Reflection for Thursday, Feb 28, 2008

(Note, we've missed a few days due to technical confusions, snowdays and the flu, but we've kept reading on our own. See the calendar at the bottom of the page for each day's reading.)

Romans 8:31-39

God in the ER.

Last night, I took James to the ER. At 5:30pm, he started projectile vomiting and everything else and then just went limp after an hour. It is scary for a parent to see her child so listless and vulnerable. This is the part of the atonement that I have never understood, the part about God, a Father that would sacrifice his son. And yet, I know that God feels the pain of parents and children who suffer. In the ER, David and I, although confused about James, felt lucky. There was a toddler with a large head wound, a 5-year old girl with very painful condition similar to kidney stones that required multiple CT scans, a teenager with a sever asthma attack and no parents around, and a 12 week-old with 103 degree fever. The room needed a lot of prayers. When faced with another person’s suffering and with my own helplessness, I often ask, “where is God in this place?” I’ve always loved this passage because it seems to ask the same question I ask in these situations: “Who will separate us from the love of Christ?” Hardship? That 5-year old had gotten used to all the needles and tests at a young age. Distress? Parents who can’t fix it for their child, live with stress every moment. Famine? James stomach went from jolly to sunken in just 2 hours without nutrition, I can’t imagine not being able to feed my child for days. Nakedness? In different states of undress or just in confusion and at a loss, we were all vulnerable. Peril? War? Do these separate us from God’s love? It feels like it, but (at the risk of sounding like a Huckabee campaign) isn't God's love "more than a feeling."

So I was surprised to open my Bible today and find my favorite passage waiting for me on my day to reflect: Romans 8:38-39
“For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

James is on the mend. I hope too are the other infant, the toddler, and Leah, the 5-year old and Leah, the 14-year-old, (there was cute moment when the doctors got confused by the Leah’s and for a moment they left their own fear of their condition and identified with the other’s). Mended or not, they are not alone, not alone in their suffering as God as Jesus too has suffered great pain nor parents alone in their distress, for God too has known their vulnerability. I guess God, too, was in the ER.