being met

     God meets you where you are, and provides you with what yo ucan handle. Today is my first "on call" at JFK medical. Loathing the day for fear of being riddled with intense situations that I, as a newbie, am unprepared to handle, I was not even looking forward to what I was able to succeed at last week--the pop-in.
     However, God gave me four profound vists this morning that have allowed me to see His presence with me in this journey.
     I got to pray with one patient, who afterwards was in tears. Not because of my rambling, uncertain prayer, but because prayer reveals that God has and is and will be present in her room along this scary journey.
     Two patients were rather stand-offish but eventually warmed up to me and talked with me for over a half-hour.
     One man, however, was the cleverest of them all. When I entered, he quickly tried to dismiss me with little eye-contact and "yeah, thanks" remarks. Irritated that I stil had not left, he came up with the only question that will send a chaplain sprinting from a room, "Could you get me a Bible I could have?"
     Excited to be given this mission for God, I ran to the chaplain office and snagged the Gideons we have stored. Upon my quick return the gentleman asked, "so what faith are you." When I responded with Presbyterian, he said, really? "Me too, well kinda of, I have not been in decades, but am a member at A. Presbyterian." This commonality led to a plesantly brief conversation.
     About ten minutes later he came into the chaplain office with his hospital gown blowing in the wind. He was concerned because the Gideons had stamped, "Please do not remove this from the room." And he wanted to keep the Bible. I informed him that he could most certainly keep the Bible and if the Gideons wanted it back I would get them another, myself.
     Later that afternoon when I had time to reflect. I was overwhelmed by the way God opened up the man's heart so that the patient would be atuned to his own spiritual needs. Being at first uninterested in this "chaplain" standing in his hospital room, eventually led the man to have his own Bible to read--for the first time in a long time--during the long, lonely nights on the hospital ward.
     It is in this random, onnocous encounters that I believe God mets us.