here I am; send me

In the hospital, the hiring manager for patient services has been telling Riley about a job serving meals to the hurting, the sick.

“No one wants to be in a hospital,” he explains to her in his office, “and so sometimes the patients won’t be very kind to you or happy to see you.  They will complain and frown, even when you’re doing your best work.”

Oh my.  I want to hide my head, having myself been, an uncountable number of times, among the weary and hurting and self-consumed, the frowning and complaining and unkind, the ungrateful; having been this way, an uncountable number of times, even to Riley when she only meant to do her best.

I’ve listened in through most of the interview, having been invited into the conversation by this man who at once seems to appreciate both Riley’s capabilities and her need for support; who, being someone who daily serves needy people, has wisdom enough to see that needing support doesn’t make a person less valuable.

I watch Riley’s body language, listen to the way her voice sounds as she readily agrees to the things he says.  She is quiet and focused, receiving possibilities beyond her with open humility, her eyes trained, her body still.  In my mind, I hear her voice like a bell, her open-hearted faith like Mary, how she always reminds me that whatever God wants is what will be, how she stays aware of her own limitations but still submissively focused on God’s limitlessness.  She wonders—I can see it in her yielded expression, her hands resting in her lap—if serving meals here in the hospital–is an opportunity God has in mind for her.

Briefly, she touches her brassy hair, done up in a slick bun on the back of her head.

Send me.  Send ME.

I can feel her thinking it.

As part of the interview, Mr. Manager tells Riley the story of a child he one day found writing on the wall outside of his office.

“That little boy had been running wild all over the hospital, killed three fish in the koi pond in the courtyard, trying to feed them bread.”  He holds up three thick fingers, to emphasize.

Riley only nods, shifting a little.  You would think she had seen this child and his dirty shoes, his feet thudding against the indoor carpet as he ran the length of the hallway.  I see him now, a ghost, and for my part, I nod too, feeling annoyed, feeling certain that I have already wondered aloud from time to time, critically and full of pride, why in the world no one is watching him.

“This kid was completely unsupervised and completely out of control,” Mr. Manager continues, leaning back in his chair.  “And everywhere he went in the hospital, he left a mess, things destroyed.  So, we had to investigate.”

The hospital investigation team, of whom Mr. Manager had been a part, eventually connected the child to the room of a patient, a woman who had been angrily berating the nutrition staff about her food for the better part of a week.

“Every day,” he tells Riley, “she had complained as much and as hard about her food as it took to get us to send her another plate.  We would have been right to be frustrated, to call her demanding and impossibly difficult.”

But the investigation team had also discovered that the patient, a single mom, new to the area and without friends or relatives or connections, had had no choice but to bring her son with her when an emergency brought her to the hospital for care.  She’d been calling every day to berate the staff and complain about her food to get them to bring her another meal for her son, that wayward kid running wild and unsupervised through the hospital.

“So, from then on, we just did everything we could to help her,” Mr. Manager said.  “We told her to order the two plates she needed, that it would be okay.”

Riley responds to this revelation with a number of compassionate sighs, leaning forward in her chair.

“My point is that we don’t ever know all the reasons why a person behaves as they do or says what they say or chooses what they choose, and so, we always need to treat the patients with kindness and patience, no matter how they act toward us, because remember, no one likes to be in the hospital.  Everyone who’s not on staff is here because they’re sick or injured or hurting in some way or because they love and worry about someone else who has to be here.”

The words of Jesus come to me—me, wanting to kneel right here on the office floor in recognition of grace.  It’s not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick.

This Jesus said in response to accusations, to pointed fingers jabbing the air, to sharp tongues calling into question the integrity of a religious leader who would share a meal with people of ill repute, of corrupted character, with exposed betrayers and rebels and sinners, when other religious leaders kept their distance, passing by on the other side.  This was how Jesus revealed God to be distinctly different from those who claimed to be His earthly representatives, by moving toward the hurting and the difficult, the troubled and irreligious, instead of away from them, precisely drawn by compassion for their immense need and untouched by their ingratitude or anger or prickliness.

Mr. Manager, I hear it in his voice, thinks all the patients in the hospital come under his personal care.

No one likes to be in a hospital.

What if I were to see it the same, to believe and receive that the Wounded One is my own?

Here we all are, ailing in our own individual ways, with all our shattered hearts, our groaning bodies, our sin-sickness and captivities, feverish with our other loves, our arrogance and pride, miserable with our divided hearts, filthy with self-righteousness.  Here we all once were, wounded and left in the ditch to die.

The whole broken world is a hospital, a community of the sick, the dead, and now, because of a Great Physician who would not keep His distance, of those in various stages of healing and rebirth.

My guess would be that very few of the patients know about Mr. Manager down here on the first floor, spending the night on an air mattress in his office when it snows because, his words, the patients still gotta eat.

My guess is that most of them don’t know anything about his work, how with compassion for them he manages his team, how he talks to everyone down here about patience—yes, patience for the patients–and kindness.  The patients really only know Mr. Manager through the workers he sends out on the floors.  It’s like he delivers the meals himself, but through the hands and feet of all his room service assistants, who carry his words and hopefully at least a bit of his compassion and vision for helping.

And who also are we in this story, the redeemed and repenting ones, the healing and reborn, except the ones descending to the foot washing beside our Christ, the ones carrying the food that lasts into all the hurting and hungry world.

I’m thinking I ought not to draw back so, ought not to seem so surprised, when miserable people don’t respond to me with gladness.

Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, our Jesus patiently teaches.  That’s the job, the following, the work that’s on offer, to draw near in love to the hurting and needy, to the heart-sick.

“Look, you can shadow me,” Mr. Manager says to Riley now, “and I’ll pair you with someone else for a while.  We’ll show you the way.”

In my heart, I hear an echo of come, follow me, like we’re standing in the byways, or out there in the hall, overwhelmed by a mission that’s holy and big, or standing by an altar ablaze.  There’s talk of benefits—Your reward will be great, for you will be children of the Most High God, who is kind to the ungrateful and the wicked, and an offer: Whom, then, shall I send?

Send me.  Send ME.

I’m thinking it too, just a holy whisper, as Riley and I follow Mr. Manager out into the hall, on our way to the elevators and home.

He finishes the interview by asking Riley if she thinks this job sounds like something she’d like to do, and does she have any questions for him?

“Yes,” she says, without hesitating at all, her cheeks flushed, her voice vibrant.  “When can I start?”