When I was a young minister, I often felt awkward making hospital visits because I didn’t know what to say. I asked my senior pastor’s advice and he said, “Don, you don’t need to say much. The most important thing is the ministry of your presence. Just being there is enough.”
Never underestimate the power of being present with someone, particularly when they realize you don’t have to be there.
Two members of my staff spend many weekends watching their kids play sports, sometimes 8-10 hours a day. Sometimes in the rain or cold. Their presence is a profound act of love and devotion.
In his must-read book, How to Know a Person, political writer David Brooks shares this story: “I recently read about a professor named Nancy Abernathy who was teaching first-year med students when her husband, at age fifty, died of a heart attack while cross-country skiing. With some difficulty, she managed to make it through the semester and carried on with her teaching. One day she mentioned to the class that she was dreading teaching the same course the next year, because each year, during one of the first sessions of the course, she asks everybody to bring in family photos so they can get to know one another. She wasn’t sure if she could share a photo of her late husband during that session without weeping.
“The course ended. Summer came and went, and fall arrived and, with it, the day she dreaded. The professor entered the lecture hall, full of trepidation, and sensed something strange. The room was too full. Sitting there, along with her current class, were the second-year students, the ones who had taken her class the year before. They had come simply to lend their presence during this hard session. They knew what she needed, and didn’t need to offer anything more.”
“This is compassion,” Abernathy later remarked. “A simple human connection between the one who suffers and one who would heal.” (Brooks, pgs 52-53)
I want to do more of this. I want to sense when someone feels the pain of being alone and alleviate their discomfort with my presence. Not to teach or coach, but simply to be with them.