A
year and half ago there was a mass shooting in one of the Bronx hospitals. I
learned about it almost instantly as friends started to call me all concerned
about my wife who is also a doctor in the Bronx, but thankfully in a different
hospital.
Shortly afterwards while returning
from vacation I had an opportunity to visit that hospital as I went for a
hospital call virtually from the airport.
It was the most bizarre of my hospital
visits thus far. I did not know that place and I ended up entering the hospital
through the emergency room. In that emergency room there were more police
officers and security guards than there were doctors and nurses combined and it
was not because of that earlier shooting. Cops were there accompanying victims
or suspects of stabbings, shootings and brawls. It goes without saying that hospital is in
one of the roughest parts of our city
But in this hospital I personally
encountered a true miraculous healing. I was visiting a person who fell from
the fifth floor onto the concrete pavement below and was completely broken. In a
few weeks after a great number of surgeries she was released to home care and is fine now. We still keep in
occasional contact.
Doctors and nurses in
this hospital saved her life. It is a hospital clearly supported by
charities and the city budget, a hospital with rusted hospital beds and shaky
elevators. However, for my victim it was a better place than any of the posh
hospitals in Manhattan. In this Bronx hospital the trauma medicine is their
daily bread. Day in and day out they deal with the demons of poverty, violence,
alienation and provide perhaps not fancy, nevertheless, top medical care especially for
trauma victims. And that is the true healing miracle - in medicine just like in
the rest of life wealth is not everything.
My visits to this specific hospital
and the stories which I hear from my wife from her Bronx hospital made me
wonder - how would or how do Jesus’ miraculous healings look today in our world? Join us
this Sunday, our worship will be right about this.
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