Conversations in the ICU
“I tell you, open your eyes and look at the fields! They are ripe for harvest. Even now the one who reaps draws a wage and harvests a crop for eternal life, so that the sower and the reaper may be glad together.”
John 4:35-36, NIV
A few years ago, I was sitting in an Intensive Care Unit at a hospital in which I was serving as a Chaplain Intern. I spent many hours sitting with the nurses, often talking about life. Throughout the summer, we had been through a lot together: we cared for the same patients and loved them for however long they were with us. The nurses attended to the physical needs of the patients while I cared for their spiritual and emotional needs. After a few months of working together, our conversations went from talking about the weather to deeper subjects. We talked about friendships, family, love, death and, sometimes, we even talked about God. Many of the nurses had not been in a church since their childhood, and a few had never been in a church. Over the months of having these deep conversations, I began to hear some common themes.
First, what is life all about? Second, if there is a God, does He have a plan for my life? And third, how does Jesus fit into all this? These questions were asked not in a church office or during Sunday School hours, but in a busy hospital ICU. I came to realize that people still asked the deep questions of who God is, does He care about me and how Jesus fits into all this. Yet, they weren’t coming to a church to get their questions answered. They were asking them among friends and colleagues at work, at the local bar or over dinner in the comfort of someone’s home.
It was an eye-opening experience — and a wake-up call — for the state of the church and our responsibility today. You see, we can no longer sit at the front door of the church and expect people to simply show up. Many people ask the big questions, but they are doing so somewhere (heck, anywhere) other than in a church. This is a call for us to be creative and to think outside the box. Our message hasn’t changed, but where we say it and how we do so must be re-evaluated.
This is a challenge, but I hope it also excites you. God is calling you and me to think afresh about ministry, and He is pushing us towards our neighbors who desperately need to hear the Good News of Jesus.
