Today I visited two friends who are not well at all. One was a man in ICU hooked up to who knows how many tubes and his arms were more bruised than white; he's likely not going to leave the hospital alive. While I visited with the man's wife she kept coming into and out of the room; it was not a sight that most 10-year olds would understand. On the way from there to the other hospital I told her about her mom and my's wishes that we never get to that point. Someday we might be that ill, and she and her brother will have to make some life-or-death decisions, and I told her about my feeling this this is no way to die, that as Christians we have a greater hope in God and so what seems like pointless suffering is not something I want. She did not say much, but I hope that she understood at least something of what I was trying to say. Who knows, maybe someday she will be doing work like this and be a greater comfort to the families than I was today.
It grieves me terribly to deal with people I know and love like today; as I have been teaching a class on Biblical lament, recently I wrote a short one of my own.
For My Friends, April 2016
O Lord, who is worthy of praise, who has created us and put
within us the very breath of life…
O Lord, why do my friends die so badly? Why do so many people I care about suffer so
much at the end of their lives? God, I
don’t understand how there can be years and years of hurt and anguish in which
somebody doesn’t get better. How do
those of us who sing songs about heaven on Sunday live the rest of our lives
acting as if holding onto this life is the most important thing?
O Lord, make dying easier for us because we have faith in
you. Lord, make life something that is
truly fulfilling for those who are in their old age. Lord, make it where my friends are not
drugged up, just surviving for the sake of ‘life’. Lord, make us who call on your name truly live.
O Lord, creator and sustainer of every one of us who call on
your name, let the world see that you truly desire to give us life and life to
the fullest and so turn to you. Let
doctors and nurses praise you because they can only see your miraculous hand
working to give people life. Let us all
depend on you rather than medication or invasive surgery or the things we think
are so important.
O Lord, I know that you are God, even when I can’t always
understand why things are the way they are.
May I continue to praise you in good times in bad, in times of happiness
and frustration. You are the giver of
all that is good.
