“When Jacob awoke from his sleep, he thought, “Surely the LORD is in this place, and I was not aware of it.” He was afraid and said, “How awesome is this place! This is none other than the house of God; this is the gate of heaven” – Genesis 28:16-17 (NIV)

My father is a professional artist, and when I was five years old, our local church commissioned him to paint a mural of St. John of God. John was born in Portugal in 1495 and was a soldier before he had a personal encounter with God. After this radical encounter, he believed his vocation was to serve the sick and poor, and he was often found cleaning the wounds of lepers. My father's painting depicted the leper whose feet St. John was washing, as the leper miraculously transformed into Christ. That powerful image impacted me as a child, has remained with me, and has become a part of my pastoral identity as a hospital chaplain. 

As an oncology chaplain, I have grown increasingly aware of God’s beautiful image in my patients. Like St. John of God and the patriarch Jacob in Genesis, I am amazed at how I encounter Christ in the most unexpected places, often in the grief and wrestling of another. This week, I was called to a room where a patient had just received a terminal diagnosis. The patient and family were processing their sudden grief and loss; they were wrestling with their faith. As a chaplain, I was invited into the room to tend to their spiritual and emotional needs. The patient and family spoke Spanish, so I invited a translator to communicate with them. 

“This is hard. This is not how I imagined the latter years of my life. I do not want this leukemia, and I do not want this burden for my family. I do not understand why God has allowed this, but I know God is good, and I still trust Him,” declared the patient passionately, with tears streaming down his face. As he stated his trust and faith in God even in his season of grief and loss, a holy hush came on everyone in the room, and as a chaplain, I leaned into the silence. I was aware of God’s sweet Presence in that room, transforming it into a sacred space. After a few minutes of silence, the patient spoke about his song compositions that reminded him of God’s faithfulness toward His people in the storms of life. As I visited with the patient and family, I learned they had served faithfully in their local church and composed worship songs in Spanish together as a couple. I reflected on their love for music and asked them if there was a particular composition that they would like to sing together.

The patient sat up straight, smiled, and began to sing passionately. As his wife harmonized with him, everyone in the room was moved to tears. God was there: in their grief, in their anger, in their wondering, in their pain, in their song. After the song ended, the translator tearfully indicated that she felt the power of God through the screen; she let the patient, his family, and me know that she had prayed for her work to be meaningful, and she felt like she was right where she was supposed to be. The patient beamed and said he was “blessed to know that God was using his suffering to touch others.” God was present – touching hearts physically and virtually. The veil between our physical realm and the sacred realm was thin. Like Jacob, I was at the gate of heaven, witnessing God’s Presence transform a room with a terminal diagnosis into a sacred space filled with worship, meaning, and faith. As chaplains, we represent the Divine in the room, carrying God’s healing Presence to those we serve. Concurrently, may we remain curious and aware of encountering God already at work in the room. We often stand at the gate of heaven, encountering Christ in that grief-stricken patient, in that tired nurse, in that on-call death. That is where transformation happens.