were so sure that Jesus was coming back any moment that they quit working

(1 Thess 4:11-12; 2 Thess 3:10).

Despite the universal anticipation of Jesus’ imminent return, Jesus did not come back as soon as the early Christians expected. This is likely what led them to author the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Jesus had not returned yet, so they wrote the story of Jesus down on papyrus for future generations. Some Christians probably started to doubt. Whatever the case, we know that by the close of the apostolic era, outsiders were teasing Christians for expecting Jesus to return. Second Peter 3:3-4 records such scoffers: “Know this first of all, that in the last days mockers will come with their mocking, following after their own lusts, and saying, ‘Where is the promise of His coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all continues just as it was from the beginning of creation.’” These scoffers are promoting a new calendar: “Stop ordering your lives around the hope of Jesus’ return. He didn’t bring anything new.” The scoffing has not ceased.

So, here we are: finishing the first quarter of yet another year. This is a big one: 2020 … a new decade. For many this brings hope of new beginnings and new expectations. But, for those of us who follow Jesus, we do not look at 2020 for new beginnings. We look backward to 4 BC (the birth of Jesus) and 30 or 33 AD (the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus). The new beginning of creation begins not now, not at Y2K, but with the life, death, and resurrection of the incarnated Son of God who is making all things new. This, then, is the strangeness of celebrating another “New Year.” Sure, it is a “new year” on a calendar, but God is operating on a different timetable.

We are a people who live in the interim. We live in the odd tension of a new creation inaugurated already in Christ, but not yet fully realized. We live in the tension of saying that Jesus can come back any moment, and yet have nearly two thousand years mitigating against our claim. Despite this, we stubbornly insist on viewing time differently than the rest of the world. Sure, this is another “new year” on a calendar, but it is in fact simply more of just the same. This year is “new” in the same way that each season of The Simpsons is new: same town, same characters, same tropes, but, sure, some new storylines. This year is “new” in the same way that a new calendar is new: same dates, same months, same holidays, but, sure, a few new pictures of hotrod cars or Anne Geddes babies to distract us on each page. Barring the return of Jesus (for which we continue to long and pray), the year 2020 will be more of the same. Yet we remain faithful. Those of us who follow Jesus operate by a different calendar: we know the true “new creation” began two millennia ago. And so, let us stubbornly live by a different timetable, as we “go and make disciples of all nations” with the confidence that Jesus “will be with us always, to the end of the age ” (Matt 28:19-20).

AUTHOR’S BIO Dr. Matthew Easter is the director of Christian studies and assistant professor of the Bible at mbu. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Otago, his M.Div. with a Certificate of Baptist Studies from Duke University Divinity School and a B.A. from Southwest Baptist University.