Lausanne World Pulse – Perspectives Articles – To Touch the King: Why We Minister to Those who Suffer
By R. C. Stevens
November 2008
The grandmother, Rama, was an old acquaintance who had worked as a house-helper for some friends of ours. Her son and daughter-in-law sat with her on the floor of our sitting room—their clothes and hollow faces declaring their poverty, the quiet despair in his eyes highlighting the harsh life of a day laborer. Recently, I had spent the better part of two days with them and they had come by our home to pay their respects before returning to the village. Sitting together now, I felt anger rise like bile in my mouth—anger at this family—at their poverty and ignorance and at the way they simply accept their lot in life. Anger at a world of injustice and suffering that we have so little ability to change.
The Need of a Family
A week earlier, Rama and her daughter-in-law tried to change their fate. They arrived on our doorstep with Sonu—a 5-month-old baby boy wrapped in a blanket. Only two large, unseeing eyes were visible. He was sick, and as the cheap village doctors had not helped, they had been to see our pediatrician who had told them that something was wrong with the child’s blood, and that the treatment would cost in excess of 2,000INR (Indian Rupees). They asked us to help as they did not have that kind of money. They had nowhere else to go and had spent the last two hours searching for our house in hopes that we might be willing to pay for the treatment.
Bundling them into a rickshaw, I abandoned my afternoon plans to sit in doctors’ waiting rooms and ensure that Sonu received the proper treatment. Speaking with the pediatrician, I began to realize how critical the child’s situation was. The doctor’s only official recommendation was an immediate blood transfusion. Unofficially, his entire manner spoke of the futility of even trying.
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At a small modern hospital not far away, an elderly doctor with kind hands and a gentle spirit took Sonu from his mother’s arms, removed the blanket, and engaged in the fight for this small life. I had never seen anyone so sick and still alive. This small child was emaciated, with skin hanging from his body due to dehydration; each breath punctuated with small cries of pain. He was unresponsive when the doctor tried five times to find a vein that was open enough to allow for an IV. The little one needed oxygen, antibiotics, and rehydration fluid to try and control blood poisoning, dehydration, pneumonia, and tuberculosis.
Sonu’s immediate need was blood. He simply did not have enough to sustain himself, and without more he would die. Pricking, poking, prodding, and praying, the staff was able to coax just enough blood out of him for the tests required to match type and compatibility. I was handed two small vials of his blood and put them in my shirt pocket. I set out across town to the blood bank to bring back a liter of bright red life.
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R.C. Stevens (pseudonym) has served with his wife and two children on a church-planting team among Hindus in South Asia for the past eight years. |