A liturgy for personal health.
I walk the halls of the hospital again.
It was all new to me when I first arrived years ago.
I wanted comfort, but its comfort felt so uncomfortable to me.
It came not at the hands of my loved ones but through the help of my new colleague.
Many times after, it has come, not through the familiar but through the foreign.
It has come through the words of students, reminding me of my body’s need for more of this and less of that and through texts from friends, insisting I rest more. Their reminders echo Your call to Wisdom. Help me heed Your wisdom.
It has come through hospitality from teammates who make an extra pot of soup or watch my children. Their kindness imitates Your humble service. Help me receive Your service.
It has come through health care workers who have taken time to send texts out of hours or who have even gone the extra distance to check in on me at my own home. Their faithful presence in time of need reflects Your own unchanging nature. Help me reflect on Your nature.
It has come through the hands of the nurses and doctors who encounter every disease, tirelessly working for the lives of others. Their healing hands are a whisper of Your kingdom, their patience and meticulous care a mirror of Your loving-kindness, and their courage to face sickness, brokenness, and death, an allusion to the One who conquered these realities once and for all.
Help the foreign become familiar and the uncomfortable become comforting.
Help me receive their hands as Your hands, a gift given in my time of need.
As they reach out to embrace me, the foreigner, may I reach out to embrace them, loving them as myself.
And as they touch the brokenness of my body may the reality of Your body broken manifest in our interactions, touching them back, healing their brokenness,
For not one of us is well; we all cry out for a Doctor.
May the broken body serve as a reminder of the body broken.
For us. For them.
Amen.
—Jean Morton
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