Responding to the Human Condition
“Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.’” – Matthew 25:34-36 (NIV)
There’s no better place to observe the realities of our human condition than in the waiting area of a hospital’s emergency department. Here we see the world in microcosm, and here we must make choices – about how we judge others, about how we respond to others, about how we love or fail to love others.
Show up during non-peak hours, like say around 8 a.m. on a Saturday, and the staff will check you in quickly, get you back to for tests, poke you and prod you, and pepper you with questions. Before you can say “appendicitis,” you’ll be in and out of surgery and back home in time for dinner, which, of course, you won’t want to eat. But you’ll hardly have any memories of the waiting room.
Show up on a Friday afternoon, on the other hand, and you can expect a minimum five-hour wait. That’s when the people-watching-fun begins and, frankly, that’s when your faithfulness can be tested.
Will you respond in holiness or in haste? With encouragement or as a critic? With compassion or judgment? Will you sit silently among the hurting or will you be a witness to the ends of the earth, including the ER waiting room?
What you will see is a little bit of everything – the good, the bad, and the down-right bizarre. Here’s a few I have witnessed:
The rather loud lady making her way to the front desk every 20 minutes to inquire, rudely, about the reason for the delays and to make her case about the injustice and incompetence that keeps her waiting.
The front-desk clerk who never gets rattled by distraught, tired, sick, and frustrated patients who take out their frustrations on her, even though she has nothing to do with the fact that the place is woefully understaffed.
The brother and sister with their elderly mother, who clearly has an issue that could be handled at a walk-in clinic. Why the ER?
The distraught woman in her 70s who mumbles to herself and then begins asking random strangers if they will give her a ride home.
The young father holding his four or five-year-old son tenderly in his arms for well over an hour, the boy’s mother at their side, until they can get the child in for an x-Ray and, eventually, a cast on his arm.
The orderly who takes patients back for scans or x-rays and later returns them to the waiting area, all without ever losing the smile on his face or his commitment to help those who are suffering. “Need a blanket? I’ll get you one.”
No one goes to an emergency waiting room because they are feeling great and hoping to kick-back and enjoy the experience. We go because we aren’t well or because someone we care about isn’t well. And typically we go because the pain has reached a point where we consider the situation, well, an emergency.
“Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love.” – Ephesians 4:2 (NIV)
Waiting is not a good prescription for an emergency. And when we sit with our own pain and frustration while surrounded by the spectrum of the human condition, it’s easy to get selfish, bitter, judgmental, and angry. It’s easy to lash out, even at those who aren’t to blame.
But we don’t have to be in the middle of a five-hour visit to the emergency department to lose our patience with people and circumstances. We can do that on a call with customer service agent who speaks broken English, when the service or food in a restaurant is sub-par, while driving down Central Avenue, when we’re dealing with a contractor who has overpromised and underdelivered, or when we’re on a flight that’s been delayed.
“Do not be quickly provoked in your spirit, for anger resides in the lap of fools.” — Ecclesiastes 7:9
Perspective and attitude, of course, are everything. But, men, here’s the challenge. We can’t expect to respond with a godly perspective and attitude if we haven’t done regular spiritual workouts well in advance.
Why do we read and memorize scripture? Why do we pray continuously? Why do we ask God for patience, empathy, and compassion? Why do we practice godliness in small things, regardless of who sees us? So when life isn’t easy and we’re ambushed by the human condition, we can do as the Apostle John instructed.
“Dear children, let us not love with words or speech but with actions and in truth.” — 1 John 3:18 (NIV)
If we haven’t fed our roots with the Spirit, we won’t produce the fruit of the Spirit. Then we will get blindsided by the chaos and the craziness of the moment, giving in to our frustrations and giving up on love when the world around us needs it the most.
“Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up.” – Galatians 6:9
A quick personal story:
Several years ago my lovely wife and I boarded an airplane for a return flight from our Caribbean vacation. All was well until they announced a delay. Some folks on the inbound flight had somehow arrived without their passports and our plane couldn’t leave until they resolved the situation.
We had waited in the plane on the tarmac for nearly three hours when the folks without their passports got on our flight. They were going back to the USA, their vacation cut short. Rather than apologizing to the other passengers or just saying nothing, the couple walked down the aisle complaining about things like their seat assignments.
My wife said something to me, not to the couple, but the man overheard her and said something disrespectful to my wife. The tender warrior in me dropped his tenderness and, in words I can’t recall in precise detail, suggested the man sit down and shut his pie hole.
A flight attendant stepped forward to prevent escalation, but she wasn’t the real hero. The real hero was a woman sitting about two rows behind us on the other side of the aisle.
With the tension thick, this woman turned to the Holy Spirit, lifted her voice to God, and began to pray – out loud, in faith, and with love and truth in her voice.
All at once, Peace, capital P, filled the airplane cabin, and I felt both ashamed and blessed. Unlike me, this woman was ready for the unexpected. She had done the prework, she yielded her heart to the Holy Spirit, and in obedience she did what He told her to do.
The world is full of broken people – in emergency department waiting areas, on airplanes, and everywhere else we go each day. How we respond says everything about who is Lord in our lives – is it Jesus or is it our flesh? In my experience, it’s the one we’ve devoted the most time to each day long before we’re confronted by the human condition.
“The King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’” — Matthew 25:40 (NIV)