Transforming Care: A Christian Vision of Nursing Practice by Mary Molewyk Doornbos;Ruth Groenhout;Kendra G. Hotz Page B
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Jeremiah said:
The LORD has done what he purposed,
he has carried out his threat;
as he ordained long ago,
he has demolished without pity...
Cry aloud to the Lord!
O wall of daughter Zion!
Let tears stream down like a torrent
day and night!
Give yourself no rest,
your eyes no respite!
Arise, cry out in the night,
at the beginning of the watches!
Pour out your heart like water
before the presence of the Lord!
Lift your hands to him
for the lives of your children
who faint for hunger
at the head of every street.
Look, 0 LORD, and consider!
To whom have you done this?
Should women eat their offspring,
the children they have borne? Should priest and prophet be killed
in the sanctuary of the Lord?
The young and the old are lying
on the ground in the streets;
my young women and my young men
have fallen by the sword;
in the day of your anger you have killed them,
slaughtering without mercy.
(Lamentations 2:17-21)
Notice that Jeremiah addressed these laments, not to the Babylonians, but
to God. It is to God that Jeremiah says, "you have killed them, slaughtering
without mercy." He encourages the people of Jerusalem to "cry aloud" and
to "lift your hands to him for the lives of your children." Ultimately, he
held God responsible for the suffering, and he protested that suffering to
the powerful God whom he knew as the only source of hope for renewal
and restoration. The lament does, in the end, look to God for restoration
and comfort, but not before it first raises its complaint. It does not gloss
over that suffering in its recognition of God as the source of life and hope.
Most of us are unaccustomed to the lament and uncomfortable with
the idea of raising a clenched fist to the God who made us and who can
unmake us. But consider what freedom the lament offers and what is lost if
we deprive ourselves of it. Lamentation gives us space to voice the very real
pain and suffering that we experience. It does not demand that we face all
of life's trials with an unrealistic piety that expects joy at every turn. Lamentation gives us permission to lay our troubles at the feet of the One who
is powerful enough to do something about them. Lamentation tells us that
anger with God can be appropriate and that God is "big enough to take it"
if we need to shake our fists and cry out in rage. Even Jesus, while suffering
indescribable agony on the cross, lamented. His lament was directed, as
was Jeremiah's, to God the Father. He cried out, "My God, my God, why
have you forsaken me?" (Matthew 27:46). Why have you abandoned me in
my suffering? Where are you? This is the human cry of lament.
Lament does not end with anger and gall. It moves us toward peace
without offering any false or easy solutions. Jesus cried out the beginning
of Psalm 22 as he was dying on the cross, but that psalm concludes with the
confidence that God will bring deliverance. Similarly, Jesus himself, after
uttering these words of lament on Good Friday, greeted his disciples on Easter Sunday with "Peace be with you" (Luke 24:36). Deliverance had
been won. Only someone with a sense that the world is not as it should be,
only someone with faith in a God who cares about suffering, would bother
to raise the lament. It is precisely a person of faith's confidence in God's
goodness and power, in other words, that makes the protest of the lament
possible.
Nurses are witnesses to some of humanity's greatest suffering. As witnesses they are the ones who observe and who can testify to the reality
and meaning of that suffering. This is the true sense of nursing as a Christian witness. Nurses care for people who are fearful, in pain,
lonely, confused, and vulnerable.
And it is not simply individual
human suffering that affects the
nurse. The inadequacies of our
health care system, which asks
health care providers to do too
much with too little, the social
structures that make that health
care inaccessible to a significant
The LORD has done what he purposed,
he has carried out his threat;
as he ordained long ago,
he has demolished without pity...
Cry aloud to the Lord!
O wall of daughter Zion!
Let tears stream down like a torrent
day and night!
Give yourself no rest,
your eyes no respite!
Arise, cry out in the night,
at the beginning of the watches!
Pour out your heart like water
before the presence of the Lord!
Lift your hands to him
for the lives of your children
who faint for hunger
at the head of every street.
Look, 0 LORD, and consider!
To whom have you done this?
Should women eat their offspring,
the children they have borne? Should priest and prophet be killed
in the sanctuary of the Lord?
The young and the old are lying
on the ground in the streets;
my young women and my young men
have fallen by the sword;
in the day of your anger you have killed them,
slaughtering without mercy.
(Lamentations 2:17-21)
Notice that Jeremiah addressed these laments, not to the Babylonians, but
to God. It is to God that Jeremiah says, "you have killed them, slaughtering
without mercy." He encourages the people of Jerusalem to "cry aloud" and
to "lift your hands to him for the lives of your children." Ultimately, he
held God responsible for the suffering, and he protested that suffering to
the powerful God whom he knew as the only source of hope for renewal
and restoration. The lament does, in the end, look to God for restoration
and comfort, but not before it first raises its complaint. It does not gloss
over that suffering in its recognition of God as the source of life and hope.
Most of us are unaccustomed to the lament and uncomfortable with
the idea of raising a clenched fist to the God who made us and who can
unmake us. But consider what freedom the lament offers and what is lost if
we deprive ourselves of it. Lamentation gives us space to voice the very real
pain and suffering that we experience. It does not demand that we face all
of life's trials with an unrealistic piety that expects joy at every turn. Lamentation gives us permission to lay our troubles at the feet of the One who
is powerful enough to do something about them. Lamentation tells us that
anger with God can be appropriate and that God is "big enough to take it"
if we need to shake our fists and cry out in rage. Even Jesus, while suffering
indescribable agony on the cross, lamented. His lament was directed, as
was Jeremiah's, to God the Father. He cried out, "My God, my God, why
have you forsaken me?" (Matthew 27:46). Why have you abandoned me in
my suffering? Where are you? This is the human cry of lament.
Lament does not end with anger and gall. It moves us toward peace
without offering any false or easy solutions. Jesus cried out the beginning
of Psalm 22 as he was dying on the cross, but that psalm concludes with the
confidence that God will bring deliverance. Similarly, Jesus himself, after
uttering these words of lament on Good Friday, greeted his disciples on Easter Sunday with "Peace be with you" (Luke 24:36). Deliverance had
been won. Only someone with a sense that the world is not as it should be,
only someone with faith in a God who cares about suffering, would bother
to raise the lament. It is precisely a person of faith's confidence in God's
goodness and power, in other words, that makes the protest of the lament
possible.
Nurses are witnesses to some of humanity's greatest suffering. As witnesses they are the ones who observe and who can testify to the reality
and meaning of that suffering. This is the true sense of nursing as a Christian witness. Nurses care for people who are fearful, in pain,
lonely, confused, and vulnerable.
And it is not simply individual
human suffering that affects the
nurse. The inadequacies of our
health care system, which asks
health care providers to do too
much with too little, the social
structures that make that health
care inaccessible to a significant
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