The Only One on the Ward Who Prays

Bay four, bed by the window, which everybody says is the good one and which means the light wakes you at half past four.

Twenty nine days.

She has watched three people come and go from the bed opposite. The first one was lovely. The second one was in a lot of pain and it was hard to be in the room. The third one is here now and is on the phone a great deal.

When she came in she prayed the way she prays at home, which is out loud, quietly, but out loud, because she has always done it out loud since she was a girl and she does not know how to do it any other way.

In the first week she did not think about it.

In the second week she noticed a woman glance.

In the third week a healthcare assistant, who is kind and who she likes, said something jokey about her having a chat with the boss, and she laughed, and it was fine, and it was completely fine, and she has pulled the curtain round every time since.

Now she does it in her head. And in her head it has got shorter, and this week it has occasionally not happened at all, and she noticed that on Tuesday and it frightened her more than the scan did.

Twenty nine days is a long time to get quieter in.

If you have ever felt yourself getting smaller in a place where you are stuck, you know that curtain rail. And you know the fear that arrives with it, which is not about the ward: I have been shrinking for four weeks and nobody did anything to me, and I do not know how much smaller I get if I am here another month.

The word, and what rests on somebody

Let me pull up the chair by the bed and say the plain thing.

The problem is not the ward. Everybody has been decent, and the woman who glanced probably meant nothing, and the assistant was joking and likes you. The problem is that nothing has been done to you and you have got quieter anyway, and that is much more frightening than opposition, because there is nothing to resist.

So let me put the word straight and then give you the verse, because the verse is precisely about being talked about.

Blessed does not mean the stay is short. It means the favor of God is resting on a person, His face is turned toward them. It is a fact about where He is looking. It does not read off a discharge date.

Now Peter, and I want you to notice the verb.

If ye be reproached for the name of Christ, happy are ye; for the spirit of glory and of God resteth upon you.1 Peter 4:14

Resteth. Present tense, continuous, and it is a word about something settling and staying.

It does not say the Spirit will come to your aid if you are brave enough. It says the Spirit of glory rests on the person who is being reproached, as a description of what is currently the case, while it is happening.

And happy there is the same word as blessed all through the Beatitudes. It means God's favor is on that person.

You have the Spirit of glory resting on you in this bay, present tense, and resting is something He is doing rather than something you are achieving. First Peter 4:14 puts the verb in the present and makes it a description rather than a reward, and it is the Holy Spirit, named directly in that verse, who is the one doing the resting.

Nothing was done to you, and that is the point

Now the shrinking, because it deserves to be taken seriously and not talked out of.

Here is what actually happened over twenty nine days. One glance. One joke from a person who likes you. That is the entire hostile content of four weeks, and you have gone from praying out loud to sometimes not praying at all.

That is not weakness of character. That is what happens to any human being in an environment where they are the only one doing a thing, and it happens to everybody, and it does not require anybody to be unkind. It is drift, and it is quiet, and it is exactly why Peter wrote to people who were scattered in places where they were the only ones.

And notice what he does not do. He does not tell them to be braver. He tells them what is resting on them.

Which is a different kind of help entirely. He is not increasing the demand, he is describing the supply.

You are not being asked to be braver in bay four, and the verse gives you a fact rather than an instruction. First Peter 4:14 states what rests rather than what should be attempted, and it is the Holy Spirit who is that resting, which means what has been in that bay for twenty nine days is a Person rather than your own resolve.

And I want to say something about the curtain itself, because you have made it carry a lot of meaning that it may not deserve.

Pulling a curtain round in a shared bay is not necessarily shame. It might be manners, and it might be quiet, and there is nothing in Scripture that requires prayer to be audible to strangers. Jesus specifically commends a closed door.

The tell is not the curtain. The tell is Tuesday, when it did not happen at all. That is the thing worth noticing, and you did notice it, which is why you are reading this.

What to do about it, plainly

So here is the practical part, and it is small on purpose.

Do not decide to pray out loud with the curtain open. That is a resolution and resolutions made in bay four at week four do not survive the assistant's next joke, and failing at it would cost you more than the drift has.

Do one thing instead, and it is this: put it back somewhere fixed. Out loud or not, curtain open or shut, but at a time. When they bring the tea. When the light wakes you at half past four. Attach it to something that happens in this bay whether or not you feel like it, because feeling like it is the thing that has been quietly leaving.

You have something resting on you that does not run on your enthusiasm, and it has not moved once in four weeks. First Peter 4:14 puts the resting in the present continuous, and it is the Holy Spirit who is described as dwelling rather than visiting, so what has held in that bay was never being generated by you.

I do not know how much longer you are in. I am not going to guess and I am not going to tell you the scan comes back well, because I have no idea and you have had a month of people being brightly certain in that room.

And if the tiredness or the smallness has gone somewhere darker, say it to the ward staff or your own doctor, out loud, this week. That is not a failure. It is exactly the same courage as praying out loud and nobody ever calls it that.