When Jesus Healed the Masses
Glen Robinson
My wife, Shelly, and I were privileged to volunteer last week during the Your Best Pathway to Health mega-clinic in Fort Worth, Texas.
While work responsibilities as a communication professor at Southwestern Adventist University in Keene, Texas, meant I could only be there Friday afternoon, Shelly, a nurse with Vencare Hospice in Fort Worth, Texas, was there the entire time. She helped out with Patient Flow, making sure patients got to the various departments. I helped out by interviewing volunteers, taking pictures and writing a few stories for social media.
A weekend of rest and reflection gave us a chance to think and talk about what impressed us most about the event. The numbers [6,805 people served], of course, were impressive. I heard the Fort Worth event ended up being the second largest Pathway to Health ever held. And it’s easy to get caught up in the numbers.
But what impressed me more was the thought of how urgent the need for this kind of ministry is and how tenacious these people were who were being served. People would come and sleep out in the elements, waiting in line for hours in the sun or cold or rain to get the medical care they needed. I couldn’t help but think about what Jesus must have gone through when he was healing people. We tend to imagine him healing one person as a time, but we forget that there were masses of people who needed healing, and he had to deal with this huge volume of people, all jostling for his attention. As challenging as it was for us with 2,200 volunteers, what must have it been like for Him!
Shelly told me that when she saw the people coming for medical treatment from all walks of life and then going away satisfied, she thought about heaven. We will be surrounded by all kinds of people, individuals we might not have rubbed shoulders with in a typical day on earth. But each and every one of them, of all colors, all demographics, all economic backgrounds are cherished by God as His children.
Finally, I thought of how this event reminds me how our society has become separated into a world of the Haves and the Have Nots. Typically, today, health care is available to the Haves and not the Have Nots.
Shelly and I were blessed by our involvement in Your Best Pathway to Health and look forward to the next opportunity to serve.
