Yes, visiting here in hospital has been highly restricted but possible. Only one visitor per day. And of course phone calls.
I’m not entirely unhappy about the visitor restrictions. The medical people here are terrific but the environment itself is incredibly noisy.
That doesn’t bother me, as sleeping anywhere, anytime is one gift that I feel God has given me to offer the church—or indeed any context that I find myself placed in.
But to add troops of visitors into the mix? Heavens to Betsy! My own visitors I could handle. When everyone in the public ward gets visitors, that is a lot of people. And so many people here seem to appreciate shouting and being shouted at, including amongst the hospital staff. I know this because in the absence of many visitors, people ring their relatives in hospital and shout at them. Not angry shouting. Just shouting. This I am not understanding. It does however seem to bring some measure of comfort and cheer to those being shouted at.
Perhaps in these COVID restricted times it could be a ministry some churches could become involved in: offering to ring up sick people in hospital and shouting at them.
“I was hungry and you fed me. Naked and you clothed me. In hospital and you rang me up and shouted at me.”
Think about it. In these COVID times, this idea has legs.
2 comments:
What about shouting at people over the phone while naked?
You can tell that I missed my calling for marketing
When Mark was in RNSH public recently the old guy on the other side of the curtain literally spent all day bellowing into the phone in a friendly fashion. Mark can sleep but I felt homicidal on my visits
When I was in hospital with scarlet fever in 1947 I was permitted a visit from my parents once per week, on Sunday afternoon, for one or two hours. They had to talk to me through a window. When my mother managed to stretch throught he window and kiss me they realised that for future visits my bed would have to be further from the window. With obviuously no phones owned by patients and visiting restrictions so strict there was little problem with extraneous noise.
I hope the treatment works well and ministry can continue (largely) unabated.
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