By James Lamkin

 

"An 'Amongst Us' Theology"
 
       The night before I boarded the airplane, I pulled the night shift at the hospital; then slept in the on-call room. The next day I worked until noon before driving to DFW airport. That was the summer when I was a Chaplain Intern at Baylor Medical Center in Dallas, TX.
       Mid-seminary, I had signed-up for Clinical Pastoral Education (CPE). It is a hands-on training process for ministers. Students go and do ministry, then reflect upon it theologically, receive supervision and peer group perspectives, while working on personal strengths and growing edges. All of this happens amid pastoral visits to the ICU, the CCU, the maternity floor, the cancer treatment center, the emergency department, as well as patient rooms.
       I think it is a pretty ingenious laboratory for a pastor's personal growth. I've been a CPE evangelist ever since.
       On that Friday afternoon, I boarded my first Delta jet to fly to Monroe, LA. As you know, that's Delta's hometown. I was 24 years old by then, but like a kid, my nose was glued to the window wowed by the sight of the city below.  I distinctly remember flying over the twin towers of Baylor Hospital.
       This was my first airplane flight; and the oddest thought hit me. It is odder still that I recall it now 33 years later. "With painless ease," I thought, "we fly over pain."
       Baylor had over 700 beds. Multiply that by multiple family members impacted by every injury and disease of every patient.
       I thought of Mrs. Williams who was sitting at that moment, wearily, in the fourth floor waiting room as she had done for two months. I thought of Bill and Betty Jones weeping through their masks while holding their all-too-fragile premature baby in the neonatal unit. I thought of Bob and his long fight with chemotherapy and the fatigue and fear in his family's faces as they held hands and held on.
       The life and death struggles, the weeks and months of longsuffering, the expensive and exhaustive decisions made by docs in split-seconds that change the course of history...all these were happening as the plane distantly flew over the hospital which then hid beneath the summer's haze and disappeared under the clouds.
       "I am not far from the pain," I thought, "only about 2,000 feet." That's only one Texas-sized parking lot at Six Flags; but it was miles away from the hospital stretcher that lay alone, covered with a hauntingly quiet sheet, in Room #3 of the trauma center.
       Just today, a Northside Driver reminded me of the early Christian hymn in Philippians 2. Scholars call it the kenosis, the self-emptying, passage. It is Jesus' story---where the Immortal becomes mortal among us and dies among us by a "cross kind of death" among us. But, God raises him up---among us.
       The punch line is: God did not choose "with painless ease to fly over pain." Rather, God got among us and our pain.
       Believing that may not always help; but sometimes, on these hot summer days, as various hurts and fears come our way---remembering the amongstness of God may make a difference.

 

     Helping Hands Home Assistance's focus is to link seniors, disabled persons, and their families with needed services. The 2010 Senior Information Awareness Fair will be Friday, September 10, 2010, from 10 AM-4 PM, at the Kia Center in Decatur, GA. There will be an opening ceremony followed by a keynote address and the opening up of health screenings, an exhibitor floor and workshops on senior issues.

     [Helping Hands Home Assistance, Inc. (HHHA) is a non-profit 501 (c)(3) organization founded in 2002 to serve senior citizens and people with disabilities. The organization helps them to live independently in their own homes by providing medical and non-medical services often times at minimal or no-cost to clients. HHHA uses funds from private pay, sliding fee scale, long-term insurance, Medicaid, other health insurance and government programs to cover the cost of care for people who otherwise would not be able to afford it.]          HHHA Flyer 1          HHHA Flyer 2