: CHRIST : COMMUNITY : LIFE brushed his teeth. Lastly, I had to remove his IV line. His veins were weak and I had to work carefully and slowly. As I washed and peeled the stubborn tape, he stopped me. “Thank you, miss,” he said softly. My heart was breaking, but I managed to get him ready to leave. As he gathered his few belongings and I went to finish his paperwork, I heard him ask me, “Miss? Can you call me a cab?” I turned, naively thinking I had misheard him. “Sir? A cab? Do you mean you would like your family or friends to pick you up?” He smiled sadly, “No, Miss. I don’t have anyone. Can you please call me a cab?” I nodded, backing out of the room numbly. I called him a cab. I walked him out and watched him leave, hunched into the backseat of a taxi. Alone. And somehow I made it all the way to the bathroom, where I sobbed for him. They tell you not to get involved with your patients emotionally, but sometimes they break into your heart uninvited. I realized that day that worship is more than songs. It means loving people through my week. And if I sit in church on Sunday and sing songs but cannot love my patients, my co-workers or my friends the other six days, I can’t call myself a worshipper. Sometimes it means belting out a song in an unknown key next to my uninhibited nephew. It means apologizing for my quick temper. It means letting that other driver go in front of me. It means bringing flowers to that single mom. It means mailing a card, giving a hug, holding a hand. And sometimes, loving someone, worshipping through service… means calling a cab. I was fairly certain that Chris Tomlin’s rendition of “Amazing Grace (My Chains Are Gone)” had never been sung with such volume, nor in that particular key. The extraordinarily enthusiastic vocalist was my seven-year- old, towheaded nephew. I watched him last Sunday, slightly jealous of his toothless, off-key joy. I can’t remember the last time I sang like that. “When did I lose that?” I wondered. In Exodus 8, Moses is trying to free the Israelites. Verse 1 says, Then the LORD said to Moses, “Go to Pharaoh and say to him, ‘This is what the LORD says: Let my people go, so that they may worship me.’” Did you catch that? The Lord wanted His people released; that they may worship Him. We are a ransomed people, set free from bondage, cut out of a legacy of slavery, rushed into the light of freedom. Why? That we may worship. What a heritage. What a glorious charge. A few months ago, I was having coffee with a friend who made a mention in passing about how we are called to be worshippers every day of the week. How hasty I am to box worship into a Sunday morning habit. How quick I am to forget that worship is to permeate all of our being. And how quick I am to miss the point sometimes that it has to be a lifestyle rather than lip service. And how quickly God has revealed that loving people can be a synonym for worship. I learned this a few months ago. He was my last patient of the day. It was the end of my internship on the surgical floor as a student nurse and after ten hours of a difficult shift, I was tired. I scanned his chart. Good. He was going home. I had delivered poor prognoses all day and was ready to deliver some positive news. I waltzed in to find a frail, older man sitting on the edge of the bed. A sweet gentleman I had been assigned to for weeks... Confused, I scanned the chart again. Oh. We weren’t sending him home because he was getting better. We were sending him home because there wasn’t anything else we could do. I washed his hair, helped him dress and When Worship Meets Love By Grace Cartwright 10 CCM