A few weeks ago, with the help of some wonderfully talented volunteers, I led a Vacation Bible School for our friends in the nursing home. This was something we first tried last summer, and it was such a huge success that I couldn’t wait to do it again this year. So for three afternoons in a row, the dining room came alive; we had crafts, games, songs, snacks, and Bible lessons. We were a bunch of adults of all ages enjoying our time together and worshipping God with a child-like faith and energy. Our theme for the week was Living With Courage, lessons from the book of Daniel–Courage in Exile ( Daniel Ch.1), Courage When it Costs Us (Daniel Ch. 6), and Courage in the Fire (Daniel Ch.3).
On the first day, we read Daniel chapter 1, the account of Daniel and the many Jewish young men taken to live in Babylon when its king conquered the land of Judah. The purpose was to take these Jews and assimilate them into Babylon by re-educating them and immersing them in the Babylonian culture. Though the Jewish captives do not seem to have been mistreated, they were captives nonetheless, unable to return to their homeland. They were exiles.
I thought this was profoundly important to discuss with our nursing home friends. Whenever I lead Bible lessons with them, I never ignore the truth of where they live or how they feel. I never gloss over those raw emotions and pretend that everything is going to be great. We talk about things like their physical suffering, their fear of death, and their disagreements with their roommates or fellow residents. I can’t offer them hope if we don’t talk about the truth. What did Jesus come for if He isn’t able to meet them right there in the middle of that pain? It’s only the hope of heaven and the strength of our Savior that can get them through.
So we began by talking about fear. What is fear? What is courage? Is courage the absence of fear? We agreed that courage is not the absence of fear; courage is acting boldly and confidently in the midst of fear. And then we talked about what it means to live in exile. We recognized that though the nursing home is where they currently reside, it’s not really their home. It can never feel like the home they once had. Just as Daniel and his Jewish friends lived in Babylon, it was not their true home. Just as Daniel and his friends had no choice of where they were living, our nursing home friends don’t really have a choice about where they are living either. As we were discussing some of these things, I asked, “Are you ever lonely?” Many nodded their heads and one gentleman said, “Every day.”
Because I work with nursing home residents almost daily, I know the reality of their loneliness. But to hear him say it like that, “every day,” still made my heart break in a way it hadn’t in a long time. Think about that for a moment. Feeling lonely every day. It’s almost impossible for us living in the “outside world” to understand. We scurry around from place to place, busy with our jobs, errands, hobbies, and families. We often feel “stir crazy” or say we have “cabin fever” if we haven’t left our homes for several days. Even inside our homes we are still connected via our many devices and social media platforms.
While we are busy running around from one place to the next, nursing home residents rarely leave their facility. If they leave the building at all, it’s nearly always just to go to a medical appointment of some kind. (How exciting.) They often go days without even going outdoors. Most nursing home residents that I know do not have a cell phone or a tablet, and there is no landline phone in their room. That means communication via a phone call, FaceTime or Zoom is not an option for them. Staying connected with friends and family depends upon their access to the communal phone at the nurses station or in the commons area. They really are in a modern day type of exile.
We talked about how to live with courage in the midst of exile. How can they live with hope and bold confidence in the midst of a a lonely desert? Exiles can live with courage because they know the land they currently encamp upon is not their home. They choose to look past their current situation and set their gaze on their future homeland. Sometimes, however, they need help; they need to be reminded of their future home because the darkness of the present one makes it so hard to see the hope beyond. That’s why it’s so important for us to visit them in their exile, to enter the world they live in behind the doors of the nursing home and spend time loving and encouraging them.
Pure and undefiled religion in the sight of our God and Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their distress, and to keep oneself unstained by the world. James 1:27