This is Not the End of the Story.

(Pray with me? In Lectio Divina through repetition and silence, the Word becomes a portal for prayer. Need a mighty dose of hope? You’re not going to want to miss this one. Subscribe on the right to make sure you don’t miss a week.)

That first summer of seminary I put my arms through the sleeves of a borrowed lab coat, pinned a name badge on my pocket, and walked in and out of patient rooms carrying a small Bible. I was doing a credit of Clinical Pastoral Education at Duke Medical Center. My husband served the PICU. I was on the fifth floor, the neurology department.

I remember how inept I felt in the face of suffering.

 

There were Baptist missionaries from Papua New Guinea in the corner room. She had a brain aneurysm and they were waiting.

 

Waiting.

 

They stayed in the darkness. No, they didn’t want prayer.

 

 

To the right of the nurse’s wing there was an African American family who would pull me into their tight prayer circle and pray the sort of prayers that understood that God listens to our cries.

 

That summer I memorized all the verses to “Great is Thy Faithfulness” and “It is well with my Soul” and almost daily had a new occasion to sing them. I sat with families whose loved ones were taking last breaths. It was always holy ground. Always.

 

In the east wing there was a woman with short red hair like my grandmother’s whose brain cancer had relapsed. When I picked up her chart, it was as thick as a dictionary.  I walked through her door every day and scooted my chair up to her bed. We did Centering Prayer to the first line of Psalm 23, “The Lord is my Shepherd.” She couldn’t do the ancient breath prayer by herself, she said, but she could breathe to the rhythm of my breaths. She could lean against my prayers and find herself steadied. Please come back tomorrow, she’d say, as she squeezed my hands.

 

It was a privilege, but a heavy privilege and by the end of my shift I could feel the cumbersome stories across my shoulders.

Tuesday mornings I had a weekly check-in with my supervisor and one week he asked me if I was carrying the pain home with me. He was a soft-spoken African-American man with Jesus eyes, the kind that sees pain but does not look away.

 

I didn’t know how to answer, “Was I bringing the pain I had witnessed home?”

He nodded: “Do you have a practice for laying down the pain?”

 

I looked up, searching, not answering.

 

“I’d suggest you spend time in the chapel before the end of your shift. Pray. Breathe. See what comes.”

 

I did. The next day I took the elevator from the fifth to the third floor and sat halfway back in the chapel looking at the bronze burning bush on the wall behind the altar.

 

I sensed the Spirit inviting me to remember each story, turn it over in my mind, and then hand each patient back to Him.  They were His first. They are His now. They would be His for all eternity.

 

This became my prayer:

“Lord, I know you know all the needs of __________. I also know that you have angels elsewhere. Send your angels human and otherwise to _______ now to take care of them through the night.”

 

In my mind I walked the halls. I gave each door, each heartbreaking story behind each door back to God.

.

It was prayer.

It was a way of handing the pain to He who has the shoulders to bear it.

It was an acknowledgement that I’m no messiah.

It was an acknowledgement of He who is.

Our Slow Word lectio divina scripture for this week, Isaiah 35:4-7a felt like a scriptural representation of that practice at the end of every day:

.

“Say to those with anxious hearts, “Be strong, do not fear;

Your God WILL come,

He will come with vengeance;

With divine retribution

He will come to save you.

Then will the eyes of the blind be opened

And the ears of the deaf unstopped.

Then will the lame leap like a deer,

And the mute tongue shout for joy.

Water will gush forth in the wilderness

And streams in the desert.

The burning sand will become a pool,

The thirsty ground bubbling springs.”

.

Your God WILL come.

And on this past Tuesday morning as I reread the verses and took them on a walk around my suburban neighborhood, the same sort of prayer bubbled up. With each step, I held onto the phrase like the woman with the issue of blood holding onto His hem. One word. One step. Right step. Left step. Right. Left. Your God WILL come.

I prayed through a my own stonewalled circumstance.

Your God WILL come.

And then I prayed for dear friends. I prayed for a friend’s son who is straightjacketed in an impossible situation, a friend who’s fighting cancer and losing, another one who’s wondering why it seems to be that love always eludes her.

Your
God
WILL
come.

And you too my friend:

God is not asleep.

God is not impotent.

God is not paralyzed.

Walls cannot stop Him.

Storms cannot silence Him.

Disease has no power over Him.

Graves cannot hold Him.

Your God WILL come.

*In what area of your life do you need to know that your God is living and active, that in fact He truly is coming.