Gap

I was the Chaplain on-call for East Surrey hospital on Sunday night. The way it currently works that meant I went to pray with the Emergency Department at 7pm and the ICU Department at 7.30pm at the beginning of their shifts. It is a privilege to do that. At 1.15am I got a call from the switchboard at the hospital asking if I was the on-call Chaplain. When I said yes (I’m amazed I actually managed to speak after being woken up) I was put through to the ICU to speak with a member of the team. I was then asked if I would go and visit a patient who was in end of life care. So I got dressed, got in the car and drove to the hospital to visit a young man who was dying. I found my way to the ICU and was helped into the PPE by a lovely young doctor who explained the situation to me. This was a young man, with a young family who they had done all they could for. His family had visited earlier in the day but had now accepted he way dying and asked for a Chaplain to visit. I went in and read scripture and prayed with the young man. Having done all I could, I left and went home. It just so happened that I was also on the early shift on Monday morning, so I went again the pray with the Emergency Department and the ICU Department, this time at 7am and 7,30am. When I got the ICU department I bumped into the young doctor I’d met in the middle of the night. She thanked me for attending to the patient and told me he had died soon after my visit. She said the family had been comforted by knowing a Chaplain had been to pray with him. When I got to the Chaplains office a bit later, I picked up an email from the young man’s family thanking the Chaplain who had visited and saying what a comfort it had been for them to know that as they were praying for him, someone was paying with him! It struck me what a privilege it was to stand in the gap in those moments. That’s what I had been able to do: to stand in the gap. In the moments before my mum died in July last year, a Chaplain had visited her and read to her from Ephesians. She would have loved that even though she wasn’t conscious. I wasn’t present at the time, I was probably on my way to the hospital but I went and found the Chaplin and thanked him for standing in the gap. As I have thought about all this since yesterday morning, it occurred to me how we can all stand in the gap for others in all sorts of different was at this time. It’s not the reserve of a Chaplain. We can all pray for someone. We can all read scripture and ask God to be true to his word for someone. We can all stand in the gap. Mostly we’ll never find out how God was at work. But we can trust that God is listening and waiting for us to be those who stand in the gap. So…I’m wondering, where can you stand in the gap for someone?