This past week I attended a minsitry briefing for Prison Fellowship Ministries. During a lunch, one gentleman, a lawyer by trade, said that he has a ministry in town that masquerades as a law firm.
We admitted a young person dying from cancer tonight. This patient has a young child and is married. It is one of the sadder cases we have had.
Our goals with this patient are the same as any other: to improve her life by relieving suffering, and love her and her family as Christ loves the world. With these aims, all of our team members provide spiritual comfort, not just the chaplain.
There will be for this young person many losses: loss of ability to go to the bathroom without assistance, loss of the ability to embrace a child, loss of so long a future in this life. There is receptivity here for God ministering through hospice aids, chaplains, social workers and nurses.
So how does this person’s lot square with Jesus’ desire that we “have life abundantly?” Here we have faith seeking understanding, and some of that understanding is acquired within suffering, and some through the care provided by other human beings.
But imagine the awfulness if this family were alone. No friends or family, no hospice family, no community. What misery they would experience during the death vigil. And what meaninglessness for the spouse when it was all over.
Where I am headed is that there is understanding and meaning available even when death takes a young person- because God loves through community. To that extent, we at Texas Hospice are a community of ministers operating under the guise of a hospice agency.
