When Your Story Meets Jesus

Yesterday morning we met friends at their church.  This church is a "contemporary church" with five campuses.  We were at the main campus.  The lead pastor, however, was at another campus and he was at our location via video. This was my first experience with this and I was surprised with my own reaction.  Instead of feeling disconnected with the minister and his message, there was little difference in being live or on television. There actually was the illusion that he was in the room. When he said something funny, the congregation reacted with laughter just as if he was standing there.

Just as the praise band was finishing its set and was about to hand things over to the lead pastor, the praise band leader said something that got my attention.  He said, "I hope that here you find a place where your story meets Jesus."  Something about those words spoke to me. The Psalmist ends many of his psalms with "Selah" (pause and calmly think about that). So then I must admit that during the sermon, I was simultaneously listening to his message and processing the words of his associate.

I continued to process his words while in the NICU yesterday afternoon.  As a reminder, NICU is the acronym Neonatal Intensive Care Unit.  I think it's easy to forget when calling the unit the NICU the force of those four letters.  Without the N, it's ICU.  When your family member or friend is in the ICU, he is there because he's very hurt or very sick.  Normally when someone leaves the ICU, he does not leave to go home, he leaves to go to a room, In other words, he's now well enough to go to the hospital. Babies in the NICU are in Intensive Care for a reason.

And each and every baby in the unit has a story. Some stories are happy. Others are tragic and sad. But each story is unique. And in one way or another that story meets Jesus. Hopefully, that meeting is only in the figurative sense.  Just like when Jesus told His disciples, "Let the children come to me, because the Kingdom of God is made of children", in the NICU these babies find total love and acceptance.  The doctors and nurses do not ask them about their insurance. They could not care less about that.  They don't notice the babies' ethnicity. It doesn't matter. They do not ask baby about his religious affiliation. Each baby gets the same care and attention regardless of the color of her skin,   texture of her hair or her religious beliefs. The only requirement is that she is in need of their help. But unfortunately, sometimes, just like in the ICU for big people, the  baby doesn't make it.  In that unit he meets Jesus in the literal sense.  He was just too sick when he got there.  In spite of the best technology and best medical help in the country, the baby breathes his last breath. And Jesus says to St. Peter, "Let that baby come to me. That baby  has a  place with me and he will continue his story here."

I took my story to church yesterday and it met Jesus.  Our friends were babysitting for a local family. And the child in their care was a baby, just a few weeks old.  And I took my turn holding her during church. While sensing her warmth against me and feeling the slight rise and fall of her chest, I couldn't help but remember that my mother kept "the bed babies" during church at the Hillcrest Baptist Church in Enterprise, Alabama. While the rest of us were attending Sunday School and church, she attended to  those babies. And I was reminded why.  Until yesterday, I had always imagined Mother sitting in a rocking chair watching those babies in a crib.  You know, "bed babies." There's not a chance those babies were in a crib. There were at least two hours that day that those babies were in somebody's arms. Against somebody's chest.  Feeling somebody's heartbeat against their own. My mother knew a long time before I did that holding a newborn baby is like being Jesus, "He's got the tiny little  baby in His hands. He's got the whole world in His hands." In church yesterday, her story met Jesus, and He was me. "Let the children come to you and you will be the Kingdom of God.  Her very life depends on you. She has no other Jesus but you."

One of my favorite books by Frederick Buechner is Telling the Truth: The Gospel as Tragedy, Comedy and Fairy Tale. When I read the book the first time over thirty years ago, I could not have imagined how relevant it would be yesterday. Tragedy, comedy and fairy tale are alive in the NICU each day.  Each of the doctors and nurses in the NICU has a story. And when each of them comes to work their story meets Jesus. In one way or another as he or she scrubs in and attends to a newborn baby, above that baby's crib is invisibly inscribed, "Once upon a time in a land far, far away..."  And that baby looks up and sees Jesus.