In a Hospital Room
I can identify with Chuck Webster; perhaps you can
too. Chuck is a minister who has visited
a lot of people in the hospital. Let’s
learn from his insights:
As a minister I’ve visited hospitals a lot over the
years, usually for a surgery or sickness that kept the patient in the hospital
for a day or two, maybe longer.
Occasionally, though, it’s different.
Sometimes people are facing the day that in some sense they’ve always
feared.
A few years ago I got a call from someone I didn’t know
in another state, and she asked if I would visit a relative of hers who was in
a local hospital. I agreed, of course,
but when I got to the hospital I realized the situation was more serious than I
thought. He was alone in ICU and was in
critical condition. I prayed with him,
and he seemed to understand what was happening, then he stopped breathing. I summoned the nurses, and they walked in and
took over.
When you’re in the presence of death your first concern
is for the people who are most intimately affected — the person himself, and
then his family and close friends. You
want to do what you can to comfort them, to bring them peace, to help them feel
God’s presence.
But then, inevitably, comes self-reflection. This
introspection is natural, I think, and probably part of what the Teacher meant
when he wrote, “It is better to go to the house of mourning than to go to the
house of feasting, for this is the end of all mankind, and the living will lay
it to heart” (Ecclesiastes 7:2). He’s
talking about funerals, but ICUs and ERs probably work almost as well.
“That day is coming for me,” we think. One day my spouse or parent or best friend
will be lying in a bed like that one.
What will I wish I had done? What
will I wish I had said?
And then even closer to home, one day I will be lying on
that bed. What will matter then? My hobby, my job? My house, my car, my things?
On that day, I won’t think a lot about much of what
occupies my thinking now. I won’t fret
over the outcome of the football game, the worrisome noise in the SUV, the
minor annoyances of life.
But I’ll want to know that I’ve walked with Jesus. I’ll want to know that I helped the people
around me to know the Lord.
I’ll have regrets, but I’ll find peace in knowing that
God won’t hold them against me. Jesus
put them on his shoulders and carried them up Golgotha’s hill — every
thoughtless word, every unkind act, every impure thought. He became my sin so that I might become His
sinlessness. He took on my guilt so that
I could be clothed in His innocence.
When that day comes for you and me, that’s all that’ll
matter — our life with Jesus, and the corollary effects it had on our
relationships with others.
Maybe I can paraphrase the Teacher’s words like this:
“It’s better to go to an ICU room than to a dining room, because the hospital
teaches us what’s most important.” *
Thank you, Chuck, for the poignant reminder that what
matters most is our relationship with God.
The good news (the Gospel) is that Jesus, God’s Son, died
on the cross for our sins so that we might have salvation and receive the gift
of eternal life (John 3:16).
God will save those who place their faith and trust in
Jesus (Acts 16:30-31), turn from their sins in repentance (Acts 17:30-31),
confess Him before men (Romans 10:9-10), and are baptized (immersed) into
Christ for the forgiveness of sins (Acts 2:38).
He will continue to cleanse from sin those who continue to walk in the
light of His Word (1 John 1:7).
Won’t YOU focus on what really matters: your relationship
with God? Won’t YOU accept His offer of
salvation and eternal life by trusting and obeying Him today?
-- David A. Sargent
* From “What I Learned in a Hospital Room” by Chuck
Webster
No comments:
Post a Comment