Wednesday, May 28, 2008, 08:00 AM -
Extra Christy
As part of my preparation for my trip to Israel, I wrote a spiritual autobiography. Over the next weeks, I would like to share parts of it with you. Even after a year of seminary I could not decide if I could do the work of a pastor. I could learn from books which is most of what is required in seminary but could I help the people as a pastor? I took a Clinical Pastoral Education (CPE) internship at Louisville University Hospital. The old one. This is the one they tore down a few years after I was there. It had staph growing on the walls and unairconditioned wards where poor people without insurance were dumped. It was a nasty place in the summer.
There I visited a man daily in a hot ward as he burned up with a fever. The doctors had operated to fix his infected organ which should have given him relief, but recovery was slow and the fever wouldn't break days after the surgery. Finally, they x-rayed him and found a sponge had been left in him and was causing the infection. He went back for another major surgery, and another recovery. Still the fever would not break. After another few days of agony, the x-ray revealed pieces of the sponge! They hadn't got it all out! So a third major surgery and recovery weeks after he should have been home and back to work. This time he recovered.
I don't recall saying anything profound. It was hot. We were in a ward of about 20 or so other patients and their visitors, nurses and doctors. He was sweating from the heat and fever. Not the best conditions to talk about matters of the spirit especially when screw-ups lengthen and deepen his stay in purgatory instead of bringing him back to life.
As he finally recovered he insisted he would not have made it through the hopes and disappointments without my prayers and visits. (some of which were just hellos exchanged because he was too sick to visit) I decided to continue to prepare for the ministry, I felt he gave me God's answer to my question of if I could help someone as a pastor by his insistence of the value of my ministry. I also realized that it isn't my great training or skill, but God's presence, God with us, Emmanuel, that I bring that blesses others.
I look to the hills! Where will I find help?
It will come from the LORD,
who created the heavens and the earth.
The LORD is your protector,
and he won't go to sleep
or let you stumble.
The protector of Israel doesn't doze
or ever get drowsy.
The LORD is your protector,
there at your right side
to shade you from the sun.
You won't be harmed by the sun
during the day or by the moon at night.
The LORD will protect you
and keep you safe from all dangers.
The LORD will protect you now
and always wherever you go.
-- Psalm 121 (Contemporary English Version)