The Touch of God
Many years ago in a land far, far away, I had the Perfect
Job. It included travel to islands &
amusement parks, teaching (my first love), retreats, and being around
teenagers. I was a full time youth
minister. It is only now 30 years down
the road that I realize it was the Perfect Job.
And now that I have the confidence, humor, and ability to hold the
attention of at least 50 kids at a time, I realize those are things I wished I
had more of back then. In other words, I
wish I had the Ability and the Opportunity simultaneously …. But perhaps that
is how you develop the ability, over time.
I was speaking with someone new in the ministry last week
and we were talking about reading lists.
I said to her, the first book I read on the job was called, “You can
sell anything by telephone.” In fact, it
was so helpful that one of my dearest friends said: “The reason I volunteered was because Chris
wouldn’t let me off the phone until I said YES.
She could sell toilet products to Eskimoes.” Um, I think the phrase is: “refrigerators to Eskimoes,” but hey, whatever
they need, I’ll give them a call!
One of my working principles for culturing both volunteers
and the teens was always this: I will
not ask you to do anything that I myself am not willing to do. With this in mind, there were two young men
that, as the time got really close to make their confirmation, reported they
had not done their community service hours.
Are you kidding me?! Why they
waited that long, I will never know …. not unlike some people who would be in
the Procrastinators Anonymous Club but never got around to filling out the
paperwork.… So among the three of us, we decided to visit a nursing home to fulfill
the hours there. I went with the
boys. We had to come back with our
rabies vaccinations, I mean, proof of TB shots, before we could start doing
whatever it is that we were to do there.
I had no clue.
One man, a tall, thin, nonverbal Native American in a
wheelchair, got a very big charge out of my teen Mike pushing him around the
hallways. When Mike paused to chat with
me, the gentleman would make a huge pointing gesture with his arm as if to say,
“Onward!” and the pushing around
continued. I myself went into the
recreation room. My lesson for the day
was there. Except, I wasn’t the teacher;
I was the student. Apparently the
Almighty gets a big charge out of role reversals and making us see things
through a different person’s eyes.
Two women sat at the table with paints and projects. Perhaps this initial vision is what turned me
against nursing homes (for myself). As
an amateur painter at heart, I couldn’t imagine being old, in-bound, and given
only three bad colors (think: brown, garish purple and avocado green) to paint
with and crappy little pieces of children’s figurines that someone already
wrecked. That was the first impression
that stuck with me: how trapped they
must feel! Even people who aren’t
artists need better colors – or at least primary
colors to mix and play with.
Someday, I’ll be organizing a break-out from my nursing home to go to
one of the craft stores to get real supplies!
The two ladies in front of me, however, were not really
painting anymore. No surprise there,
given what I just shared with you, right?
What was most striking about them, as I stood behind listening to their
conversation, was the personality difference.
It was like a lesson in spirituality:
namely, acceptance with joy brings peace.
Louise sat in the chair and forced out the bitter words, “Here
I am in this place and my kids are
off living their lives. I don’t deserve
this.” She raised a fist to the sky and
addressed the Almighty, “Why don’t you just kill me?!” It was too much like someone living out the
bad advice from Job’s wife in the Old Testament, “Job, look at all your
suffering. Why don’t you just curse God
and die!” I stepped back a pace, afraid
the Boss would take her up on the request.
I was too young to get struck by lightning.
She re-grouped her powers and continued, “They brought me to
this place. They took my cat <insert a lump in throat
here> and put her to sleep … and then they brought me here.” My eyes widened. I considered my own household at the
time: if someone put my dog down … they’d
need an elephant tranquilizer to get me to the nursing home. To use the redneck expression best fitting
it: “I’d tear the place up.” You know how our minds are: we consider, we are horrified, we plan for
the unlikely. Nonetheless, I get slight
chest pains as I type this.
She tried for a third, brief rant: “I hate my life. I want to die. I have no friends.”
What do you do with
that?
And ever so sweetly and quietly, the woman who sat in the
wheelchair next to her reached her hand over and placed it on Louise’s
arm. “Oh, Louise, you have me. I
am your friend.” <excuse me I
have something in my eye. > Louise
turned her weathered face to look at Suzie with her shining, yet wrinkled
cheeks and silver bun of hair on her head.
“Suzie, you are a good friend.
Yes. A good friend.”
Suzie offered a new perspective, “Louise, we have lived our
lives and now our children are trying to live theirs. They have jobs, …. And we can be happy
here. I thank God for my life. And I thank God for you.”
Louise was not an immediate convert. Yet she did soften and the comfort of her
friend took on a new meaning for her:
she was no longer alone because someone dared to touch, to care, to
speak. And as for me, I drifted away …. Far,
far away to another place and time and yet they live in my mind eternally as
that one moment. The poignancy of
compassionate love – really, the touch of God to a human heart – and I see them
again as I left them. And then I think
about the bastards that killed her cat.
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