On a daily basis, I catch my own reflection in the heart-felt concerns and worries of my patients. We worry about our kids, our parents, our purpose, and our significance. I laugh with my patients all the time as I tell my senior citizens that I’ve contracted a deadly disease from them: ageing. It seems there’s nothing that makes people take life quite so seriously as the thought of losing it, and, while I’m in the business of giving physical hope through medical science, the real hope and health that people long for isn’t something I can dispense on a prescription pad. Truly, people long for peace on this earth and hope beyond the grave. Many times in practice I have nervously asked patients if they’d like me pray for them, and to my shock and embarrassment (because I worried about offending them) they latch onto the offer with a desperate “Yes!” More recently I hung “A Physician’s Prayer” in my examining rooms, and I’ve been stunned at how many patients will tell me they find comfort in knowing that I ask God for wisdom as I treat them.
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