More than watchmen for the morning

My little boy was hospitalized Tuesday for croup (for the third time) He's totally fine now, but I was exhausted by the experience and Thursday I was whining to my sister about my string of humiliations over the past week and a half (only some of which have shown up on Sarcastic Lutheran). She mentioned that perhaps God was humbling me, so that I have planty of practice for when I'm a pastor. My first thought was "thanks a lot bitch". my second thought was "I'm so grateful to have a deeply spiritual sister who can speak the truth to me". I think she's on to something. There are lessons to be learned from the past couple of weeks that would haave been impossible to learn from success-success-success.
Last night I was the volunteer on-call chaplain at the hospital and ended up spending two hours with a young couple who had just lost thier baby...the mother, 7 months pregnant, was in an accident and the baby couldn't be saved from the emergency c-section. Really all I did was sit with them, I'm no ace-chaplain, but driving home I wonder how my spirit while in that room with them and their tiny deceased baby would have been a little different if I had just experienced 2 weeks of utter success in my life.

Dear God,
When I complain about stuff, forgive me.
Teach me to wait for you.
More than watchmen for the morning.
More than watchmen for the morning.
In Jesus' name,
AMEN

Comments

[MadPriest]

I doubt if God humbles people. I think life in general can be humbling if you have faith and I am certain that anything that life throws at us, good or bad, will be redeemed by God if we wait patiently and if we allow him to do it. However, the bad news is that sometimes the person who suffers is not the main beneficiary of the redemption (see Jesus Christ and pretty much every other Christian who has ever lived).

[Nadia]

That's good MP, a helpful perspective. I think you're right about the waiting for God to redeem our shit. I like that. I also think the act of having God redeem the gross stuff is beneficial in a way that having no gross stuff at all can never be.

[terri c]

So sorry to hear about kiddo with croup, scary all round I should imagine. Am glad the young couple had your presence to help keep the world from spinning off its axis. When it all hits the fan, it makes such a HUGE difference just having someone really THERE.