{"id":1806,"date":"2013-03-25T11:38:13","date_gmt":"2013-03-25T18:38:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jonandlayne.com\/?p=1806"},"modified":"2013-03-25T11:54:33","modified_gmt":"2013-03-25T18:54:33","slug":"learning-how-to-do-my-job","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jonandlayne.com\/learning-how-to-do-my-job\/","title":{"rendered":"Learning How To Do My Job"},"content":{"rendered":"

A Jon Post<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

I have a confession to make; I\u2019m not great at my job. I have been doing it for 3ish years now and I\u2019m still learning quite a bit each time I go in.<\/p>\n

My Job: Talk to sick people.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s it. That\u2019s really all I do. I go in and talk to sick people about home, about the farm, about my family, about their families, about life<\/i>\u2026 about death, about Christ, about hope. And after 3ish years I\u2019m still learning how to do it.<\/p>\n

Last week I was reading the Bible with 4 sick men. Awhile back I was given a bunch of Portuguese New Testaments by my friend and partner Jorge Pratas, and I had distributed them to these men recently. Xavier (pronounced Sha-vee-AIR) had been reading from Matthew 5 and so we opened to that passage together and read Jesus\u2019 teaching commonly referred to as the \u201cBeatitudes\u201d. \u00a0After reading verse 4<\/a> we talked about what it means to be comforted and how that promise can come true. As we talked about that, one man in the room, Bernando, spoke honestly about the comfort he needs when he thinks about dying from his cancer. Realizing that I wanted to have more preparation for that question, I spoke briefly on the subject, told him I wanted to come back another day and talk about what the Bible says about his fear, and we continued in Matthew 5.<\/p>\n

Two days later, as Layne and I worshiped God together I felt Him moving on my heart to remember what I had told Bernando and to search the Bible for places he could find comfort in his fear. Layne helped and we found many scriptures that talked about God\u2019s promises in and after death. I’ve\u00a0been doing this for 3ish years and this whole time\u00a0I’ve\u00a0known that I want be able to speak about God\u2019s comfort to the dying. It\u2019s not an easy thing to broach the subject of death when someone is still clinging to the hope of health and life. With Post-Its\u2122 stuck in my Portuguese Bible, I headed to the hospital praying that God would guide me in the conversations that were coming.<\/p>\n

I arrived, I greeted, I exchanged news on family at home, I sat on Bernando\u2019s bed with him.
\n\u201cCan I talk to you about the fear you mentioned two days ago Bernando?\u201d I asked, tentatively.
\nAnd we dove in together. Psalm 116 talks about David\u2019s intense desire and worship for his Lord as he is brought close to death\u2026 then he utters the phrase \u201cThe Lord cares deeply when His loved ones die.<\/a>”
\nWe read John 14:1-4 and talked about knowing the way to the Father\u2019s house<\/a>.
\nAnd as I was reading John 14 with Bernando, Xavier and Loren\u00e7o, I realized that there is a Biblical character who knew of his impending death, knew of his coming suffering, knew of the pain that lay before him and pleaded with the Father to miraculously save him from those things. The answer to his prayer was an angel to strengthen him, and a deafeningly silent \u201cNo\u201d.
\nJesus Christ knows how it feels to look over the cliff into the suffering below and look at his death at the bottom and he knows what it means to for his heart to anguish<\/i> <\/a>over the silence of the Father.
\nAnd this Jesus Christ\u2026 this man of sorrows, acquainted with grief<\/a>, this man is the mediator between us and the Father<\/a>.<\/p>\n

He knows\u2026 he knows.<\/p>\n

And there is comfort in that.
\nSo as my tears welled in my eyes and leaked down my cheeks, I told my friends we pray to a God who hates their suffering more than they. And at times He answers our prayers the way he answered David\u2019s in Psalm 116.
\nOther times He answers like He answered Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane.
\nBut he, himself, knows what it means in both cases.<\/p>\n

So I\u2019m still learning how to have these conversations.<\/p>\n

I have a good teacher<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A Jon Post I have a confession to make; I\u2019m not great at my job. I have been doing it for 3ish years now and I\u2019m still learning quite a bit each time I go in. My Job: Talk to sick people. That\u2019s it. That\u2019s really all I do. I go in and talk to…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonandlayne.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1806"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonandlayne.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonandlayne.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonandlayne.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonandlayne.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1806"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/jonandlayne.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1806\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1820,"href":"https:\/\/jonandlayne.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1806\/revisions\/1820"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonandlayne.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1806"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonandlayne.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1806"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonandlayne.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1806"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}