The Lights

We lined up in front of the old folks and sang a few songs, read the Easter story to them and discussed its meaning.  It was strangely fulfilling, listening to the elderly voices joined together with hymns, the songs most familiar to them.

Driving home that day I thought about how draining it would be to serve regularly in a nursing home. As I passed houses and trees, I realized how thankless it could be, not being remembered from week to week. Watching people you grow fond of slipping away, slowly or quickly. Watching death take its toll at the end of every life.

But they go every week anyway. These two are a special couple; married later in life with no children of their own, they found their ministry niche in the nursing home community. It isn’t a flashy place with state-of-the art technology or the best doctors in town. It’s just a humble little nursing home full of lonely souls in the twilight of their lives. But their spiritual needs are just the same as anyone else’s: they need to be noticed and cared for, loved, remembered. They need to know that God loves them, God cares for them, and they are written on His palms.

And that is what they do. They are lights in the darkness, friendly faces on lonely days. Every week, they show up at 9:30, walk through the home and wheel the residents out to the cafeteria for a short little service of hymn-singing and Bible-reading. Every week, they show the forgotten that they are still important. Every week, they stop in and share their hearts with these sweet folks, listening, learning, loving. They are gentle, speak softly, and always smile. They don’t ask for help from others. They don’t complain. They aren’t given awards of acknowledgement from outside of the little nursing home. They just continually show up, week by week. And for twenty-two years, they have poured their hearts into the hearts of the bedridden and tired, giving them a gift that so few people bother to do.

And I think, even though it could be draining, they are fulfilled in those hours of sharing Christ. For, like Christ himself said, when we serve the least of the brothers, we are serving Him. When we serve others in small ways with open hearts, we experience a piece of Jesus that we cannot see in the most 'spiritual' of Sunday mornings. They serve those who are neglected, overlooked, or ignored and in doing so, they bring a light to an otherwise forgotten people. 

A special thanks to K.B. Snodgrass for this weeks story.

Image used courtesy of: Ulrich Joho http://bit.ly/1ed7gDr