PEOPLE NEED US TO EXEMPLIFY COMFORT AND ASSURANCE
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At 22, mail carrier John Prine delivered newspapers to the Baptist Old People’s Home in Maywood, Illinois. The elderly residents would pretend that he was a family member just to have somebody to talk to. Prine was also a songwriter, envisioning that the longing for attention is heard only as the calling to others from the forgotten heart, as if from the end of a long hollow log. He wrote these lyrics:
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“You know that old trees just grow stronger And old rivers grow wilder every day. Old people just grow lonesome waiting for someone to say, ‘Hello in there, hello’” (Hello In There; John Prine; Walden Music Inc. / Sour Grapes Music; 1971).
The Priesthood and the Diaconate, commissioned as Christ’s and His apostles’ work on Earth, must model empathy and adoration for the eyes and ears of doctors, nurses, and all nurturers.
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“Christ is the doctor of doctors” (Story of a Soul; Thérèse of Lisieux; Manuscript A, folio 83v; Calvados Carmelite Monastery, Lisieux, France, 1896).
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Our work is needed by all.
“Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, To visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world” (James 1:27).
Isaiah 46:4 – “And even to your old age I am he; and even to hoar hairs will I carry you: I have made, and I will bear; even I will carry, and will deliver you.”
Psalm 71:9 – “Cast me not off in the time of old age; forsake me not when my strength faileth.”
Psalm 71:18 – “Now also when I am old and greyheaded, O God, forsake me not; until I have shewed thy strength unto this generation, and thy power to every one that is to come.”
Psalm 23:1, 4 – “The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want… Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.”
Isaiah 40:31 – “But they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint.”
2 Corinthians 4:16 – “For which cause we faint not; but though our outward man perish, yet the inward man is renewed day by day.”
Leviticus 19:32 – “Thou shalt rise up before the hoary head, and honour the face of the old man, and fear thy God: I am the LORD.”
1 Timothy 5:1–2 – “Rebuke not an elder, but intreat him as a father; and the younger men as brethren; The elder women as mothers; the younger as sisters, with all purity.”