German television today broadcasted a program on someone who works in a hospital with chidren who were born prematurely. He is part of a specialized group, but the program is only about him and his work. The crew follows him in his daily routine. He patiently explains what he is doing, how the ward functions and how these babies are treated from a medical point of view. Quiet, informed, knowledgeable, he talks about his work. It is awesome to see such a big, tall man working with almost miniature babies. They are small, frail and always at risk of losing their lives.
And every moment of this program reveals how this big man cares for what he is doing and especially for children.
The babies lie in beds which look like space age contraptions. Each has its own bed, linked to every conceivable device with cables all over the place. Inside, clearly visible, but cut off from the threatening contamination of normal air, lies the small ones. They hardly cling on to life.
Every now and then an alarm on the machines goes off. Then the caring man has to investigate what needs to be done. He remains at the bed, sometimes picking up the body, breaking a wind, talking gently as he handles the alarm.
He baths the babies, illustrates to their parents how to handle them, feed them and hold them. Look, he explains at the bedside of a small little creature: if he moves his small tongue like that, he has hunger. They are sometimes so small, so almost infinitely tiny. One of them has a hand as big as a finger nail.
At some stage the interviewer asks: Now how did you become involved in this work? He explains that he studied at a university for two years, but at no stage did he really liked what he was doing. His studies promised a lucrative career with lots of money. But that was not what he wanted to do with his life. In those years, he says, my relationship with God was not right. In this non-religious program, this remark rolls spontaneously off his lips. It is accompanied by a quick movement of his eyes upwards, to heaven. He went home, he continues, and studied medicine for two years. In Bible classes he gradually began to understand what he wanted to do. So ultimately, he took up his position in the ward, caring for babies who could not speak or look after themselves and who needed utmost care. In that place he found his happiness and fulfilment.
Each day, this grownup man, works with highly specialized technology. He cares for little babies who, some years ago, had no chance of surviving if they had been born at such an early age. Today they survive because of this technology. Today, little children survive with hands as big as fingernails due to huge progress in medical science. And, also, thanks to those who provides the technology with an indispensible, necessary human face. So he baths the little, helpless ones, chats with them, patiently holds them up to break winds, show their parents to prepare their food and change their dirty napppies. And in his humanity, his friendliness, his patience, he does not only give life, but he gives hope and inner calm to concerned, alarmed, worried parents.
This is praxis, the practice of faith – in its most concrete, self-sacrificing form. To make things right with God in an act of faith, putting on an apron, kneeling and washing the feet of others.
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