By Jim Nichols

How many loaves do you have?
Why are you afraid? 
Who are my mother and brothers?
What do you want me to do for you?
Who do you say that I am?

A quick Google search for “questions Jesus asks” yields a staggering 135 and who knows how accurate that is. It is a topic worth considering at another time, but it does make the point that much important learning (including spiritual learning) occurs because of a well-phrased question.

Hospitals are questioning places. The care offered by the medical staff depends on them asking correct and pertinent questions; depending on the answers they get from blood tests, scans, physical diagnosis, and answers from the patients themselves lead to the types of care offered. 

The medical people are not the only ones asking questions, however. Whether verbalized or not, the patients (and those family and friends involved) are brimming with questions of their own. Many of those questions are difficult and bring the questioners to life points they may not have approached before and might just as soon avoid.

A hospital administrator told me that 40 percent of the hospital admissions come through the emergency room. That would mean that 40 percent of the people in the hospital had no intention of coming to the hospital that day. That sets the stage for significant and numerous questions.

In the emergency room, as you would expect, there is a variety of responses to what is a foreign set of surroundings, odors, sounds, and people. The patients are injured or ill, but those family and friends accompanying them often have the most questions. Occasionally, those questions border on the irritable side as they ask about every medication or IV adjustment or test that is administered to the patient. These are reasonable questions, and the medical staff is adept and kind in their responses. The emergency room is a place where much information must be repeated to be sure everyone is working from the same bases.

Among the most difficult questions asked are those in the Intensive Care Unit. The level of medical care there is most consistent and elaborate; there are tubes and wires and flashing lights everywhere. Verbalized questions from the patient are few, but the stated and unstated ones from the loved ones around the bed may be many.

Recently, an adult child at the side of a dying parent asked, “How does one prepare for this?”

What response would you have given?

I would suggest to you that platitudes do not work here, but truthful kindness is appropriate. These are times that await each of us. That does not mean that we dwell with fear of this unknown time, but an adult seeking to grow must keep it in mind as reality. Standing by the side of the bed, we face human physical weakness, including our own.

My experience is that the illness and death of a loved one moves through stages. What at first seems traumatic soon transitions to some degree of calm as the beginnings of acceptance occur. I have also been impressed by the number of friends and family who offer support. Even someone who might seem to be the most alone has at least a few people looking toward him or her. Trust me in that; it is true.

Funerals illustrate several feelings. An aspect of celebration is certainly appropriate at the loss of a follower of God. The moment is truly the culmination of a life of faith. But celebrations can devolve into a happy-clappy event that seems to be designed to masquerade a truly critical event in life.

We can come to know about God by reading the Bible and through the writings of other followers. However, we come to meet God in prayer and by sampling/living in the times and places where God is most obvious, places where God and our humanness seem to touch in mysterious but unmistakable ways. We need to have ears to hear and eyes to see in these few places and times where God seems closest to us.

These end times may be one of the most complicated few hours in the lives of participants and it is reasonable for us to try to use them to grow in understanding of the blessings and realities of our lives.

 I understand these are hard sayings.

Jim Nichols is a retired Abilene Christian University biology professor and current hospital chaplain