The awaiting room...

O God, the protector of all who trust in you, without whom nothing is strong, nothing is holy: Increase and multiply upon us your mercy; that, with you as our ruler and guide, we may so pass through things temporal, that we lose not the things eternal; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

This Sunday follows the General Convention of the Episcopal Church. I go to the General Convention in a support capacity. I use the time to interview people for possible placement in the Diocese and to do those things that the Deputation is simply too busy to do. Their schedule is trying, sometimes beginning at 7:00 AM and going on until 9 or 10 o'clock at night.

When leaving for a dinner break, one of our Deputies fell and twisted her ankle. My wife sent me a text message to let me know. Soon, Bonnie Jean and I were sitting in the waiting room of the Emergency Department of the UC Irvine Medical Center, Orange County, CA. My wife went in to see the patient first, leaving me to survey a place I had no plans to visit.

All pastors have spent time in waiting rooms and this one was unexceptional: droning TV, receptionist behind a glass wall, aging plastic furniture. I'm sure you get the picture. However, the people in the room told another story:

• A young Asian couple anxiously reading a book together, their faces telling a story of quiet, suppressed anxiety.
• A very large man, there with his aging mother, snoring loudly and carelessly, suffering from untold gastric ailment. He drove his cab to the hospital.
• A wedding party stood outside. Evidently, a member of the wedding party suffered some type of injury. I assume it was a minor one as no one saw a reason to stop the celebration.
• A young man, trembling, obviously suffering from drug withdrawal.

There was a good chance that I was the only person in the room that spoke English as a native language and, thanks to the generosity of the Diocese of Southwest Florida and the Episcopal Church Medical Trust, I was probably the only one to have an insurance card as well. This is a teaching hospital in a tough neighborhood. Unlike the attendees of the General Convention, these people were not policy makers or leaders. They were here because they had no other place to be. They were sick and suffering. Their 12-hour days were laid upon them by others.

The irony of this is that a few hours previously, I was praying for God to use me in a way that was pleasing to Him. I puzzled as to how my presence in an emergency room might be pleasing to God as I was unable to be of much help, I could not relieve anyone's suffering and as my Spanish, Vietnamese and Russian is almost non-existent, my prayers would be unknown to any of these people. Like those newly-freed Hebrews of the Exodus, I longed for the fleshpots of Egypt, or at least, the lobby of the Hilton where the important people were.

It then occurred to me that this had nothing to do with me at all. I was just like the rest of the folks there in the waiting room, needing help, looking for health, standing in the need of prayer. I thanked God for placing me there, thanked God for the snoring cab driver and his worried mother, for the ushers smoking cigarettes outside, for the worried Asian couple and for the junkie trembling nearby. This was another type of General Convention, delegates from a world that God loved so much that he gave his only begotten Son to the end that all that believe in Him should not perish.

The Gospel reading for this day has Jesus departing from the spectacular feeding of the 5,000 and going off to be alone to pray. During those times when our church gathers for big meetings, hears from world leaders, and sets policy, my trip to UC Irvine reminds me that it is important to put the spectacular in its place. Our vocation involves a retreat from the spectacular and a headlong charge to those places where God awaits.