CREEDE HINSHAW: Blessings from long-ago hospital visit resurfaces

Are you a person of faith who can approach life with confidence? Are you giving encouragement to others by the way you live?

I have been reviewing my journals from my days in active ministry, and today I reproduce an entry from one journal. I had long since forgotten this day; it represents the hidden blessings that every pastor receives from so many very fine church people. I must have written this entry almost immediately after having made two early morning hospital visits on a cold February day in 1997:

“Today I visited the Medical Center to see two church members who inspired me with their cheerfulness.

“Edith, 78, had lung surgery a few weeks ago. Doctors has miscommunicated between Emory and Macon, resulting in frustration and an irregular heartbeat. I see Edith on one of those hospital tables, hooked up to IVs, ready for a catheterization. Machines hover over her, two or three monitors record her vital signs. She is smiling and upbeat. She tells me that she had never been in a place where she has received so many smiles. But I know why she is the recipient of all this sunshine. It is because Edith herself smiles. She smiles broadly, regularly and sincerely. The smiles she receives are a reflection of her own trusting confidence and genuine love for others.

“Then I go upstairs, to the 4th floor, to see Cohen, 75. He has had surgery last night; not back to his room until 11 p.m. It was his second surgery in two days. Doctors opened the same incision a second time because it was draining improperly. He had received full anesthesia a second day. I find him in bed, cheerful and confident. I allow as how I’d be grumbling if I were him. (It’s true!) Sometimes I have the mistaken impression that misfortune should not befall me.

“Cohen smiles, shrugs, and says with all the folk in his church and family praying for he, he can’t help but get well. This is not a platitude said to the preacher. It is genuine.

“I leave the hospital. It is now 8 a.m., and I have received a gift for the day … and maybe longer. One does not produce such faith suddenly in the eighth decade of life. One cultivates this positive approach over decades. Here are two people who have given me a great gift, and they don’t even know it.

“There is a place for griping and grumbling. Sometimes this is the healthiest possible approach. The psalmist knew how to complain. To deny feelings of frustration is deadly to the very soul.

“But the psalmist also knew how to affirm life. ‘This is the day the Lord hath made. I will rejoice and be glad in it.’

“In the course of any given day the preacher hears both grumbling and praising. But this particular day started out with a healing, heaping dose of verbal vitamin C. It was a miserable cold day outside, but not for me.”