If
you told me a year ago that I hanging out in the dialysis ward where I see tons
of blood, I’d have said that you’d lost your mind. I dislike blood and faint easily. I can’t stand someone talking about blood and needles for long,
much less looking at it. But God
had other plans, and I ended up visiting the dialysis ward on one of my first
days at the hospital. After about
ten minutes I got very hot and felt a little funny, so I had to go find some
water and sit down for a little while.
Then I stood back up, didn’t fall over, and went back in. I haven’t had any problems since, which
is a sure sign that God is bigger than me and a silly little thing like ‘prone
to fainting’.
Being
in the dialysis ward is challenging even once I stop thinking about all of the
blood. I go there as part of the
chaplaincy team to visit the patients and pray with them. Many of the patients are very old, and
all of them are pretty sick. They
have other medical problems in addition to their kidneys, and depression is
common. It’s not an easy or happy
place. We try to bring a bit of
sunshine in. Sometimes we sing or
bring sweets, but most of the time we just come and say hi. We listen to their problems and pray
for them. I usually try to talk to
them, since I speak some Arabic.
Some of the other volunteers give hand massages. We try to be present
with the patients in their suffering.
We do this because there
is a biblical precedent for visiting the sick. In Matthew 22:34-45, Jesus talks about visiting the sick in
addition to several other parts of caring for the outcasts in our community. Even more importantly, Jesus modeled
this during his time on earth. He
did spend time doing things like preaching in the synagogues and arguing with
religious elders. But he also spent time in the real
world, with the outcasts and the suffering. Jesus’ role in visiting the sick was a little different than
mine; he can heal miraculously.
Still, he didn’t heal in a distant, nice-lightning-strike, manner. He reached his hand out to the sick,
whether they were the sick in spirit or the physically sick. Chaplaincy at the hospital is a bit
like this. We can’t heal in quite
the same way, but we try to reach out a hand to show them that they are not
alone in their pain.
In
the dialysis ward, with the blood pumping through machines and sleeping
patients, I’ve seen a bit of God and his purpose for our world. As a Christian, I cannot fix all that
is wrong in the world. Pain, suffering, and death with always be around. But we can show God’s love in those
situations, whatever and wherever they may be. Many people come to Nazareth as
part of their pilgrimage to the ‘Holy Land’. They come to see the massive basilica and the ruins of
first-century Nazareth under it. The
church is beautiful and most of the ‘holy sights’ are worth seeing, but that
doesn’t sum up my experience in Nazareth.
Yes, God is surely present in the
beautiful church buildings with the light streaming through the stain-glass
windows. Yet God also shines out
of the eyes of the little old lady in the dialysis ward when she listens to her
solar-powered audio-bible. He
lights up a dark place when a foreign gives the women hand massages, because
they know who she is and why she’s there and that she comes to care for
them. His love glimmers when we
stumble through transliterated songs in Arabic for the patients. I’ve seen God the
most in the dialysis ward in Nazareth, even though you can’t see the basilica
out the window.
