Hospital Visitation Series

HoHum:

Things one should never do when visiting someone in the hospital:

Go when we’re sick

Compare medical horror stories

Speak aggressively to hospital staff

Eat from the patient’s food tray

Disrespect the patient’s roommate

WBTU:

From David Powlison’s article, “A Most Welcome Visitor”

A preacher friend was talking with me about visiting church members in the hospital. He commented, “I have noticed an upswing in how often other visitors treat me with noticeable disdain.” The derision and eye rolling do not come from the patients he visits or from medical staff. It comes from the family and friends of other patients. He will strike up a friendly conversation in the elevator or waiting room. When the other party finds out that he is a preacher, the room turns chilly, and the person makes some verbal or non verbal sniff in is direction. In effect, “Why on earth are you here? What good can you do? Yeah, right... religion is a joke.” “Sad that you are here because you have a captive audience, patient’s can’t get away”

Of course individual reasons come into play, but my friend also credits 2 cultural causes for the uptick in disdain. First, our culture places blind, inordinate faith in medical knowledge and personnel. Physical health is the greatest good imaginable. Ill health is the greatest bad imaginable. Medical care is the means to achieve the greatest good of health.

Second, the way the culture talks about prayer (“our thoughts and prayers are with you”), and the way churches typically pray (the “prayer list” and “the preacher’s prayer”) are largely medically oriented. If we didn’t know better, we could easily get the impression that both the medical profession and God are preoccupied with restoring and maintaining good health. Who does a better job at it? Medical insight and expertise do the heavy lifting. Medicine is objective and scientific while prayer is subjective and superstitious- a bit like a rabbit’s foot. Pray might not do any harm, but it can hardly do much good. Such thoughts make shepherding the sick a bit silly!

But my friend has come up with an effective way to disarm scorn and open up the possibility of a significant conversation. With a twinkle in his eye, he says, “You know doctors lose every one of their patients in the long run... but some of my patients live forever.” That catches people off guard. It makes them think. The mixing of inevitable death with possible eternal life often leads to an opportunity to speak directly about Christian faith. In reality, church and medicine have a very different sense for what is most needed, what is the greatest good, and what drive prayer. Medicine is no match for what my friend comes to do.

He is a shepherd to the souls of those privileged to welcome such a visitor. Ministry endeavors to cure soul sickness. The ministry of prayer and the Word aims to cure a thousand ailments: unbelief, self preoccupation, anxiety, meaninglessness, ruptured relationships, and all the wayward desires and actions of sinful flesh. The aim is to work faith into the heart and love into the lifestyle. Because physical illness slows people down, often frightens them, and makes them realize their true spiritual needs, it can open a wide door for curing a receptive soul.

My friend’s ministry is not indifferent to sickness, as if he is only concerned for the soul. Death and the shadows of death- weakness, illness, disability, bereavement, aging, dying- haunt the pages of Scripture. Jesus does good to sick people. James tells us to pray for the sick. Eternal life will swallow up death and all its shadows in the resurrection. The lesser, temporary healings are a genuine good. So my friend also prays with people that God might give a cure or help for what now ails their bodies. He respects doctors and nurses, and prays that their work will prosper as a gift of God. But his priorities are clear. He knows that doctors do lose every patient in the end. He knows that there is a subtext in every person’s medical history to which patients, doctors, and other visitors are often blind. They may think that what is going on is merely a medical drama. But in fact, an epic moral drama is playing out right now in every person with a medical condition. It is also playing out in every visitor and medical professional.

Every hospital visit presents a focused counseling moment. In fact, I think that hospital visitation has a lot to teach counselors. The occasion of sickness strips the counseling encounter down to its elemental features. Recently, an elderly woman in our church died after a long decline in which she was supported by visitors who loved her.

Thesis: The basic elements that played a part in visiting with her shed light on the basic elements in all biblically-wise counseling.