GOD IS IN CONTROL

From: Paul Ludy
paulvludy@gmail.com


GOD IS IN CONTROL

FROM THE LIFE OF SEVENTY DELBERT SMITH, at the time a missionary in Hawaii:

"The child is not here. We released her this morning." It was the professional voice of the hospital receptionist who answered Delbert's request to visit the little girl in the isolation ward. Then, forgetting her professional stoicism, she stared quizzically at the tall young man across the desk from her. "It was meningitis, was it not?"

"Yes," Dr. Mitchell said, "it was meningitis," Delbert returned, his voice trailing off in grateful reverie as he turned to leave the hospital. How thankful he was for the experience of yesterday!

He could hear again the doctor's measured tone as he had counseled him: "The decision will have to be yours, but I want you to know that there is grave danger for anyone who is near her."

"Is it a contagious form of meningitis?" Delbert had asked.

"Yes," the doctor replied, "an extremely contagious form."

"Would there be any danger to others if I should go in?"

"The infection can be carried to others," Dr. Mitchell said. "If you decide to go, you will have to be subject to all the precautions that the nurses and I follow in the isolation ward."

For a moment Delbert had hesitated as he had thought of his own small children at home. He could remember the horrible deaths suffered by those whom he had known in his youth who had been victims of the virulent meningococci--the ruptured eyeballs, the broken eardrums, and the damaged brains.

Still, he had been called to administer to the young girl who tossed restlessly in her bed down the hall in the isolation ward, the terrible ache in her head and back beginning to dull from the medication, the persistent fever still raging unabated. He had gone directly to the isolation ward expecting to carry out his mission. But the nurse had stopped him with her authoritative, "You cannot go in there. She is quarantined."

"But I must go in," he had insisted. "I am a minister, and her parents have called for me."

So the nurse had taken him to the doctor, whose efforts to dissuade him had momentarily weakened his resolution. Then it had happened. Deep inside his consciousness, Delbert felt as well as heard the words: "Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil; for thou art with me."

The decision had been made. Outfitted in surgeon's gown and mask, he had entered the little girl's room while her parents had waited anxiously on the screened walkway that skirted the area.

When the ordinance had been completed, Delbert scrubbed and returned to his regular clothing. He ministered with assurance to concerned parents, one of whom was a Catholic and unaccustomed to the faith of the Saints.

And in less than a day--overnight, in fact--the child was well, completely well, and at home with her family.

A happy smile crossed Delbert's face, and his heart sang as his eyes swept upward beyond the banyan tree, across the snowcapped mountain into the clear blue tropical sky.

His lips moved in a silent prayer of gratitude. A tremor of joy passed through his body as he smartly snapped one closed fist into the open palm of the other hand in a characteristic gesture and strode--with a gait that would have been a happy skip if he had been younger--down the flower-lined hospital walk to his car.

(From 'The Master's Touch' by Mildred Nelson Smith)