i had a real cool experience today. the dad of a youth who graduated two years ago had a heart valve collapse and was rushed to the i.c.u. a local hospital. our senior pastor, bill, and i went to the hospital to visit with him. we went to the icu waiting room looking for family members but couldn’t find any. since it was visiting time we figured the family was probably in the room visiting with the dad and therefore we thought we would hang out for awhile. while waiting we accidentally overhead a doctor telling two women who were not related to the dad we were trying to see that they would need to consider signing a “do not resuscitate” order on their son/brother. it was a rough experience for them. bill and i stayed waiting for visiting time to end hoping that the family from the father we wanted to visit would step out. the doctor’s conversation with the mom & sister of the dnr patient became more difficult and eventually the doctor just point-blank explained what he wanted them to know and left the mom and sister crying in the hall way.
it was at that point that we realized JESUS was standing in front of us waiting to be comforted. i got the chance to walk over, introduce myself, and ask if there was anything we could do. all they needed was a chance to talk through what had just happened and then pray over it. so that’s what we did. we listened, and listened, and when they had said enough we prayed. after we prayed the doctor had come back to walk through everything once again. bill and i decided to try and leave a note for the dad we had come to visit. it turns out he had been moved to another hospital an hour or two before. the whole time we had been at the wrong hospital yet it still felt like the right one to me.