By the Waters of Babylon – Ps 137:1
“Finding Hope”
There was once a teacher whose job it was to visit children in a big hospital and help them keep up with their lessons. When she was given the name and room number of one particular boy, she first called his regular teacher and learned that his class was studying nouns and verbs.
It wasn’t until the visiting teacher got to the door of the boy’s room that she realized he was on the burn unit. She was not prepared for the sight of a badly burned little boy, racked with terrible pain. Yet, she had agreed to come, and so she walked into his room and told the boy she had come to teach him about nouns and verbs.
The grammar session did not go well. The patient was very uncomfortable. He found it hard to concentrate. As for the teacher, she wondered about the wisdom of putting this critically injured little boy through such an exercise.
The next day, a nurse from the burn unit came up to the teacher and asked, “What on earth did you do to that boy? !”
The teacher was ready to apologize, but the nurse went on, “We’ve been very worried about him, but ever since you were here yesterday, his whole attitude has changed. Now he’s fighting back, responding to treatment. For whatever reason, he has decided to live!”
Later on, after he was healed and left the hospital, the boy explained the change in his attitude. The nurse was correct. He had completely given up hope – until he saw that teacher. Looking at her as she stood at the foot of his bed, he said to himself, “They wouldn’t send a teacher to work on nouns and verbs with a boy who was about to die, would they?”
Our present state of mind and heart in this pandemic seems pretty dim right now. The world is always in one form of pain or another. But, ask yourself, would God have sent his Son to work on our pain if he did not think we were worth it? We can and will heal.
