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Throughout the month of November we’re looking at civility – how trusting God can help us cultivate a disposition of the mind and heart that has the potential to revolutionize our culture and ourselves.
There are only a few places in our society where diverse people come together and experience life as equals.
One is the Bureau of Motor Vehicles. At one time or another, everyone has to take a number and wait in line to renew their driver’s license.
And everyone is on equal footing when being photographed without glasses or any discernible displays of emotion.
The local Social Security office and election polling places are often like that, too. It’s not uncommon to meet your neighbors for the first time while standing in line to vote, or while waiting to sit down with a real human being to explore why the government keeps misspelling your name on official documents.
It would be wonderful if places of worship were showcases of equality.
But it’s not usually so. Martin Luther King, Jr., lamented that Sunday at 11:00 am is the most segregated hour of the week in the United States.
Then there’s the great equalizer – the hospital intensive care waiting room.
In a sermon called One Inch from the Fence, theologian Wes Seeliger wrote, “I have spent long hours in the intensive care waiting room watching with anguished people, listening to urgent questions: Will my husband make it? Will my child walk again? How do you live without your companion of thirty years?
“The intensive care waiting room is different from any other place in the world. And the people who wait are different.
“They can’t do enough for each other. No one is rude. The distinctions of race and class melt away. The garbage man loves his wife as much as the university professor loves his, and everyone understands this. Each person pulls for everyone else.
“In the intensive care waiting room, the world changes. Vanity and pretense vanish. The universe is focused on the doctor’s next report. If only it will show improvement. Everyone knows that loving someone else is what life is all about.”
In the waiting room, a seemingly arbitrary huddle of strangers becomes a band of brothers and sisters.
We’re not getting our licenses renewed. We’re asking God for a miracle. We’re offering expressions of support. And we’re hoping against hope that it’s not too late for each of us to receive the gift of hope.
When you think about it, the intensive care waiting room is the heart of civility.
Civility does not come down to being nice or being polite – mastering a set of socially approved conventions for how we get along with others. Instead, it begins with the recognition that all of us belong to this sacred space – the place where we await news that will have life and death consequences.
Civility is a disposition, a fixed attitude of openness to others, a heartfelt respect for the uniqueness and beauty of every woman and every man. All of us bear the image of the God who has made us.
Seeliger poignantly asks:
Could we learn to love like that if we realized that every day of life is a day in the waiting room?