Waiting

February 12, 2019

Hospital waiting rooms are rarely places of joy. Their walls encompass many a tear, countless broken hearts, and thankfully moments of relief after hours of agonized waiting. Today, the waiting room at Kenmore Mercy was a holy place of joy as I sat with a good friend during his wife’s surgery. I hadn’t expected to stay as long as I did; with the weather conditions and the time I left home, I figured she would have been in surgery before I arrived, but they were still waiting when I got there, so we talked for awhile, recounting God’s blessings and praying together. I headed to the lobby so they could have some time together before they took her into the operating room. 

When he came out, we had coffee and talked about ministry, family life, and life in general. It was nothing out of the ordinary, but nonetheless, it was infused with holy moments. We come from quite different backgrounds but have a common bond in our faith in Christ. He’s just getting started in ministry; being on the tail end, I thought I had had my last wag, but God apparently had other plans. 

One of the challenges of ministry is never knowing what difference it makes. It’s possible to work hard, build a congregation, grow a ministry, only to see it evaporate right before your eyes for reasons you can’t figure out. And it’s possible to labor in obscurity without perceivable success only to find out years later that your faithfulness opened up an entirely new world to someone you had forgotten you had even met. It’s all in God’s hands, and we have to learn to leave it there. If our sense of worth rides on our accomplishments, we are on shaky ground indeed. Only in the love and grace of God can we rest secure. I am grateful for the time we shared this afternoon, for conversation that grounded us in the vast love of God, and for simple friendship. No—more than friendship; we are brothers in Christ, and it is very good.