(4th & final reflections from a Traumatic Fall)
As I was being wheel-chaired out to the ER entrance for my 2:30 AM escape from Harborview Medical Center the nurse and I were bantering around the chaos, high energy and skill-sets that create the quality of diagnostic and remedial care I just experienced. “Compassion is a critical element, yes?” Almost as a throw away this woman in her mid-twenties laughed. “Yes, and it’s what makes us leave after a few years—to keep our sanity.” I thanked her as my lady left with two security guards to walk the block and a half to get our car.
My best years were from five to twelve years at WSCN. Sometime later the single healthiest of my lay families left us—in relationally a good space—but I think, as a result of my own drift emotionally, following a good, exhausting and chaotic run. My heart broke. A few weeks later, during a Pastoral retreat in the mountain country of Washington I urgently reminded God I was spent and needed for the church’s sake to leave. I had set up a board meeting the following Sunday for the specific purpose of resigning.
During that retreat God gave me a scripture and a phrase, “Be strong. Do not give up and I will make your work succeed.”—which taken together indicated that I should wait, be faithful and serve in place. Although delivered in the intuitive voice I had always known as Jesus I closed The Book and said, “Jesus, it’s not enough. I cannot trust my own inner intuition as fact. The time of miracles and energy and compassion in me is gone. If this is you, I need a sign that cannot be mis-understood.”
It was Sunday morning, nothing more had happened and in two hours I would resign and leave to the Church and God, WSCN’s future. Just as the service was ending a young man walked in whom we all knew; gentle in spirit, a street preacher from Ghana, Africa who a couple years earlier had spent a year with us, living on campus, praying. Literally, George (his English name) would go into a closet on the third floor, then a 4’ x 4’ room off a huge, open and broken space to pray for an hour or six. His gospel was Word-Faith and Pentecostal, neither of which I shared.
One night about six months after I gave permission for him to stay he came to me asking if I was curious why he worshipped with us. “I am,” I responded, more than he could know. Our partnership just always seemed right, although when I would ask him to pray he would begin in his native tongue, move to glossalia (speaking in tongues) and end in a broken, British English. I was always grateful my congregation would not know the subtle difference between his native language and his prayer language. The Spirit was all over him.
That night George revealed that in Africa he had a vision of our Church and that is why, upon seeing it, he stopped his itinerant journey for a season to pray for us. “Pastor,” he began gently looking away per his cultural training, and then rather boldly looking straight into my eyes finished. “Your church is doing works of good greater than Churches ten times your size, but…” I hate buts for the critique always follows. ”…but, Pastor, no one is praying to strengthen the good works.” He was right. “That’s why I’m here.” With a gentle smile he started to turn to leave, turning back and with far more passion, added, “Your Church is poor now, but soon, God will pour out such a blessing on you from heaven that you won’t be able to contain it. God has spoken.” At that I smiled, dismissing the prophecy as a Word-Faith excess and thanked him.
The table for the board was set and they were already enjoying the meal my lady had prepared. I stood outside the door looking in, feeling sad but knowing what had to be done. Just as I was ready to enter I noticed that George had come down and was quietly and reverently waiting a word. I invited him in to dine with us before our meeting. “Thankyou Pastor for your kindness,“ he began his head bowed and eyes looking away, so as to honor me as a pastor. Then, looking straight into my eyes for only the second time, added. “I have come today with a Word from God to you.” He paused. It had been two years since he worshiped with us and year since his last visit. Then, slowly, his British accent dramatizing the moment, added: “Be strong Pastor. Do not give up and I will make your work succeed.” He then quoted the very same verse God had given four days earlier.
I was stunned. He shook my hand and turned to leave. I don’t think I moved till turning back he added, “Your Church is poor now, but soon, God will pour out such a blessing on you from heaven that you won’t be able to contain it. God has spoken.” At that I smiled, dismissing the prophecy as a Word-Faith excess and thanked him.
The board meeting agenda was now turned upside down. What else could I do?
The doctor was beautiful, maybe 25 and carrying a tray of what I assumed were sutures and novocain filled needles when she realized I had been moved to the hallway literally adjacent the nurses station. “Great…” she whispered to know one, pausing and briefly frowning for maybe a second. Then she came up and calmly noted the space was public, spoke directly to me. “Well this will be fun.“ I was certain that was a lie. But her smile and professionalism allowed me the courage to enter into the next forty five minutes using about 10 needles to deaden my face and 30-40 sutures to sow me up. I remembered that I had asked God to appoint every nurse and doctor. By her own assessment, the eye doctor who followed and my daughter in-law, a nurse, she did exceedingly well.
As I left the hospital three hours later, pleasantly chatting with my care nurse I was again struck by two things:
1) Just how completely God had surrounded every second of the painful chaos I entered that afternoon when my head was crushed by rock; in friends like Lorenzo and Kensteve, my lady, my daughter in law and son, the fireman first responders, the ambulance techs, my care nurses and three doctors.
2) I thought about Ann Julian of Norwhich, an Anchorless of the Church in the 13th Century who literally, marrying themselves to the church, would never leave a small garden and single room with two open windows—one into the church to receive food and holy communion and one out to the courtyard so that towns persons could come and seek their counsel and prayer; their job half psychologist and half prayer warriors (like George) for the church and city.
Ann, following a great sickness near death and having prayed that she may know Jesus in her suffering had a number of visions. In one Jesus appeared and assured her that Gods salvation covered everyone, everywhere in all time. She wrote that “All will be well...
“Our Lord brought to my mind the longing that I had for him, and I saw that nothing hindered me but sin, and I saw that this is true of us all in general, and it seemed to me that if there had been no sin, we should all have been pure and as like our Lord as he created us. And so, in my folly I often wondered why, through the great prescient wisdom of God, the beginning of sin was not prevented. For then it seemed to me that all would have been well. But Jesus answered with these words and said: Sin is necessary, but all will be well, and all will be well, and every kind of thing will be well. All manner of thing.
At one time our good Lord said: ‘All things shall be well.’ And another time he said: ‘You shall see for yourself that all manner of thing shall be well.’ There should be understood several things from these two sayings. One was this—that it is his will that we should understand that not only does he take care of great and noble things, but also of little and humble things, simple and small—both one and the other. And this is what he means when he says ‘all manner of thing shall be well.’ For he wants us to understand that the smallest thing shall not be forgotten.” 1
In the sum of my whole experience Sunday afternoon to early Monday morning I was amazed at just how significant is the skill and compassion of each care-giver and of the overwhelming sense of human pain that was present. It really didn’t matter if I was a drug attic or mayor, I would be taken care of though my response would effect outcomes and the ability to be cared for.
The penal idea of salvation rooted in offense misses the clear narrative of scripture about God‘s coming to us with healing in God’s wings. That hell happens is clear and was evident in the struggles of so many stressing the healthcare system. But the idea that heaven can be heaven when a majority of persons are in a forever prison from which rescue is impossible is clearly not possible; that is, if the Jesus Story is the accurate picture of God.
In the “Day of the Lord” when everyone and everything that will be, is renewed and we, with Jesus return to live inside the broken spaces of the earth, our skills developed on earth and perfected in paradise will flow out into the earth like my friend Lois would do as a Federal FEMA employee, before retirement. Did that life of service cost her? Yes, no less than it does the ambulance techs or nurses and doctors I met.
That is the vision of the early Church where the Roman Empire is overcome by Jesus sword? Yes, the Sword of his mouth; the power of love spoken and lived.
“I saw the holy city, New Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, made ready as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband. I heard a loud voice from the throne say, “Look! God’s dwelling is here with humankind. He will dwell with them, and they will be his peoples. God himself will be with them as their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes. Death will be no more. There will be no mourning, crying, or pain anymore, for the former things have passed away”” (Revelation 21:2-4 CEB).
How it all works out? I have no clue, other than in and because of the Jesus event. Will evil be addressed and those who absolutely set their hearts against God. Yes. But it will not be a judgment of an angry, offended God, but of a God whose heart is pierced through with our accumulated suffering.
My own concern is not with those who appear not to care but with us who claim Jesus, including and especially me, but do not have Jesus heart. We, scripturally are the ones in great danger if we miss the whole point and do not forgive as we are forgiven.
Those are some of my reflections as I was made vulnerable and given healing treatment way beyond what I deserved. These care-givers were Jesus in the city turning chaos into life and peace.
Blessing! Terry :)
1 Ann-Juliann of Norwich, re-quoted in my book “50 Days of Promise“, Devotional on Week 3, Story 10 “The Psychologists of the 13th Century“
(Ann was broadly read in that time as she still is today.)
You can purchase at: https://www.amazon.com/Days-Promise-Resurrection-Narrative-Devotional/dp/1520320809/ref=sr_1_11?keyw
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