Thanks be to God

This morning in church I was winding up for the big finish to my sermon when choir members alerted me to the fact that an elderly member had passed out. I shut up and responded to his distress. More importantly, our parish nurse, another member with nursing background, and a couple more people acted quickly. The ambulance came and even though he had revived, the paramedics whisked him away to the hospital. We carried on with the service after I reminded everybody that as unsettling as these incidents are, they are also part of life together.

After worship I headed to the hospital and found our parish nurse at his side, along with his wife. Not surprisingly he was upset that he had disrupted worship, but I teased him and said that if he wanted to get out of listening to the sermon there were other ways of doing it! Fortunately his sense of humour was intact and we laughed together.

It is not an exaggeration to say that I love this old guy. He hates to miss church and loves to sing. He and his wife recently celebrated their sixtieth wedding anniversary and it was a pleasure to be at the party and see their joy. If he had gone to his reward this morning we would have been shocked and upset, but what a place to go. Actually, we had a similar incident at a church supper recently, one that was more serious. I talked to this other man a few days after he nearly choked to death and he told me that while he was glad he was still around, to "check out" surrounded by friends with his ministers present would have been pretty good!

Our creed says that "in life, in death, in life beyond death, we are not alone. Thanks be to God." We experience it all in our Christian community, and that's the way it should be.