Freedom

By Joy Le Page Smith, MA, BCC

Last March when the Mount Olive Lutheran Church Men’s Workmen Team said “yes” to building an altar for the chapel of Havasu Regional Medical Center, I was overjoyed. Through the years of serving as a volunteer duty chaplain at the hospital I longed for the chapel to be more than a quiet room. I am sure many came to pray and many were helped in the little room through all the years prior. But the time came when I became the Director of Pastoral Care and could perhaps bring a change . . . if only I could get that help.

How wonderful it was when I asked Jim Day, an Elder at Mount Olive if his team could bring a dream to fruition and received his OK. When Tom Moore, a winter visitor at the shop, came to take measurements I asked him to take as much room as was needed in order for the altar to have a kneeler and enough space so a family of four could bend together before God in prayer. And, that is exactly what the Mount Olive workmen prepared for the chapel.

Months went by and at times I saw copious tear marks on the leather kneeler. How touching that was as I recall the time during my internship as a studying chaplain at a teaching hospital in Phoenix (then called Good Samaritan Regional Medical Center, now Banner University). It was my turn among the nine of us chaplains to take 24-hr. duty. A call came for me to be at the bedside of a dying baby. Nothing could prepare me for what I saw upon arriving in the room of the child.  No parents were present. I stood looking into the deformed face of a girl child. Her head had no bones and I could see every vein through thin, pale skin. I was rocked back. My job was to pray for the child. I had no idea how to pray for her at the moment, but rather fled to the chapel on the first floor. There I fell on my knees before the altar. “Why? Why? Why—Why! These were the only words I could say. I bawled my eyes out. (Close too literally.) I was there until a family came into the hospital chapel pulling a child in a little red wagon. I arose and left so they could pray together over whatever need that was tugging their hearts.

Much of chaplaincy strikes the heart in a way that can bring us to our knees. Yet, God has empowered me, just as He has for chaplains throughout history, to stay the course . . . keep coming to the side of those who are facing the hardest events of life. How? For Christian chaplains, we know Christ has called us. At one point when I needed a break in service I was called back in a notable way. I heard His call solidly within a quiet moment of quandary. In my heart. I knew what the words meant when they came, “I am acquainted with suffering.”

Back to that wonderful event early in the year when churchmen as workers freely built an altar for our hospital. A few months back I came to work to find the chapel and several areas of HRMC’s first floor sealed off—having no entrance. A fire had taken place. The greatest of all damage came through the built-in sprinkling system drenching all these areas leaving a considerable amount of flooding. Strangely enough I had total peace about this. I remarkably knew from the start all would be restored. And, that is what took place.  And, for a fact not the altar, nor even one other accoutrement of the chapel was damaged by fire or water. Once returned from storage, not a single touch of harm had come to it. All is back in place.

The words of Job come to mind. After all, Job was tried in ways humans have a hard time imagining. He came to terms, in the end, saying “Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return there. The LORD gave, and the LORD has taken away; Blessed be the name of the LORD.”

That is surely true of each of us.  Clearly, Job’s life was restored many times over.) What matters, through it all, is the fact we can trust. For all is well with our souls when we do. The entire Bible is about staying on the side of “faith in Father God.” Clearly, this sees us arriving at life’s end—safe and sound.

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