Part 1: Introduction.
In the summer of 1976 I began my Clinical Pastoral Education (or CPE) training at Rush-Presbyterian-St. Luke's Hospital in Chicago.
On my first day I was assigned to the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit to see a young girl named Terri who was dying from lupus disease.
I hadn't a clue what to do. I just introduced myself to the girl and her mother, and then stood in silence at the bed.
Suddenly Terri's mother started to cry and ran from the room. I followed her out and led her to a nearby lounge where she could sit.
And then she blurted out, "If God is merciful, why does he permit suffering?"
I hardly knew what to say. All I could manage was this: "If God weren't merciful, I wouldn't be here."
There's a lot that was wrong with my answer. It avoided the core issue. And though I meant it sincerely, it may have sounded pretentious.
But it did capture a truth, one which Terri's mother did let me know she realized: God's compassion is revealed in and through the lives of God's people.
As Christians, we believe that God is present not only as Holy Spirit, but tangibly in the flesh and blood of God's ministers— lay and ordained alike.
We show God's mercy— we prove God's mercy— in the compassion we show one another.
Yet the inadequacies of my response impelled me to search for a better answer, and this is it.
Before we can tackle the subject of suffering, we must consider two even larger subjects: Anthropology and Theodicy.
Tomorrow: Anthropology
In 1963, a racist bomb attack on an Alabama church killed four black girls.
John Petts, in Llansteffan, Carmarthenshire, designed this window,
with Jesus' words from Matthew 25:40: "You did it to me."
This window from the people of Wales was installed in 1965.
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