Chaplain's Corner

Back on February 27th Bethesda Place celebrated 10 years since its opening. I was asked to put together a slide show of the ten years and as I did I got to pondering the number of people that have come and gone from Bethesda Place in the last 10 years. What shocked me as I put this together is how quickly people are forgotten. This forgetfulness is not on the part of the family of course, but on the part of the many others who cared for these individuals while they lived at Bethesda Place.

There were some pictures of folks that I hadn’t forgotten; people who left an impression on me for one reason or another. One little lady named Agnes whose mind had already been effected by dementia would often cuss a blue streak, most of the time quite indiscriminately – I haven’t forgotten her. A rather genteel English gentleman named Stephen who even though his mind was utterly ravaged by Alzheimer’s had a unique dignity with which he carried himself – I haven’t forgotten him. There was also a rotund, happy faced woman named Mary who seemed to leak joy, even after her body and mind failed her – I haven’t forgotten her.

The pictures of these and others stirred my memory and in the remembering there was joy. But then there was face after face that I looked at and had no recollection of a name, I could not remember anything about the person, no characteristic, no situation, nothing that they ever said or did. There were even a few pictures that I looked at and had to ask myself the question, “Did he or did she really live at Bethesda Place?” I had absolutely no recollection of these in my memory banks.

Then it hit me, someday, someone will be looking through pictures and they will see mine and I wonder, will I be remembered or will I be among the forgotten. Yes, someday, when I pass from this old world, there will be some, a very few I am certain, who will remember me as long as they live – then I will be forgotten. But most, will forget me and even if they see my picture somewhere will scratch their heads and wonder, “Who was that guy? I can’t remember him at all.”

This realization is the existential awareness of our smallness. Some feel their smallness when they stand under a starry sky and look out into the universe. Others feel their smallness as they sit on a bench at a shopping mall and watch hundreds of people walk by  and not even one nods or smiles an acknowledgement of their existence. Others feel their smallness when the orbit of their life brings them into contact with a person of note. But the fact of the matter is we are small. In the context of this world, of its 7 billion inhabitants, if a couple hundred know me, recognize me, remember me for any length of time after I am gone – that’s pretty good.

We work hard against our feeling of smallness. Sometimes we do that by keeping “our world” small. It is much easier to feel important, significant, to feel as if I matter if I narrow my world from 7 billion to a couple of dozen people. It is easier to be a small fish in a small pond than to be a small fish in the ocean. Other times we try to push against our feelings of smallness by seeking to inflate our importance: we do this with education, with accomplishment, or with influence. One of the more insidious, but common ways that we push against our sense of smallness is by making everyone around us feel small – by putting other people down. You have probably met one or more of these folks who just can’t seem to help putting everyone down. Somehow in doing this, they feel bigger, more important, more significant in their world.

It seems to be a common human experience to struggle with these feelings of smallness. And as I have observed the many ways people have pushed back against these feelings, I am saddened at how very dissatisfying these many attempts are and how the feelings seem to perpetuate despite our efforts to eliminate them.

Sickness, age and loss of vitality can take the “largest of us” and diminish us. A local politician develops dementia, end up in a nursing home and even though he was once almost bigger than life, in the end, he was just a frail, small man who died with few but his closest family by his side. A personal Care Home is a lesson in the smallness of the human condition, for it is a place where all that gave status in the outside world is left out there and every person once again becomes an equal, equally small, equally lacking the “bigness” that the human soul strives for.

The Bible acknowledges these common human feelings in a number of ways. Solomon, the third King of ancient Israel wrote, “Who knows what is good for a man in life, during the few and meaningless days he passes through like a shadow. Who can tell him what will happen under the sun after he is gone?” These words were written by a man who was “world renown”, extremely powerful, fabulously wealthy and who could had the leaders of the nations coming to listen to his wisdom, yet in this book written by Solomon, he laments the utter smallness of all of this. Solomon’s father David wrote, “As for man, his days are like grass, he flourishes like a flower of the field; the wind blows over it and it is gone and its place remembers it no more.” David, like Solomon was powerful, rich, feared and respected. Yet at the pinnacle of his accomplishment he realized that even in that exalted position, he was nothing, just like the grass of the field that withers, dries up then is gone.

Although the Bible recognizes the reality and commonness of these feelings it does not affirm them but refutes them by telling us that we are significant by virtue of the fact that God has chosen to consider us significant. This choice to consider people significant and God’s choice to extend his love to people are one and the same. The Bible asserts, “How great is the love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God!” or “In Jesus we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God’s grace that he lavished on us with all wisdom and understanding.”

When we reckon with these statements that God lavishes his love and grace on us it is hard to feel insignificant. After all, if the almighty, eternal Creator of all that is lavishes His love and grace on you or I, it provides us a foundation to believe that as small as we are, we are not insignificant. This is the only thing that prevents me from being swallowed by overwhelming feelings of insignificance.

Yes, someday, I will be gone and be little more than a memory in the minds of a few people that once loved me, that is if their minds remain intact and they remain unaffected by some dementing disease. Someday, everything I have done in this world will be forgotten and slip into the oblivion of the billions of others that slip away into the nothingness of being forgotten. BUT the thing that cures my despair over my smallness is my belief that God has promised never to forget me if I trust in Him, receive his Jesus as my Savior and live in the presence of His Spirit. And this hope is not mine alone, it is offered to everyone. I may be small and lack significance in this world, but because God loves me, I am not swallowed by despair. How about you? How have you come to deal with that encroaching sense of smallness that catches up with us all sooner or later?