A lone man sits in his wheelchair. Moments ago he was seated at the table. The table was once occupied by a friend across from where he sits. But today he is sitting alone. He glances slightly and notices that he remains the last one to be taken back to his room. Lunch? It was tolerable. No real spice or flavor. Outside of “heat it up and put it on a tray”, there is minimal love involved in the preparation of meal after meal after meal. It doesn’t matter as the once hot food from the kitchen was just warm when he received it at his table. Moments ago what was the scene? A room three quarters filled…Filled with men and women like him. Farmers. Housewives. Businessmen. Vets. Bankers. Secretaries. Wealthy or just break even, when you’re in this place, everyone is the same and everyone is treated the same. His thoughts are interrupted by a young orderly who just happened to notice that he hasn’t left to go back to his room on his own or wasn’t pushed back using his chair. She offers to take him back to his room.
Room? As he is wheeled in, there is a window on the opposite side of the room, a hospital bed to the right, next to it a single chair, and in between is a phone. To the left is a small television, no photos in his room, and his small, private bathroom…his whole world now. Where he once lived prior to arriving here, his land stretched as far as the eye could see (literally) and now he is in a room that three small pushes from his wheel chair could easily navigate across it. His eyes moisten as tears form. He fondly remembers the voice of his wife who sadly has been absent from his ears for over a year. Every clearing of her throat. The pitch of her voice. His thoughts fondly drift to when he met her in his cousin’s apartment. Love. Even if the opportunity of them meeting was brief, it was love. A love of 68 years of marriage. His ever-present devotion to be home every night save one night many years prior while working on a construction project that went into overtime over night while a large concrete floor cured. The gardens at the multiple farms they lived which grew vegetables a plenty. The mooing of cows out the window. The buzz of a fly…which caught his eye and brought him back to his lonely room. He moves from his wheel chair with pain and much effort to swing his body back to his electric lift chair. Television? Nothing on that would appeal to him. The radio? The modern country music doesn’t suit his appeal. He sits for a moment staring into nothing, his hands moving, while his mind deeply desires to be back at his home with his wife. So now the newspaper catches his eye. He picks it up with his shaky hands and begins to read. Without realizing it he drifts off to sleep. He is later suddenly disturbed by an upset resident down the hall who cries out for someone to help her.
Day after day with little change except for the weekly chapel service or men’s Bible study or the visit to the large room with large bay windows overlooking a pond to count the geese on the pond with another resident, his life was very consistent. He is slid back to his usual table the next day to be greeted by another man near his age. There is a brief exchange of pleasantries…But no matter how full the cafeteria of the nursing home gets, almost every one of these men and women share one thing: a lonely day in a lonely room to go to bed alone. And when the tinsel and large paper snowflakes are hung up to cover the cold and institutionalized walls, perhaps this Christmas will be the one where a son or daughter whom they’ve not seen for years will come to visit…even if the visit is only punctuated by a quick retelling of the year’s events with frequent glances at watches to hope to avoid staying longer than necessary.
Another man sits on an uncomfortable bed. Uncomfortable? Everything in his life now is uncomfortable. The temperature. The noise of other inmates. And if that were not bad enough, the worst sounds were the sliding and grinding of rollers of cell doors and then the loud bang when the motion is complete. What is a full-night’s sleep? Disappointing meals eaten from Styrofoam trays with plastic utensils to cut food that just bends and wiggles. Your name is called. A brief smile forms on your face as you know today is visiting day. You take your place to see the once young and beautiful-looking wife you once couldn’t wait to see is carrying a few more lines and less smiles on her face now. The weight of everything she has to handle while you sit out your time. She mentions how your daughter is doing in school. Your mind races back to the times when you lifted her up in your arms and she squeezed you ever so tightly. Now her embrace and voice isn’t recognizable in your memories. Your wife gets up to leave as she has to get back to work because her brief time away was to visit you. You leave and all the weight of hating yourself floods back. You go back to your cell and mentally count down the time. Eight more years. Will anything be what it once was? Will there be anybody waiting for me? Will there be anybody who will want to see me?
Hushed voices are heard down the halls. A room with a single window opposite from the door with a hospital bed in between. Monitors and pumps running…the humming, whirring, and beeps. How can anyone get any sleep with this ridiculous noise? Effort is needed to lift an arm for the plastic water glass. You take a small gulp of water; parched lips are refreshed. As if on queue and certainly not on your timetable of quickly leaving, the doctor arrives to tell more news: we need to run some more tests. The doctor checks a couple of things, asks a half-caring, “How are you doing?” knowing full well that as soon as his shift is over he is going back to his house, warm meal, wonderful family, but most of all: away from walls filled with charts, pathetic attempts of paintings/prints on the wall, and sick people. Normal? What is normal? It must be anything outside and beyond this hospital. And then a further pain plagues your thoughts and almost grips your heart: love…Where is love in all this?
A large gathering was there. Men, women, and children…Listening. Listening to someone speaking things that were simple…and yet too complex and complicated, it seemed, to live by. How could something be so simple and yet so hard to live? You hear His warm and authoritative voice. They hear the occasional footstep on the short grass beneath His sandals. He never seems to tire from speaking. As a refreshing stream that seems to start and ends with a continual flow, so are His words. His words to change people radically. Revolution? Only against the darkness of the hearer’s hearts. And then He says (Luke 6:32-36), “But if you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners love those who love them. And if you do good to those who do good to you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners do the same. And if you lend to those from whom you hope to receive back, what credit is that to you? For even sinners lend to sinners to receive as much back. But love your enemies, do good, and lend, hoping for nothing in return; and your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High. For He is kind to the unthankful and evil. Therefore be merciful, just as your Father also is merciful.” And His words kept pouring out…through the ears and into the hearts of the hearers. Who could this be who says these things? It isn’t a matter that Jesus always chooses the underdogs or challenged His hearers with pious and poetic words that are much easier to say than ever to do in life. Yet Jesus Christ lived out everything He said. His heart was always for the marginalized—whether a tax collector, someone short, fishermen, or even a Pharisee secretly visiting Jesus in the night desiring to know Truth. He took notice of those whom the world and certainly church people paid little or no attention to. “Why invite trouble?” many would say. Yet this humble Savior delivered a mother-in-law, a leaper, blind men, didn’t condemn an adulterous woman, and a whole lot more.
About twenty years ago a few rogue Christians challenged their hearers in preaching and in music to visit and serve “The Least of These”. Sadly modern Christianity now has shifted to a narcissistic mood, “I’m a child of the King so I can live like the Devil but it is okay because Jesus forgave me and so I can live a life with a motto of “I can do all things…” because God blesses all my choices and behaviors. After all, none of us are perfect; we’re just human. So why bother living as a Christian? Just follow your heart, do what makes you happy, and God is such a good God that He will just spit out the bones in our bonehead decisions and accept us. But it was Jesus who reached to the brokenhearted, the widows, the orphans, those sick or in prison. Every encounter with Christ, a decision was made. Many were healed, delivered, forgiven, and all were touched. James the Lesser said (James 1:27), “Pure and undefiled religion before God and the Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their trouble, and to keep oneself unspotted from the world.” Unbalanced or errant preaching focuses on one or the other without realizing that “take care of number one” cannot have a heart to care for people who have no way to pay you back. In other words, James isn’t giving us a choice or an A and a B of pure religion but that both combined allows the Christian to truly be a Christ-follower. Jesus again in Matthew 25:42-45 said, “for I was hungry and you gave Me no food; I was thirsty and you gave Me no drink; I was a stranger and you did not take Me in, naked and you did not clothe Me, sick and in prison and you did not visit Me.’ Then they will also answer Him, saying, ‘Lord, when did we see You hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not minister to You?’ Then He will answer them, saying, ‘Assuredly, I say to you, inasmuch as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to Me.’” In every one of these examples are people who had needs but were neglected, ignored, forgotten. Further these are they who are unable to do for themselves. They are those who may never—or if and when they eventually can but not for a long time—ever leave where they are. They are those who in their present stage of life do not have money, stuff, or ability to pay back. And these are often the ones marginalized in our communities. Visit the nursing homes. Visit the county jails or prisons. Visit the hospital room with John Doe for the patient’s name on the door with no next of kin known. Visit the orphanages. Visit the elderly woman living in a small apartment or house whose whole life are in the photos in albums or up on the walls …a room with photos of memories. Memories—like those who I wrote about above—of those whom we loved and loved back but now we only visit when convenient.
Question…How many will sit in a nursing home to eat a “Hungry Man” flavored piece of turkey for Thanksgiving with something that resembles mashed potatoes, something that looks like brown gravy, and a roll that could be used to chock the tire of our car? How many will receive a small gift from the nursing home that won’t be remembered a year later when perhaps the best gift grandpa or grandma could ever get is a visit from family who do their best to overstay their welcome rather than keep thinking of an non-heartless excuse to leave? How many would like to be remembered while behind bars when it seems like the whole world has moved on…except for those having to work two shifts to keep a roof of some kind over their heads…and never will live it down that you were the reason for the added stress? Where is the love toward those who have no way to visit our church. Yet these people can perhaps know in their final hours that someone from __(insert your church’s name)__ gave up an hour of whatever to spend that hour sitting beside them to just listen? Where is our love when we see a stranded motorist needing aid? Where is our love when we talk to the sales person who is behind the counter at the grocery store or convenience store when the Lord pings our heart to be “more Jesus” to that person who may not be having the greatest of day? Where is our love, as Jesus challenged 2000 years ago and still He does today, for the least of these?