"Ah, this famine of love..."

“Ah, this famine of love! How it saddens my soul!” These were words written by Toyohiko Kagawa, a great Japanese Christian, in 1931, shortly before the onset of the Second World War. “…everywhere this dreadful drought of love! Not a drop of love anywhere: the loveless land is dreary… When the last drop of love has dried away, all men will go mad and begin to massacre all who ever thought of love…” This cry for love was a precursor to the Japanese invasion of the world and remains a cry today in a world tormented with war and terrorism. Not only is the world tormented, but the smallest unit of society, the family, is fighting, dysfunctional, and bifurcated. Nothing amazes me more than families tormented and fighting in life and continuing to do so, even in the face of sickness, pain, and death.

The church is daily exposed to the needs of the world around it, and chaplains, filled with the same Spirit as Christ and the Apostles, are given the opportunity to be living demonstrations of God’s love to those they encounter in their journeys of pain, sickness, and death. Only when chaplains love even the sickest of modern society, people who are much like they are, in the same manner in which they love themselves, will they fulfill the commandment to love God with all of their heart, mind, and strength. “The [chaplain as a] Christian… salt for society, becomes a vehicle for God to reach out to a misguided, oblivious world that so desperately needs His touch.” For now, until that completeness, the chaplain has three responsibilities, which will lead us toward that consummation: Trust steadily in God, hope unswervingly, love extravagantly. And the best of the three is love (1 Corinthians 13:13).

I wrote these words last week after I had been called to a series of particularly difficult deathbed scenes. The first one was the most horrible death as can be imagined. The lady had a bedsore so bad that her bowels had come through the sore in her buttocks area and burst. The smells were indescribable and the death was excruciating for the client, the family, and the staff. The second was to a death of the most dysfunctional family one could encounter, with physical fighting, cursing, and blaming going on all around the staff. It is the job of the chaplain, as the emissary of God, filled with God’s Holy Spirit, to walk into these situations and, like Jesus did to the natural elements, speak peace and hope into the lives of the grieving families. For me, it would not be a job I could do unless I was convinced that God goes both with me and before me. Furthermore, it is my sincere hope that when I leave, I leave some of God with those that stay.