The Mercy of God —Part 2

On one of our twice-monthly visits to the AIDS hospice, I noticed an unfamiliar patient seated at the entrance. Sores covered this recent addition to the ward. He did not look as sick and thin as the other patients, but the scabs on his arms and legs made me shudder. I will not give him a massage, I decided.

Let the others do it. Thinking (and secretly glad) that twelve others could help him, I searched a section of the ward that would least likely be his quarters and started offering massages to the sick. I finished with a patient and prepared for the next person to massage. As I turned around, I came face-to-face with the man I had noticed at the entrance. How long he had been standing there, I had no idea.

“I want massage,” he addressed me.

He spoke English! Hardly any of the sixty patients in that ward did. I could not mistake the message. “You want a massage?” I echoed and smiled to hide my surprise and unbelief. Why me? Where were the others? “Yes.” He lay down on his bed four feet away. Starting from his head, I dropped some oil on his scalp and massaged.

But on his arms, back, and legs, I poured oil.

The dry skin could not absorb enough.

I added more oil and gently rubbed it in.

Soon bits of scaly skin started to slough off.

More oil. Dead skin accumulated on the bedsheet, so I scooped it up and dropped the pile in a bin close by. I worked silently, praying, while he watched my every move without a word. On the next trip, I could hardly wait to see how the man was doing, but on his bed lay a different patient. I walked through the ward but found no trace of him. To this day, the question remains: Why, of the more than ten others in the group, did he ask me? Did he know my thoughts? I will never know.

But those minutes that I gave him a massage spelled a day of victory for me. It taught me several lessons, one of which was, “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me” (Philippians 4:13, NKJV), for the Lord had enabled me to do a deed I could not have done on my own, one which I detested.

Bienvisa Ladion Nebres