September 8, 2023 - AM Blog

       Our visit with the doctor who is charge of the transplant isn’t until 5:30 EDT.  The Lord willing, I will write a second blog this evening to share where we are headed.
       I would classify myself as a sexist mainly when it comes to nursing care.  At least from my experience, most of the female nurses have a gentler spirit and touch.  And heart.  There have been a few exceptions.
       Case in point this morning.  I had blood work and then headed to the same floor where the stem cell harvest had been.  I drew the guy nurse who isn’t far from my age. 
       From the moment that he closed the curtains he talked non-stop.  He began telling me about his childhood growing up with seven siblings, five of them boys. 
       The six boys stayed in one large bedroom with three regular beds.  His dad said that it was training for when they got married.  They would learn to make up or sleep on the floor.   I did get a word in at this point and said, “I have a feeling that you slept on the floor more than once as a husband.”
       My Mayo chart has me listed as “Rev. Chuck Cooper” so maybe he thought he would either teach a pastor a thing or two or show how knowledgeable he was on the Bible.  Most of you know that I prefer to be called pastor instead of reverend, but it’s not a hill to climb at Mayo.
       He started with Jesus walking on the water and how he wouldn’t have been afraid like the disciples were.  He moved from there to Jesus meeting the disciples by the Sea of Galilee after Jesus’ resurrection, only connecting the three times Jesus asked Peter, “Do you love me?” with the three denials of Peter.
       Somehow he went back to the trial of Jesus before Caiphas making a somewhat snide comment about the rooster crowing and how that couldn’t have happened.
       At this point I couldn’t stand it any longer.  I said, “Well, you don’t understand the Scripture.  When some of the translations say that a rooster crowed in the middle of the night, that is a very poor translation.”
       I went on to share with him that the original says that Jesus said to Peter, “Before the cock crows twice, you will deny me three times.”
       I explained to him what Daybreakers hear every spring during Lent that the cock crow was the signal for the changing of the guard of the soldiers.  What Peter heard wasn’t the crowing of a rooster.  What he heard in the wee hours of the night was a piercing blast of a trumpet, the cock crow.
       It was then that Luke tells us that Jesus turned and looked at Peter.  Peter went out and wept bitterly.
       I told the nurse that Jesus asking Peter three times if he loved Him led to the recalling of Peter as a disciple to follow Jesus.
       Most of us have those moments in our past when we failed to love as we should.  Peter’s denials were because of his failure to love Jesus as he had claimed earlier that evening.
       As I look back at my life, the vast majority of my spiritual failures have been because of my failure to love deeply enough.
       I am thankful that after every one of those, like Peter, I have heard the Lord say once again, “Come and follow me.”
       I don’t guess that you’d believe that the nurse didn’t say a thing about the Bible after that, would you?