[{"data":1,"prerenderedAt":-1},["ShallowReactive",2],{"\u002Farticles\u002Fdavid-faust-in-the-hospital-room":3,"\u002Farticles\u002Fdavid-faust-in-the-hospital-room-surround":68},{"id":4,"title":5,"author":6,"bibleBooks":8,"body":10,"columnName":51,"date":52,"description":16,"extension":53,"image":54,"meta":55,"minRead":56,"navigation":57,"path":58,"postType":59,"publication":60,"publicationUrl":54,"seo":61,"stem":62,"topics":63,"__hash__":67},"blog\u002Farticles\u002Fdavid-faust-in-the-hospital-room.md","In the Hospital Room",{"name":7},"Dave Faust",[9],"Isaiah",{"type":11,"value":12,"toc":47},"minimark",[13,17,20,23,26,29,32,35,38,41,44],[14,15,16],"p",{},"When I was a young boy, hospital rooms were mysterious places. Normally it was against the rules for children to enter the floors where the sick were being treated. When my parents visited someone in the hospital, my brothers and I had to wait in the lobby while they took the elevator into those hidden territories children were forbidden to see.",[14,18,19],{},"Doctors and nurses added to the mystique. All of them looked old and stern, wearing lab coats that smelled like rubbing alcohol, with stethoscopes draped around their necks. They worked in cold white rooms lined with cabinets containing scary-looking medicine bottles, glass jars filled with extra-long wooden sticks tipped with cotton swabs, and those ever-present hypodermic needles. And that's what I could see in their regular offices. Who knows what terrible tools lurked down those long hospital corridors I was too young to explore?",[14,21,22],{},"Then I grew up and became a minister, and suddenly going to the hospital was part of my job description. Long ago I got used to a hospital's sights, sounds, and smells, and I no longer feel intimidated by doctors and nurses—most of whom look younger than I do.",[14,24,25],{},"Like most ministers, I have arrived early in the morning to pray with a patient before he went into surgery, then sat in the waiting room for hours, hoping for good news.",[14,27,28],{},"I've rushed to the emergency room after a late-night phone call when the voice on the other end of the line said breathlessly, \"There's been an accident.\"",[14,30,31],{},"I've sat with families waiting for a loved one to die, and joined them in prayer immediately after she took her final breath and the doctor quietly said, \"She's gone.\"",[14,33,34],{},"I've been in hospital rooms filled with hearty laughter and good-natured jokes, and others filled with so much tension you could hardly cut it with a surgeon's scalpel. I've visited patients who had a roomful of visitors day after day, and other patients no one visited except me.",[14,36,37],{},"I've seen tired, frustrated hospital personnel in unguarded moments when they were rude and insensitive; but I've also watched doctors, nurses, and other health-care professionals treat patients with so much tenderness it seemed they were nothing less than angels sent from God.",[14,39,40],{},"A minister with years of experience said, \"A sick man is always a rascal. It's hard to act nice when you feel terrible.\" Some do manage to \"act nice,\" though. I've visited patients who exuded such an encouraging spirit that by the time I left their room, they had ministered to me instead of the other way around.",[14,42,43],{},"Vance Havner said, \"God uses broken things. It takes broken soil to produce a crop, broken clouds to give rain, broken grain to give bread, broken bread to give strength. It is the broken alabaster box that gives forth perfume . . . . It is Peter, weeping bitterly, who returned to greater power than ever.\" In hospital rooms I have seen God work through brokenness. There, hard-hearted unbelievers finally recognize their need for the Lord, and Christians with weak faith pray harder and begin to appreciate the fellowship of their brethren.",[14,45,46],{},"What matters most is not what puts you into the hospital—an injury or an illness, a concussion or cancer. What matters most is who goes with you. And if you look closely, you can always find the Lord in a hospital room.",{"title":48,"searchDepth":49,"depth":49,"links":50},"",2,[],"First Look","2007-03-04","md",null,{},3,true,"\u002Farticles\u002Fdavid-faust-in-the-hospital-room","column","The Lookout",{"title":5,"description":16},"articles\u002Fdavid-faust-in-the-hospital-room",[64,65,66],"Intergenerational Ministry","Spiritual Formation","Biblical Theology","WYa-TtnClfzjkiU1OccFw2cGdhpb-JEwyTHDqM8lb7s",[69,74],{"title":70,"path":71,"stem":72,"description":73,"children":-1},"Be Yourself","\u002Farticles\u002Fdavid-faust-be-yourself","articles\u002Fdavid-faust-be-yourself","Remember all the excitement a few years ago when scientists cloned a sheep? They named her Dolly. Her birth was big news—a scientific breakthrough. But Dolly died in February 2003. She only lived to be six years old, about half as long as most sheep live.",{"title":75,"path":76,"stem":77,"description":78,"children":-1},"Dealing With the Death of a Friend","\u002Farticles\u002Fdealing-with-the-death-of-a-friend","articles\u002Fdealing-with-the-death-of-a-friend","Where can you find hope in times of grief? Just ask King David: The Good Shepherd walks with us through the valley of death (Psalm 23)."]