Stuart Adamson (member of 10.30am, Dean of Chaplaincy at Morling College, and Chaplain at Bankstown Hospital) contributes a blog this week.
I’ve been reflecting on the fact that kids club has had to be postponed, and that many planned gospel events have had to be re-worked and presented in a different way online, and frankly, wondering what is going on in the heavenlies. How is God working out his plan in accordance with his will, how is the gospel going forward? The encounter below happened last week, and it is encouraging in a number of ways that I hope you find helpful.
Living in a part of Sydney where Covid infections have been transmitting in local supermarkets, I have been taking my own isolation and infection control very seriously. Even more so because I am the only staff chaplain at my hospital. I’m part time. Just two days a week. But not a single patient has had a visit from a family member in the last two weeks. No volunteer chaplains can visit, and no local clergy can either except for end of life. So a large number of lonely people are doing it tough.
One patient I met last week has had his world come crashing down around him with an admission that has placed his own mortality front and centre in his field of vision. He has been reviewing his whole life and asking “Why?” in just about every dimension.
Chris (not his real name) has a framework of faith that is biblical, but he hasn’t been to church in so many years the truths are distant memories. He talked, he lamented, and I listened. From time to time I quoted verses that echoed truths that he hadn’t thought much about for years, but that he could now affirm with faith in his heart, and a “yes” on his lips.
I visited after lunch. We talked. Nurses had given him many cards from loved ones for a birthday he had recently while in hospital, but in conversation, I discovered that he did not know their content, because of macular degeneration, and he was hard of hearing.
So I offered to read them to him in the quiet of post lunch rest time. His face lit up. And as he listened to message after message of love from friends and family, his delight grew. And we prayed, and we thanked God for his constant presence, and that we were made for relationships of love, both with Him and with each other, In Christ.”
Some thoughts:
The Spirit is always at work.
The gospel is never thwarted.
God chooses to draw people to himself through faithful witness to what Jesus has done in the lives of every brother and sister in the kingdom.
We are to always be ready to give reasons for the hope we have within us, and to share them with gentleness and respect.
Have a good day.
Let me add a tiny comment. Stuart thinks a certain way because he has been doing this for years. He sees stuff most of us miss. Mostly because he has tuned himself to see tiny opportunities, and not the obvious timing or setting or wording. There are some core biblical ideas that propel this. We can all share them.
The Spirit IS at work - and in ways that move in, around and sometimes quite outside our plans. (John 3:8)
Life IS about the Spirit moving in people’s lives, that’ what God is most concerned with. (John 3:5; John 4:34-38)
Good to learn from the experience!