Today I woke up and made a checklist of the things I'd like to accomplish today before heading off to this afternoon's church service. Quiet time, check. Workout, check. Shower, uncheck (waiting for the bathroom to be free, actually). Write blog, hm, working on it. Upload photos to facebook and find one for this blog, uncheck. You get the idea; in fact, you may even have a checklist for today that you're procrastinating from by reading this blog.
Completing a checklist is something that our culture buys into without even realizing its implications. We have so many things to do with so little time, the very act of relaxing sometimes needs to be scheduled in. We're so used to valuing accomplishments that we forget to appreciate availability. And if there's one phrase that keeps coming to mind this month, it's “be available”. Our schedule isn't packed and our ministry doesn't have any big programs for us to brag about, but that doesn't seem to bother me they way it would have even a few months ago.
I mentioned in the last blog about our home visits, and how spending time with people the world often overlooks acknowledges that they have value. That's part of being available. Focusing on accomplishments would tempt us to visit more houses on Wednesday than we did on Monday, or convince us that we needed to render some sort of tangible service to believe that we've done something important. Visiting homes and helping out in tangible ways are good things. But being available reminds us that listening, sharing an embrace, singing, laughing, and praying together are often more important than an agenda.
One afternoon this week, we spent time visiting with patients in a long-term cancer hospital. I sincerely wish that this blog was about some amazing miracle I witnessed while we were there, a life transformed before my eyes. And to be very honest, that would be a tangible accomplishment checked off on my mental World Race list. But, as far as I know, I didn't witness a miracle. What I did instead was hold each patient's hands and look them in the eyes. I cry each time I think about it, how those moments of being available changed me in ways I don't even understand. And something about the gratitude mingled with the desperation in their eyes tells me that it did the same for them. Maybe, just maybe, I did witness a miracle that day. Maybe I witnessed a lot of them.
I can't make a list of tangible things we accomplished at the hospital. But I can tell you that I know our time there was important. Why? Because I'm realizing that the world is full of people waiting to be looked in the eyes. They don't care about what I have or haven't accomplished. They just need me to be available.
