Sick - Thursday 17 January 2008

I was sick and you looked after me. Matthew 25:36 NIV

Every time I write these devotionals there is at least one day which is a challenge to me and this is the one this time. I can tell you the challenge in two words ‘Hospital Visiting’. It is time consuming, dreadful and expensive to park, difficult to find the patient concerned and uncomfortable to name a few disadvantages. No matter how much I want to visit the person it always fills me with dread. I have never been in hospital with any physical ailment but I can imagine that anyone who is ill looks forward eagerly to their visitors. And what about people who are ill at home, who need help with lifts to hospital and doctors appointments or need to be cared for physically? I deeply admire those who work in such places as hospitals and nursing homes because I cannot imagine myself coping with sick people. In this I am at my most goatish.

Recently someone confided to me that she had enjoyed being a part of her church until she was ill and found that nobody from the church came to see her. It changed her attitude towards the church. And it made me rethink mine towards visiting people.

Dis-ease manifests itself in a lot of ways. It is useful to sometimes consider our attitude to this, even to the political correctness which today surrounds our attitudes to dis-ability and there are all sorts of these both physical and mental. Note that Jesus does not say ‘I was sick and you healed me’. Sickness is a part of life and I imagine was much more in the time He lived on earth. Not everyone is healed and He didn’t heal anyone who was just going to get better on their own anyway. But he knew that those people often needed looking after while they recovered. It is far harder to care for a dying or chronically ill patient than it is to pray for and witness the miracle of healing or recovery.

Jesus went out of His way to touch lepers, who Mosaic Law demanded were excluded from the community. When I think of this I always remember Princess Diana when she reached out to touch AIDS patients and showed the whole world that it could be done. What she did was very ‘sheepish’. It is also impossible not to think of the work of Mother Theresa in Calcutta which continues in her name.

It was hard to find a bible reading to end this. The Bible does not talk a lot about nursing or visiting the sick, maybe because in the days before the NHS this was a normal part of life and just accepted, the sick would be looked after by families and friends. Perhaps the attitudes of the friends who brought the paralyzed man to Jesus reflect this. To be sheepish we are called to be carers.