The Surgeon Who Operated Without Lights

In 2010, Dr. Evan Atar Adaha stood in a makeshift surgical tent in Kurmuk, a dusty border town in Sudan's Blue Nile region. Ethiopian militias had shelled the area for three days straight. His medical supplies had dwindled to a few scalpels, some iodine, and a dwindling stock of ketamine. The regional hospital had generators, satellite phones, armored vehicles — everything a warzone clinic should have. Dr. Atar had almost nothing.

Yet when colleagues urged him to evacuate, he refused. He had something the fortified hospital across the border did not: a calling. He operated by flashlight. He sterilized instruments over cook fires. He saved 32 lives that week with equipment most Western physicians would consider medieval.

The well-armed hospital evacuated on day two.

David understood this arithmetic. Goliath inventoried his arsenal — sword, spear, javelin — the way generals count tanks before an invasion. David did not counter with a superior weapon. He countered with a superior Name. "I come to you in the name of the Lord of Hosts." Not a battle cry, but a declaration of jurisdiction. David was announcing whose authority he operated under.

Throughout 1 Samuel, God repeatedly bypasses the tall, the armed, the credentialed. He passes over Eliab's broad shoulders. He lets Saul's royal armor clatter to the ground. The question was never what David carried in his hands, but Who he carried in his heart.