On the table

Monday, June 12, 2023

(click here to listen to or read today’s scriptures)

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all encouragement.

I’ve been waiting for this day awhile. Maybe three weeks. Long enough. My emotions have been calm, chaotic, full of fear, peace, depending on the hour and the minute. And now, here I am. Writing before the fact, but as of 9 am, laid out on the table where Dr. Pirwitz is doing my second and his umpteenth heart cath.

Cath is so easy to say. Catheterization is easier to spell and type than pronounce. So many syllables, six it sounds like. Margaret had a heart cath before her extensive and very personal surgery in 2021. I had a heart cath as we were moving our stuff and then ourselves to Austin in December 2020. Now … again.

When Margaret spent 44 days in the hospital, I learned a lot of names, mostly of nurses and doctors, and some patients too. I thought I might spend time later visiting the hospital, passing time and praying with people I do not know and might not ever get to know very well.

God encourages us in our every affliction, so that we may be able to encourage those who are in any affliction with the encouragement with which we ourselves are encouraged by God. For as Christ’s sufferings overflow to us, so through Christ does our encouragement also overflow.

Like a river.

I didn’t go back. Until now. God’s river never stops flowing, both in suffering and in encouragement and in healing and in joy. As James Finley says, all we need to do is jump in. And God will work on us, work through us, and in us. That water gets into every possible pore. The water pours down like a waterfall of forgiveness and grace, day after day. All I have to do is step under it. Thank you for that, John Wimber.

Stepping out is part of stepping under, I think. Eye contact, curious loving questions, and touch all play their parts in each new moment with someone else, especially for Margaret and me lately as our bodies wear out, in hospitals and other places where people are stuck for awhile, and where they often feel alone.

Our hope for you is firm, for we know that as you share in the sufferings, you also share in the encouragement.

Hospitals were one of the grandest inventions of Christianity, and good hospitals even more so. I am presently in Ascension Seton Medical Center. Ascension is big business, but Seton is the last name of a Catholic saint, Elizabeth Ann Seton, the founder of Christian school systems and always working in and around hospitals during her short early nineteenth century life.

A mosaic portrait of Sr. Seton graces the entry of the hospital. It has always brought me peace.

Look to him that you may be radiant with joy, and your faces may not blush with shame. When the poor one called out, the Lord heard, and from all his distress he saved him.

(Deuteronomy 8, Psalm 147, 1 Corinthians 10, Lauda Sion, John 6)

(posted at www.davesandel.net)