Serving The Forgotten

From The Christian Reader:

Serving the Forgotten


by Brian Carpenter



Nursing homes are generally not nice places. There are those, of course, which have multiple levels of care and some of the areas are quite pleasant in terms of their decor, but other areas of the building are less so. There is a good reason, of course. As the human mind and body begin to fail it’s not hygienic to have very many soft, absorbent surfaces.



The Sturgis nursing home isn’t one of those luxuriously appointed places. It’s not dirty. The staff are, in my observation, very kind and concerned about the welfare of their patients. They do the best they can with the resources they have. But they are chronically understaffed and once again, based on my observation, there is a lot of turnover. It’s not unusual to walk through the doors of the unit and be hit in the face with the odor of urine or feces.



All of the pastors in town take turns doing Sunday services there. I have to say that in the past leading worship services in the nursing homes was one of my least favorite duties. The staff in some nursing homes seem to think of it as babysitting for an hour or so, and roll in all the dementia patients they can find. The well behaved ones just sleep. Some of them mutter or talk or even cry out and interrupt services. Thus, even though things weren’t quite that bad at the Sturgis Nursing Home, it has generally been one of those things I had thought was a waste of my time. I suppose I conduct worship at the Sturgis nursing home three or four times a year. It was in that context that I met Hilda.



Hilda is a dear woman who is wheelchair bound. She’s not that old (in her late 60′s or early 70′s I suppose) but she is unable to care for herself in her home because she is paralyzed from the waist down. She had back surgery a number of years ago and it went horribly wrong. She can’t move, but she is in pain most of the time. There doesn’t seem to be much that modern medicine can do to help her. She shared a room with her mother who recently passed away.



Hilda is a strong Christian. A Baptist. As we got to know each other, I came to love her, and she to love me. I asked her once is she ever got bitter against God for her condition and thought of chucking the whole Christian thing in despair. “Oh no!” she said emphatically. “I could never leave the Lord Jesus. He has been so good to me.” I don’t think she knows it, but she is a living example of the “P” in TULIP. After I got to know her I didn’t mind leading worship so much. I just figured I was mostly doing it for her.



Rhonda, who is the wife of one of my elders, works at the nursing home. She came to me a few years back with a request. Some of the residents were asking for a Bible study. She wondered if I would do it. I hemmed and hawed around for awhile. Finally, perhaps even a little grudgingly, I said yes, mostly, once again, for Hilda.



And so in December of 2007, I think, I began the Bible study at the Sturgis Nursing home. I actually had pretty good turnout, perhaps a half a dozen or so. We’d do it in the main activity room, and there were always “hangers on,” people who didn’t want to sit at the table with us, but who wanted to listen at the periphery. Pretty soon I brought extra lesson sheets for them, too. Before I knew it we had a group of about a dozen. These are people from all sorts of backgrounds. I have a Roman Catholic, a sprinkling of Baptists, a Wesleyan, a Lutheran or two, and a PCUSA Presbyterian. Some of them have clear minds. Some not so much. Some of them can hear. Some not so much.



I teach them from the Scriptures. I talk a lot about heaven, and patience in suffering, and prayer, and the difference between true and false gospels. I listen to their stories and ask them questions about their lives. I’m interested in economic history, and especially the Great Depression. I’ve always made it a practice to ask older folks about what it was like to grow up in the Depression. When I did that at the Bible study, two women immediately began weeping and one man looked at me and said, “It was the worst of times. It was the worst of times.” I guess Western South Dakota was a really tough place during the Dust Bowl. I haven’t asked them that question again. Sometimes I drop by Wymers and pick up a dozen donuts and bring them with me. Last September I brought a bunch of sliced tomatoes from my garden and some cottage cheese and we had tomatoes and cottage cheese for a mid morning snack. At Christmastime my wife and I brought our children in and we gave them some homemade cookies my wife had baked. This spring we planted tomatoes in big planters in the courtyard in the hopes of giving them their own tomatoes to eat. I don’t think it’s going to work. The tomatoes didn’t work out very well. They don’t get enough sun in the courtyard.



I’ve sort of become the de facto chaplain of the place. The staff call me when there’s someone in need of a pastor who doesn’t have one. Last month I was called out to pray with a woman who was dying because her pastor wasn’t available.



Well, last Monday I got a call asking me if I’d go visit with a woman who was coming close to the end of her days. I had spoken with her husband about spiritual things before his death a few years ago, and she didn’t want to have much to do with me then, it seemed. I went mostly because their daughter, a Christian, wanted a Bible believing pastor to speak with her father about salvation before he died. I went. The man responded positively to the gospel, and he died a few weeks later. Now his wife was approaching life’s end and the daughter wanted a Bible-believing pastor to speak to her mother, too.



Remembering the look on her face the last time I was there, I wasn’t holding out much hope that she would be receptive. But I promised I’d drop by and speak with the lady. I went the next day.



This woman was bedfast. Both of her legs had been amputated at the thigh. Diabetes, I suppose. She had suffered two strokes in the past few months which left her mind clear but made it hard for her to speak. I came in to her room, asked permission to turn off the TV, and told her who I was. She didn’t speak, but indicated that she didn’t remember me.



I told her that I was there to explain to her how to go to heaven when she dies. I asked her if that was something she’d like to hear. She nodded enthusiastically. So I told her the old, old story. I told her about her sin and its wages. I told her about the cross of Jesus Christ. I told her that if she asked for it, God would look across time and credit Christ’s perfect righteousness that he merited by a perfect life and a sacrificial death to her account. I told her God would also credit her sin to His account and punish Him for it on that cross. I told her that she would be seen by the Father through the “lens” of Christ and be considered as perfect in God’s sight. I told her that God would never undo that work and that she could face death without fear. I asked her if she wanted to do that. Once again she nodded enthusiastically.



I told her to pray after me. I’d give her the words to say and she could repeat them. Since she hadn’t spoken during our whole visit, I assumed she would simply repeat them mentally. I said the first phrase, “Lord Jesus” and paused for a second.



“Lord Jesus!” she said, loud and strong. I was shocked that she was speaking, but I continued. We went on like that phrase by phrase, verbally confessing her sin, repenting of it, and acknowledging and her need of a Savior. Together we asked the Father to credit her sin to Christ’s account and his perfect righteousness to hers so that He bore the punishment for her sin. Each time she repeated my words in a raspy but strong voice. When we were done praying and I opened my eyes. The look of joy and relief on her face was incredible. Later, when I called her daughter, she thanked me and told me that her pastor was just too busy to see to her mother very often.



I was stung by my own internal rebuke when she said that. How often was I that pastor?



People in nursing homes are often forgotten and lonely. They’re scared. They very often have no one to speak to about spiritual things. Sometimes the people they do have to speak with about spiritual things are bereft of the gospel themselves and only able to offer words of assurance and comfort without any basis in spiritual reality. The true Christians are often undernourished and without real fellowship. They are hungry for gospel truth from gospel ministers and others who know and love the Lord Jesus and the Scriptures which bear Him witness.



Yesterday I checked in on Hilda, who hadn’t been at Bible Study in awhile. It turns out she had had a stroke. We prayed together and I reached down to hug her in her bed. She clung to my neck and kissed my cheek several times. She held my hand as we talked and refused to let it go. She may well be bedfast for the rest of her days. Her world has become even smaller, and Christian fellowship all the more precious for that reason.



I have discovered something very precious at the Sturgis Nursing Home. These places that smell of piss and dung and bad cafeteria food, and which reek of loneliness and hopelessness and despair are the most fertile fields for gospel ministry imaginable. I can’t believe I missed out on this blessing for so many years. I go each Tuesday morning at 10 AM because I want to go. I love to go. I am blessed by going. I think you will find that with patience and persistence, you would have the same experience I have had. I commend such ministry to you.







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