Hospital Hallways

“That office is in the North Wing,” the diminutive volunteer behind the information desk told me. “Take this hallway till it ends and turn left. Take that one to the end and turn left again. At the end of that hallway, turn right. ”

Bravely I set out in the direction the aged lady’s withered hand had feebly waved. I had been lost like this in the hospital before; each previous time I had accidentally run into a friend who worked there and she simply guided me to where I needed to go. There was no sign of her today, however; I was clearly on my own.

At long last I found my way and finally turned the knob on the door to the appropriate office, only to be stopped by an attendant at a nearby desk.

“You sign in over here,” he said. I took the clipboard he held out to me, sat down in a nearby chair and answered the few questions, then stood to return it to him. Told to keep the paper and remain seated until my name was called, I obediently sat back down. A few minutes later in a ridiculously loud voice, considering I was the only person seated before him, he called my name. “You can go to Desk 4,” he directed.

Looking about I saw only empty chairs in the area, and nothing resembling a desk. Forced again to ask for directions, he somewhat disgustedly pointed me to a bank of registration booths I had obliviously walked by in my search for the proper department.  At long last I was given permission to go to through the door, only to be greeted by a lonely technician who clearly had had no one to talk to all day. There was no way I could hurry her along as she chatted endlessly about her children, an upcoming anniversary celebration, and the quarreling taking place between her siblings now that her parents had died.

All I wanted was my mammogram. Was there no easy way to get this thing done? No wonder I waited so long since my last one; I must have subconsciously remembered the difficulty involved in the procedure. Save me!, I pleaded in my heart to God.

Sometimes we make the process of finding God as difficult for non-believers as getting my x-rays today was for me. They walk into our churches looking for what they know they need, and too often we just give them vague directions and wave them in the direction they need to go, using a language they are unfamiliar with and landmarks they don’t recognize. When they move forward in their faith we have a tendency to stop them and make sure they have followed all the proper procedures, filling out contact information, signing up for the proper introductory class, and joining the proper home fellowship group. We chat them up like old friends instead of addressing the issue that brought them through the doors in the first place, forcing them to eventually voice their need in a soundless prayer to God,  Save me, please!

And just that quickly, He does, despite our bumbling and the unintentional roadblocks we set up to the process. What God meant to be easy we have somehow turned into something incredibly difficult. It‘s no wonder the lost and hurting are sometimes reluctant to walk through church doors. 

What I needed yesterday afternoon at the hospital was the friend I trusted to show me the way. She told me later she was stuck in a lab that afternoon and so wasn’t out wandering the halls as she usually is. And I am reminded that God needs us to be people on the lookout for others who are likewise searching for the door to His Presence, to take them to it instead of simply telling them how to find it, and then to leave them in prayer safely there in the Doctor’s care.

“For the Son of Man came to seek and to save that which was lost.”
(Luke 19:10 NKJV)

The OTHERS

The following, my "O" post in the A to Z Blogger Challenge, summarized my feelings about the event pretty completely, so I decided to use it in the Reflections Posting. Ever so grateful for the experience, I simply can't wait till next year! Thanks to all for reading my writings. Here goes:

Never was there a greater devotee of the show Lost than my son, who lived and breathed little else in the years that it filled our TV screen. While it was much too intense for me, I couldn’t help but absorb some of the drama as I walked through the living room on occasion while he was watching. Much of the show’s plot concerned the crash survivors’ interactions with The Others, as the inhabitants of the island they landed on were referred to en masse. In the early years of the story they were largely an unknown quantity, faceless and nameless, hovering in the background unseen.

In my few years of blogging experience, the blogging community as a whole has been to me the same. I knew The Others were out there…somewhere…but I had little interaction with them as I went on with my writing and posting. I didn’t even know really where to find them, apart from an occasional mention of a site or one that I happened to land on purely by accident as a result of a Google search. I didn‘t bother them, and they surely didn‘t bother to visit me. My blogs survived, but they clearly didn’t thrive.

Along came the A to Z Blogging Challenge, and I took it on, again for purely personal reasons. But as I signed up I did so with the intention of participating fully, soon realizing that dropping in on other blogs and meeting their creators was at least as big a part of the idea as posting my own alphabetized thoughts. As the list of registrants grew in the month before the challenge officially began, my excitement did as well, as one name after another intrigued me and pulled me in for a few moments of joyful exploration and discovery.

Two weeks into the Challenge, my blogging experience has changed dramatically. The posts on my own blogs are no longer my sole focus, but amazingly just the dues I pay for access to the names on the list and the privilege of reading their thoughts and offering my own in response. The joy of striking a chord of common interest with someone new or having the opportunity to encourage someone who’s struggling with an issue I’ve already been through causes me to realize just how much I’ve missed.

Too many of us live life the way I previously operated my blog. We travel with our eyes solely on our own interests and purposes, rarely giving thought to the others walking beside us unless we happen to bump into them unexpectedly or unavoidably. Our life experiences change dramatically when we realize we were born with the greater purpose of helping and encouraging those around us to achieve their personal destinies.

No man is an island, no matter how firmly he believes himself to be. The Others in my blogging experience now are beginning to have names and faces, personalities and passions that I’m discovering with joy as I now deliberately seek them out and develop relationships with them. They in turn are rescuing me from the solitary existence of my own little blogging world.

“Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others.”
(Philippians 2:4 NIV)