Sitting in the emergency room just viewing the scene, here I am, healthy, feeling like an outsider to all the pain around me, and it's so much pain. I thank God I can perceive with his heart and not be cold or oblivious though.
I think of Jesus and Bethany.
Known for being the home of the sick and poor in Israel, Bethany wasn't the place you wanted to hang out in. In fact it was probably the place you wanted to dodge and pretend didn't exist. But it was there. And between all the "unwanted's" all the "unclean's" all the rejected of the land was the King of the Universe, Jesus, dressed in manly mortality experiencing it all for himself. We forget that although he had everything he chose to come and hang out with the nothing. He knew what it was like to lack, to be rejected, to be unwanted. At the end of his life on earth the Word says "He was as one from whom men hid their faces" this doesn't mean they were empathetic to his pain, it's more like they perceived something so hideous and gruesome as to cause utter rejection toward him. But this is where he was, this is where he touched, this is where he healed, this is where he made his best friends. In the place where no one else wanted to be. In the forgotten place with the forgotten people. He understood their pain because He himself was experiencing it, they were his cause, what he felt most passionate about. I don't think you can touch anyone as effectively as when you have been through the storm yourself. And although God had control of this whole situation, everything he did in his life as Jesus was to model for us what we are to be like here on earth.
Later on as I entered the next waiting room where the patients are now in the gurneys and just saw the rows of beds stretched out everywhere I felt it was too much. This small portion of pain compared to the pain everywhere, compared to even bigger situations, was too much to take in for me and I thought, how can we be so naive to try and do this work ourselves. There is nothing in us that can even begin to touch and heal the great pain around us. Nothing that comes from us anyway! There is something in us that comes from God that takes care of this dilema. Mr. Holy Spirit! He is more than experienced at this than we could ever dream of being. After all he's got Bethany on his resume. There's no greater partner, no greater teacher, no greater company than Him. He knows how to handle the situations great and small and i pray that we don't forget that he is there with us when we see the room full of stretchers and the masses crying out in pain. We can't ever solve the problem. But we walk alongside someone who is always ready to touch, always ready to love, always ready to heal. I pray we don't forget he is so gracious as to make a home inside our heart and all we have to do is be willing to walk our little feet in the direction of the need and He can take care of it from there.
