Thursday, July 8, 2021                                  (today’s lectionary)
Seeing God, that’s my superpower
Cure the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers, drive out demons. Freely you have been given, freely give. As you enter a house, wish it peace.
Margaret asked her new young Encompass doc, Octavio Vela, what his super power was. She asks that as part of her standard interview. At Ascension, Elijah, a freewheeling patient assistant with a streak of blue hair, had said, “I can fit into small spaces.” Margaret was in a very small hospital room then. “Whoa, that must come in handy in this hospital,” she said. Most of the folks she interviewed didn’t pick one. And she told them, “Well, I think perhaps you have a gifting, and you have so many superpowers that you don’t separate them out. It just feels normal to you.”
Remember the marvels the Lord has done. They weighed Joseph down with fetters, and he was bound with chains, until his prediction came to pass and the word of the Lord proved him true.
Dr. Vela asked, “How about you? What is your superpower, Margaret?”
“Ha! Nobody’s turned it around on me. You’re the first. Good job!” And then she said, in her almost out-of-breath sorta sexy way:
“I would say that … I was raised in a post-Christian home, you know, they were over it, except for the moral part. They said there was a God, and you could pray to him, but there was no other … there were no Bibles laying around, we didn’t go to church or anything, so I had to figure out as a young child what I thought. So I decided to test God, and I’ve been testing him ever since, and he has never let me down.”
Jacob spoke. My wife bore me two sons, but one of them disappeared, and I had to conclude he was torn to pieces by wild beasts, and I have not seen him since. So now if you take this one away from too, and some disaster befalls him, you will ssend my white head down to the nether world in grief.”
Listening to the recording, you can hear the IV dinging every couple seconds. The magnesium drip is finished, but Dr. Vela has no idea has to turn the thing off.
“And this experience is just the cap on the thing, you know … so I would say, being able to see God is my superpower.”
Really? That’s a cool one!
Joseph could no longer control himself, and his sobs were so loud that everyone heard him. “Come closer to me,” he told his brothers. “I am Joseph, whom you once sold into Egypt. But now do not be distressed. It was for the sake of saving lives that God sent me here ahead of you.”
“And I’m learning to be thankful.” She whispered, “That’s the hardest thing ever. Try going through this hell and see how thankful you are.” She giggled. “I’m thankful now if I have gas! If I get somebody to give me permission to go to the bathroom sometimes, I just say thank you.”
Thank you especially for the people who help her, day after day. “Absolutely,” she said. “And I consciously make jokes and we all, you know, we interview, we get bonded, and they laugh … I don’t know what they say behind my back …” She giggled again.
“But it’s just, I’m an introvert, a crashing introvert, who seems like an extravert because I know how to be ON. And this is a long time to be on.”
Dr. Vela interjected, “Oh! I’m a huge introvert too. My girlfriend always gives me a lot of crap for it.”
Margaret spoke up, “I keep telling myself, this is a party, open house! Try to enjoy it, it will be over VERY soon. Then go lay in your own little bed!”
Dr. Vela’s dad is a vascular surgeon in Laredo, Texas. Must be a good guy. Not many kids follow their father or mother into medicine. But in just our little experience we’ve met two: Dr. Neely and his surgeon dad, and now Dr. Vela and his surgeon dad.
We began talking about premarital life and how he should ask Stacey, his girlfriend, to marry him. Of course the curious, reflective, introspective doctor asked us how we got engaged. First I told him how our son Chris and Melissa made an event of it, with a suprise fancy dress, a beautiful evening and rose petals strewn down the path to the shore of my friend Don’s Lake Lulu.
Our story was more pedestrian. I got down on my knees, and Margaret said, “You better watch out! You’re on your knees. I’ll think you’re serious.” And I said, “I am serious,” and she said, “I have to think about it.”
She only had to think two or three days, and then she said yes.
But Chris and Melissa’s story is way better. And I hope Octavio and Stacey’s story is way better too.
(Genesis 44, Psalm 105, Mark 1, Matthew 10)
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