Sitting in a hospital A&E waiting room is a great chance to think
- that is, as long as you're not in agony! All sorts of people come
and go; you see the doctors, nurses and other staff beavering away;
and you catch snippets of why people have ended up there, then try to
fill in the gaps.
In one way the A&E department is a great leveller. Young and
old, rich and poor, clumsy and careful - anyone can find themselves
there, often through no fault of their own. And you get prioritised
for treatment there on the basis of how urgent your need is, not on
how clever or pretty or popular you are. But this fact is also what
makes A&E waiting rooms sometimes very frustrating places to be
and ones that induce many negative feelings, alongside the physical
pain.
We all understand that the order you will be seen in depends on the
merits, or demerits, of your problem. But the longer you have to
wait there, the more you start trying to second-guess what people's
needs are. As you look around the waiting room you rank the people
there according to your perception of their condition and other
factors such as age, and place yourself mentally in that list too.
Then when people you think are less of a priority than you get called
to triage or for treatment ahead of you, feelings of disappointment
and puzzlement start to well up inside you. The longer this goes on
and the more this happens, those feelings of disappointment turn into
frustration and anger. So when you came in you were quite willing to
accept that those with more serious problems would be seen first but
now every time someone else gets called, you have to fight the urge
to stand up and shout “What about me? I'm more deserving than they
are!!” A system that's designed to be fair ends up arousing
feelings of anger and envy.
Lent is an opportunity for us to face up to our faults and failings.
Although we will often say that “nobody's perfect” (or as the
Bible puts it “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God”
[Romans 3:23]), we also like to rank ourselves in comparison with
others and our perception of their sins. With this mindset the
gospel of Jesus becomes very offensive. We are like the prodigal
son's older brother who complains that his father forgives the
rebellious son (Luke 15:11-32); or like the workers who work all day
in the vineyard and complain that those who have only worked for one
hour get the same pay (Matthew 20:1-16). We like the idea of
forgiveness, but only when it is offered to those we think deserve
it! This was the reason Jonah ran away: he didn't want God to
forgive the evil Ninevehites (Jonah 4:1-2)! Whenever we feel like
that, we've forgotten that God doesn't need a triage unit: all of us
have the same condition – sin; all of us have the same prognosis –
death sentence; and all of us need the same remedy – forgiveness
through the Divine Physician, who was crushed for our sins and by
whose wounds we are healed. (Isaiah 53:4-6).
So this Lent, let us admit to our own failings, including our
feelings of superiority and good-enough-ness; ask God for
forgiveness; and find in him healing and new life.
