Life: a bowl of mixed everything. Good, bad, ups and downs, sideways and everything in between. It looks kind of like a fruit bowl except when you start to move things around with your spoon, you find vegetables, you know hunks of cabbage, onion, broccoli, and possibly a brussel sprout, mixed in with your fruit. You ponder what kind of fruit bowl this is when you discover a couple rocks and still shelled nuts that have sunk to the bottom.
Life… a mixture of everything and it does not seem to make sense, totally random.
We all can look back on our past and see the delightful times when we did not think we could be happier; life was good and there was laughter. There are the times we find that the length of one day was excruciating, and we did not think we had the strength to get through it and then that day stretched on into more days and weeks. We are not sure how we survived those days.
Some days we find ourselves at odds with the world, everything and everyone seems to be against us and we wish we had not got out of bed.
Life… which one? Oh boy, that is quite the question.
We are human beings with a body, spirit and soul. We walk the path of both this physical present world that we can see and the spiritual world that we cannot, but we can sure feel it. Not sure?
How many of you can recall a time when you entered a place, a store, a house, somewhere and you could “sense” a presence of evil or darkness or something that made your insides uneasy and question your safety? That is the spiritual world. Life is a mixture of both. Tough to navigate when you cannot see and that makes the spiritual side a little trickier. It is estimated that most people believe that they have a guardian angel, sometimes you feel their presence – that is the spiritual.
I am feeling a “pressure”, it is a spiritual pressure and it feels like coming up against something that you cannot see, but it seems solid and unmoveable. Best described as perhaps birth pains, it started slowly and has been getting more and more intense in nature and seems to be affecting the world, our country and I am sensing it in my family as well.
Last week we had a week that our family does not ever wish to encounter again, probably one of the rocks at the bottom of the bowl. Bite into that and you will loose some teeth or worse, we encountered the worse.
My oldest son had some medical issues and Tuesday found him sitting in the waiting room at the emergency of the hospital. The waiting room…. Glen who is a diabetic and had blood sugars way out of whack had also thrown up some blood. The tirage nurse for some reason thought this could be an infection so she sent him to the “isolation” part of the waiting room. Anyone with signs of covid or infection had to go here. We have a brand new hospital and I have to tell you the “isolation” part is a bit of a joke. It is one big open room with a half wall in between non isolation and isolation. I am not sure if germs cannot scale a half wall but it seemed rather silly to think that we were in any kind of isolation.
Glen sat there from 12:00 noon until after 7:00pm before anyone could see him. No one in the isolation part moved from 11:30 am until they called 4 people at 7pm. The other side moved every few hours. One dear lady sitting with us had a broken arm. You do not need any medical training to know her arm was broken, you could see it. She had to sit there and endure the pain all that time, we watched her go in and out of shock. She had answered yes to one of the 20 covid questions so she got sidelined. Glen had gotten her some ice and when I arrived a couple hours later I asked the nurse if they could please give her something for pain as she was in a lot. An hour and a half later she got a shot but was still not seen.
A little girl probably 5 or 6 sat that whole time with suspected appendicitis, she had tested for a fever and that is a covid symptom. Of course, she had a fever if she had appendicitis. And Glen sat that whole time wanting to just go home because he really did not feel well and to just “sit” for 7 hours was a bit much.
Now many of you are probably responding with all the vaccine and non vaccine questions, covid or not but to be honest those questions were not even asked at this point. It was strictly the waiting area. It was exactly how I remembered the emergency department when I went through 3 years of my own medical stuff a few years ago. New hospital, but it had not changed the “waiting”.
He eventually got seen and was booked for a scope in the morning, he went home to sleep in his own bed. Sometime in the night an artery in his esophagus burst open. His brother who he lives with got up at 5:30am to find blood everywhere and his brother in severe distress. 911 responded immediately. I am not sure what time I arrived at the hospital but I walked in to find a very critical and white looking son laying there. Nurses were everywhere and Glen did not lack for attention that day: they were wonderful. He got a scope and they clamped off the artery and were able to help save his life. I say ‘they were able to help’ because upon analysis of the situation, timing, the amount of blood loss, his almost nonexistent blood pressure and everything else, there is no doubt of the miracles that God did that day. God ultimately used people to help save his life, but spiritually, it was all God directed. Glen had lost half his blood when he arrived at the hospital – he was in dire condition.
Glen himself attests to the fact that he believed Jesus visited him in the trauma room that morning. Glen had a few days in the hospital and was taken very good care of, it seems you just have to get past the waiting room.
Last week we learned that life can changed in the blink of an eye. You are not guaranteed your next breath, we assume we will do this or that today or tomorrow but in reality, you do not have control of your today’s or tomorrow’s, God does.
Glen’s intense time reminds me of the intense time in our country and around the world right now. It is intense, it is painful and it looks bleak for change, it is like sitting in the waiting room of emergency, waiting for some help. Some of us trying to figure out what is going on and get help, some of us in the back getting work done, and some of us have given up because it all looks to out of control. Both sides are fighting, both sides have opinions, some truth, some lies, both believe they are right. It almost looks like our country is not going to make it, that the rip down the middle is too much, irrepairable. But God….
We had no say in the outcome of Glen’s experience, we could ask, we could beg, we prayed, but ultimately it was God’s decision.
Our country’s fate in also in those same hands and I am sensing to remind each of us today to read the following scripture and do your part. For you see it is not about you and your opinion, it is not about me and my opinion, all our opinions have done is to create hostility, division and hate on either side. That is not Canadian. It is about what is best for our country and for you and me, why was Canada created? What values does our country stand for? Our national anthem states: “God keep our land, glorious and free…” God was involved in the foundation of our country, we have kicked Him out and still expect Him to bless us.
In the blink of an eye life can all change, for good or for not.
Perhaps it is time to put the Lords Prayer back into the schools, into our meetings, our homes, into our everyday lives, for God says:
”When I shut up the heavens so that there is no rain, or command locusts to devour the land or send a plague among my people, if my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and I will forgive their sin and will heal their land. Now my eyes will be open and my ears attentive to the prayers offered in this place.” 2 Chronicles 7:13-15
Please join me in reciting the Lords Prayer – learn it, use it, memorize it, teach it to your children, your grand children, and their children. Then play our national anthem, “O Canada” and sing as if your country depends upon it.
“Our Father, which art in heaven,
Hallowed by thy Name.
Thy Kingdom come.
Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread.
And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive them that trespass against us.
And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.
For thine is the kingdom, the power and the glory.
For ever and ever.
Amen.”
Matthew 6:9-13