Caring for and ministering to others requires a servant of God, steeped in the Word of God, loving and obeying God in public and in private, to sit across from a suffering sinner at a crossroad and bring knowledge, wisdom, truth, and love while being utterly dependent on the Spirit of God. That work, no matter what we call it, will be used by God to change us into his likeness; that work will result in his redemptive work in the person sitting before us; that work will bring glory to his great name.
I can recall a time I had an infection and fainted, resulting in a need for stitches. I viewed a trip to the emergency room as an interruption, an annoyance. My day had been planned. Three stitches and seven hours later, I returned home having experienced a parable about the God of all power caring for the weak and the vulnerable. Now I am grateful for the interruption.
As I lay in a hospital bed with the curtain partially open, I could observe all the activity in the hall of the emergency room and around the desk. I listened to calls for rapid response teams and alerts for trauma- level crises. In the meantime, many patients with various problems needed assessment and tending. The staff members were all respectful and kind but also exhausted and harassed by angry patients, frightened patients, and those needing immediate care. I watched. I witnessed hard work, patience, kindness, and meticulous care in the midst of great stress.
Then the back of a man’s head caught my eye from a room across the hall. There was no room available. A doctor spoke with him: “Do you know where you are?” He asked the question over and over. No movement; no response. The nurse came and was given orders. I watched for an hour as she spoke gently, announcing each thing before she did it. She cared for this man with gentleness, dignity, and wisdom. He did not move as she tended to him. An hour later, I watched them wheel him down the hall. I saw his face — his blank, nonresponsive face. My eyes briefly met his glassy stare before he disappeared out of my view.
The nurse and the patient were different genders, different races. They had vastly different capacities. The nurse held all the power over this significantly vulnerable man. Her use of that power taught me a great deal about who she was. The man was an image bearer, knit together in his mother’s womb by our God. The earthly differences were not central. The nurse illustrated the essence of the incarnation; she showed the presence and character of God in flesh and blood. That is what the power of the Almighty does. He who sits on the throne descends to the sick and the broken and shows us the character of our God in flesh and blood.
Whoever we are, and whatever our role, our brilliance, our skills, our theology, our position, or our notoriety, the nurse in the ER demonstrates for us what the presence of our God looks like. I learned something about the man — his limitations and incapacities — though I know nothing about how he arrived in such a damaged state. I also witnessed the power of humility, of kindness and gentleness, of regarding the other as important, of needing to be seen and honored, and of value beyond that of any system or organization.
We must ever and always manifest Christ’s likeness with humility. Do we really think we have what it takes to understand complex and deceptive humans? We rarely understand ourselves. How will we know when to speak and when to be silent? How will we love when we are tired or be patient when we are weary? We can’t walk the long road of healing and transformation apart from the work of the Spirit in our own lives. The life-giving power of Christ crucified cannot be released into others’ lives unless we have allowed the cross to do its work in us.
To walk with suffering sinners is to confront lies, darkness, and evil. Sometimes the suffering is unspeakable and runs unbearably deep. Apart from the work and Word of God in our lives, what have we to offer sufferers? We cannot fight the litter of hell in a life unless we rely on the Spirit of God. The suffering is overwhelming enough, but there are also layers of deception and lies in the lives of hardened souls. We cannot bring life to dead places or light to darkness apart from the Spirit of God.
If it is true that our God came in the flesh to the brokenhearted, the small, the afflicted, the ruined, and the vulnerable, then that truth needs to be lived out in our flesh and blood — yours and mine — so that the world might know that he, full of love and justice and truth, is real.
Content taken from When the Church Harms God’s People by Diane Langberg ©2024. Used by permission of Brazos Press.
