Hospitals.  They're no fun when you're sick—but remarkably instructive if you're healthy.

Recently, my wife went into the hospital for kidney surgery.  So I spent four nights sleeping out in the waiting room, and countless hours observing.  I've come away with three lessons I'm trying to hang on to.

Lesson #1: Everybody is hurting—from something.

Hospitals, of course, are filled with the sick, the broken, the bleeding.  There isn't a hallway you walk down that doesn't offer some kind of evidence of intense personal pain. 

Yet this is also true of life, itself. Everybody's hurting over something.  The problem for most of us is that because life isn't labeled a “Hospital” we often fail to see the pain in front of our face...in the face in front of us.

Lesson #2: The best care is team care.

I'm intrigued at the clusters of doctors and nurses in the hallway, talking about this or that patient and what they've attempted so far—and what they think might be most beneficial next.  These very smart people have learned that the smartest among them is not sufficient for the mystery of human hurt.  It takes a team.

Same is true in the body of Christ.  Galatians 6:2 calls us to “Bear one another’s' burdens and so fulfill the law of Christ.”

Lesson #3: There is indescribable beauty in the humility of serving.

Over the past five days, I have witnessed countless acts of kindness from nurses and doctors and technicians.  There is little glory in cleaning up human waste...or changing bloody dressings. Frankly, I was caught off guard at the beauty I saw in the humility of this selfless service. 

I now hear Christ's statement in Matthew 5:7 with fresh ears:  “Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy.”

There's no glory...and certainly no fun—in visiting someone in the hospital.  Or someone shut in.  But it's the lifestyle we've been called to.   That's mercy.

With a view from a hospital corridor, those are my thoughts .