ATTENTION: Wedding in ICU

As a pastor, I am not a stranger to hospitals.  I find myself going there from time to time to visit the sick hoping that as I come near that people might be reminded of the nearness of the Great Physician.  A few weeks ago,  I found myself on the ICU unit at our local hospital.   When you are on the ICU unit today, you are seriously ill.   As I was there,  I thought about another time when I was on that same ICU unit for a happy occasion.  The happy occasion was to officiate at the wedding of a young man who had a brain tumor and his fiancée.  As I recall, the prognosis for the young man was bleak.  As he prepared for surgery,  the young man and his fiancée wanted to get married whether the future brought them “sickness or health”.  The ICU staff was very accommodating even providing a small wedding cake for the occasion.  In a place often filled with the sound of  beeping life-monitoring equipment, there was the sound of wedding bells that day. In a hospital unit where people sometimes hold on for their life, a young man and a young woman started a new life. 

I think of that story during this Holy Week.  There is much about the story of the final days of Jesus’s life that seems so dark- a betrayal, an arrest, beatings, a trial, a cross,and a death.   And then, there comes the first day of the week and a visit to a cemetery.   Like ICU units, cemeteries are not the kind of place that often make us feel giddy and happy.    A visit to a cemetery can be mournful and painful.     Yet, a visit to the grave was different that day for Mary, Peter, and all the rest because the tomb was empty.    New life began in an ICU unit years ago as a man and a woman made vows to one another, and new life began in that cemetery on that first Easter day because Christ Jesus was alive and not dead.     Easter is the story of the truth that sometimes the best of life can come in the worst of times and places.   Easter is the story of life indeed that we know in Christ.  Whatever you face in these days,  may you discover hope and joy not because your life is so good, but because God is good and Christ lives.   Have a joy-filled Easter.-  Pastor Randy Wall

 

Prayer:    O God,  I  give thanks that you show up in the darkest of times and places.  I give thanks for Easter and that Christ Jesus lives.  May the resurrection truth be true for me; through the living Christ I pray.  Amen.