HOSPITAL PSALM

HOSPITAL PSALM

It happens to most of us at some time in our lives. I’ve just had a couple of short spells in hospital. Many people say that it easily becomes “a learning experience.” Well then, what is it that we “learn” from being helpless, or in the grip of pain, or just ill? Some of my friends seem to assume that I would spend my time praying, and others tell me that they, too, tried to pray in hospital but rarely got beyond the first few words, because there was too much in their minds, or hearts, already! I don’t think many of us are very good at formal prayer when what is happening to us is serious enough to make us think hard anyway. People don’t “say prayers” in the trenches. That is what shocked some of the army chaplains so much in World War I. Here is a psalm that tries to express some of that. I don’t know if it helps, whether or not you’re in hospital. But I have deliberately included some of the phrases that keep me going, in normal times too. For example, the well-known part of the poem used by King George VI in his Christmas broadcast before he died, and the graffiti found in a house in Cologne where Jews had been waiting to discover their fate in World War II.

I never knew I was able to trust:

until they took me in a chair to the operation.

Trust is not just a hurried prayer:

not merely a form of words at the theatre door.

Put your hand into the hand of God:

that shall be better than a way that is known;

put your trust in the hands of others:

that is better than trying to cure your own ills.

When all is done, I can only trust:

human life depends on living in faith,

for I cannot know everything for certain:

I cannot wait to act until I’m sure.

Hearing that voice on the phone is like watching the News:

in spite of what’s happened, the world’s the same [place].

Normally, I do not care who is my neighbour:

until he makes a disturbance that annoys me;

here, we’re all together in the same ward:

if my neighbour disturbs me, it’s because he’s ill.

Even when the sun’s not shining, I believe it’s there:

when God does not speak to me, I can still trust.

So help me put my life in others’ hands:

to grow in trust of God and other people.