Chaplain's Corner

The first 22 years of my career I worked in isolation. I was the pastor of small congregations, I was the only staff member and I would get up and go to my office each day and the building was absolutely empty. Of course I didn’t spend forty hours a week in a little office in the back corner of a church. There was a lot of caring: seniors, shut-in, those in hospital and nursing homes. There were the regular visits with members of the congregation and meetings with people that were new to the church. But each morning I went to an empty building and started my day in solitude.

This was never a problem for me, I am quite comfortable with myself and solitude has never been a problem for me; since becoming a health care chaplain that has changed. Now I get up every morning and go work where there is little solitude: staff members, patients, people coming and going to the lab or to visiting. Hospitals are busy places.

I’m not very good at remembering names but I work hard at it. It is one way that we let people know that we care about them personally. As I move throughout the facility I try to stop and talk to staff and visitors. Sometimes I am asked to pray for a family member or situation, other times it is a request for personal problems. Sometimes we stop and pray right where we are, other times I pray for these people alone. There is this instinctive awareness within the human heart that knows that when things get tough and out of control we should pray.

Prayer is always about people and God. Prayer is about people reaching out to God for help. At times prayer comes out of desperation, like a downing person screaming “HELP”. Prayer at times comes out of our awareness that we have ignored God and is a desperate cry for God not to ignore us. Sadly, all too often the only time people pray is in disparate times of need.

Prayer can be much more. God didn’t create us and give us the freedom he has so that he could be our cosmic lifeguard, swooping in to save us from disaster. At times he does this and at others he doesn’t leading many people to doubt that God exists or if he does, doubt he cares. God created us and gave us the freedom he did because he wants to live in relationship with us. He wants more than prayers of desperation; he wants conversation, he wants a regular, personal connection with each of us.

Many of us fear this, for we have gotten the idea in our minds that God wants to control us; that he wants to strip us of our freedom and make us into dutiful and obedient, mindless subjects. This idea is unfortunately a device designed and propagated by God’s enemies to create fear in our hearts of God. What God wants is authentic, real relationship with us. He gave us freedom so that the relationship wouldn’t be manipulated or coerced, so that we could chose to connect with him or chose to ignore him.

I pray many times a day. Oh not the formal prayers of a prayer book, not that there is anything wrong with those prayers, but all day long I talk to God: asking for his guidance, apologizing for blowing it, thanking Him for caring, asking Him to help others. I find that God is my closest and dearest companion. He’s always with me, never turns on me, even when I mess up, and gives me the strength to care for others and face the challenges of life. In my life being connected with God is what gives my life meaning. What about you?