In the Intensive Care waiting room...1 Corinthians 13:2 NI

‘If I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing.’ 1 Corinthians 13:2 NIV

We keep saying that relationships are more important to us than anything else, but our actions don’t show it. We constantly short-change our friends and loved ones for the sake of money, or ‘getting ahead.’ Relationships are like flowers; if you don’t nurture and protect them, they die. That’s why Paul writes: ‘Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit…look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others’ (Philippians 2:3-4 NIV). Sometimes it takes heartache and crisis to remind us how irreplaceable the people in our lives are. One author writes: ‘I have spent long hours in the Intensive Care waiting room watching anguished people, listening to urgent questions: “Will my husband make it?” “Will my child walk again?” “How do you live without your companion of 30 years?” The Intensive Care waiting room is different from any other place in the world. And the people who wait are different. They can’t do enough for each other. No one is rude. The distinctions of race and class melt away. The garbage man loves his wife as much as the university professor loves his, and everyone understands this. Each person pulls for everyone else. In the Intensive Care waiting room the world changes. Vanity and pretence vanish. The universe is focused on the doctor’s next report. If only it will show improvement. Everyone knows that loving someone else is what life is all about. Could we learn to love like that, if we realised that every day of life, is like a day in the Intensive Care waiting room?’