SERVICE FOR A BETTER WORLD (common app)

Please critique my common application essay below. I will appreciate your comments. Thanks.

Service means more to me than just giving to others without expecting anything in return. It brings me a special peace to give selflessly and scripture teaches that there is more joy in giving than in receiving. Giving is to the soul as receiving is to the body. Hence I have settled on becoming a medical doctor in the future because there are few vocations that afford so much opportunity to give and I have so much to share.

My faith has perhaps the most to do with why I have chosen to pursue a career in medicine. My story in itself is an unlikely one as a boy who was born into an impoverished community in Kenya and got a modest but wonderful education from the start before he moved to the States where he now enjoys the best opportunities that can be found the world over. I am the result of the many gifts God has lavished upon my family and the bible says in Luke 12:48 "From everyone who has been given much, much will be demanded; and from the one who has been entrusted with much, much more will be asked." I have been entrusted with a lot and it would be a great sin against Providence if I stuffed it all under my mattress to ensure my personal wealth and wellbeing in the future. To fail to heed my calling in such a way would find me an old and perhaps wealthy man with many pills to swallow in my old age among which the bitterest one would be the knowledge that I failed to till the portion given me.

What comes to mind when I think of becoming a travelling physician is that dream that will define whether the tree that is my life bares fruit or remains barren up until the end. For me the practice of medicine will be more than simply treating and preventing illnesses but also providing food for the hungry, water for those that thirst, a comforting hand for those in despair and whatever else to which all people should have access. I'm probably naïve and I am certainly inexperienced in many of the ways of the world but all dreams are naïve and lack experience otherwise we couldn't call them dreams. I do not expect to stop world hunger, war, oppression, disease or anything so big but I pray to become a tool in the hands of the Master that I may become part of something far greater than myself.

Another thing that drives me to pursue a career in medicine is that it has always bothered me to think that even as I laugh at a comedy, play basketball or Xbox or stay up till late doing nothing in particular someone's life somewhere far off or relatively near me is threatened for lack of something I have aplenty. I have frequently been troubled by the yearning I get to change the TV channel when a charity announcement portraying starving children in Somalia, others orphaned by HIV in Uganda or girls in India who have been sold as sex slaves comes on. I have realized that even though I don't see or hear these things happen and though they may not have a direct impact on my lifestyle this doesn't mean they aren't happening and not all is right in the world. Due to this heartbreaking truth I have determined not to sit idly by while one of my brothers or sisters suffers but to do something, everything in my power to ease that suffering.

In all honesty my decision to become a doctor is as much for me as it is for those who will need my care. This is the path my life is to take if I am to make the most of the opportunities that are so available and accessible for me. That I am able to sit and ponder what world class college to apply to is testament to the grace the Lord has shown me and I am dedicated to build myself as competent as possible for the duties that wait for me after I complete college and med school. In this stage of my growth as a person I am like a spring that my Lord is winding up by adding blessing upon blessing into my life that I may one day unwind and spread this opportunity and prosperity to all who haven't known it. It is my responsibility to get the best education possible now because education is the endless fountain from which I have the best chance to efficiently relay my fortunes to the rest of humanity.