Journal of Sacred Work

¹Unless the Lord builds the house, those who build it labor in vain. Unless the Lord guards the city, the guard keeps watch in vain. – Psalm 127

     A female enters the Matthew Walker Clinic seeking care. Diagnosis? She is pregnant. But the medical diagnosis does not begin to touch the human tragedy. The pregnant female is twelve years old.* As if this fact isn’t sad enough, it turns out that the father of her baby is her father.
   Fortunately, the girl is placed in the care of a loving caregiver – Dr. Michele Williams. Dr. Williams offers more than medical treatment for she knows that this girl hurts in many ways beyond the physical. Unless Love is engaged in the care of this patient, those who treat her will, like the Psalmist says, labor in vain. Unless this girl is surrounded with love, there will be no healing…

  The image that symbolizes sacred work (see bottom of book cover, left) engages two intersecting circles with a heart in the
intersection and a golden thread weaving through the middle. The golden thread represents the healing tradition of humanity; one circle represents love, the other represents need. The heart represents the presence of the Servant’s Heart.
   If our work and our lives are not guided by Love, than we labor in vain. If our lives are not informed by Love, than what is the point of owning any possessions we have much less trying to guard them with security systems and bank protections?
   We all need a certain amount of worldly goods to travel our journey through this world. We need food and shelter in order to survive. As humans, we also need the company of others and we need love.
   There is a funny illustration of our need for love and companionship in the movie Cast Away, starring Tom Hanks. After the character played by Hanks is stranded on a desert island he rapidly becomes lonely. How to solve this sense of isolation? He finds a volleyball among the wreckage,
paints a face on it, names it Wilson, and engages his new "friend" in regular conversation (click on image from movie at left.) He even goes to great lengths to save the "life" of his "companion" during various events.
   We all need love. We all need the companionship of others. We all need the meaning that faith in a higher power provides. Otherwise, we labor in vain suffering with no answer to the challenging question: "So what?" God’s love enriches our lives with meaning. For Christians, Jesus’ presence offers comfort when we are in pain or feel abandoned by the rest of the world. People of all faiths look to a higher power for strength. When the Lord is with us, we are never alone. When God’s Love is passing through us, our caregiving work always has meaning.

-Erie Chapman

*The image of the pregnant teenager is by Rosmarie Doumitt and is used for illustration. It is not a picture of the girl in the story although the story itself is true.