February 27th 2016
Do not judge others, and God will not judge you; do not condemn others and God will not condemn you; forgive others and God will forgive you. – Luke 6:37
I was sitting in the breakroom of the hospital one day when one of my good friends started talking about the week we were having. We are nurses, and we had a particularly busy schedule that week. On top of a great number of patients, there were a number of people who had called off worked. My friend is a good Christian person who is involved in a lot of activities with her church- this is common knowledge of our co-workers. We had just finished first rounds, and we had a total of 7 patients ready for surgery between the 2 of us. (Normally, 4-5 for 2 people is considered normal.)
She started by saying that she didn’t think that one of people who called off was really taking his mom to an appointment and that another probably wasn’t really sick since she worked with her the night before and she was fine. She then went on to say if 2 of the other nurses would do less talking and more working that we would not have to kill ourselves to get the patients in the OR on time. She then stated how she didn’t even know how one of the nurses ever passed her boards to be a nurse in the first place. She finally finished by saying that the nursing assistants must have been hiding because she had not seen them. I had just been letting her talk not really saying much, but in my head I was agreeing, thinking it was good that the two of us were there.
As she left, one of the nursing assistants who had not started his shift yet quietly said to me before walking out the door of the breakroom. “That is why I don’t go to church; all those Christians do is just sit and judge everyone else.” As I sat there after he left, I prayed for forgiveness because even though I didn’t say it, I thought some of it. It is easy for us to judge or even condemn other people. This Lenten season we need to remember that no human is perfect except for the One Who died for us. And also, we can’t help lead other people to the Lord if we are too busy judging and condemning them.
– Julie Diltz