Category Archives: Sayings on God

Spending the summer working at a local hospital in the pastoral care department, I got to hear people talk about God often. Sometimes the things people say are painful, sometimes painfully true, occasionally trite, raw, or insightful. Their stories may be unknown to you, but their pain, fears, faith, or doubt are not. This is a collection of isolated statements without context that were made about, or perhaps to, God that stood out the most from each day I spent at the hospital. They are numbered Day One through Day Fifty, and are followed by a series of reflections from the summer spent doing hospital ministry.

Reflection: Telling stories

In Day Twenty Six, the patient spent about 30 minutes telling me stories. Not stories of how she found herself in the hospital, not stories of what she was going to do when she got out of the hospital, but stories about her husband who had passed years before I walked into her hospital room. It wasContinue reading “Reflection: Telling stories”

Reflection: Not everyone needs a chaplain

My first few days I struggled with feeling as if I wasn’t being chaplainy enough. I would spend time with the patients, and quickly, I would learn if their children were wonderful, or if they provided a source of anxiety, I learned where they lived, what they did, and generally, whether I wanted to know it or not, theirContinue reading “Reflection: Not everyone needs a chaplain”

Reflection: God as the Stranger

It was my first real death, a few weeks into my time at the hospital, I was far from the wide-eyed new chaplain, but I’m hardly seasoned either. It was particularly hard. An all day process, everyone involved knew that today would be the end. Checking in on the family throughout the day, I sawContinue reading “Reflection: God as the Stranger”