I hate waiting in the waiting-room with other people, most of whom look so miserable I'm sure they wouldn't bring a smile between them at a funeral.
I fumbled through the magazines most of which are so old they might as well be written in Latin, covering such exciting subjects like Equestrian Monthly, Yachting World, and Mountaineering. Why do doctors and dentists have these types of magazines in their waiting-rooms? Looking around me, I doubt any of these people could take part in any of these activities anyway. I on the other hand ...
They have a big monitor in the waiting-room and every so often it shows your name and which room to go to. Meanwhile they show adverts for vaccinations and immunisations, medical check-ups for all sorts of illnesses, health insurance, and even old peoples' homes and funeral directors. You can't get more cheerful than that, can you?
Eventually my turn came and I went in to see the pretty young nurse. She smiled and asked me to sit down next to her and then she read off the computer monitor the results she had received from the hospital. She pointed at the screen and explained all the figures there. Cholesterol levels, sugar levels, and this and that level and so on.
She then suggested she takes my blood pressure. As she leant forward towards me to take my pulse and blood pressure I noticed that a couple of buttons on her blouse were undone. Not surprisingly, my heart beat and blood pressure were higher than normal.
One improvement the medical profession can make is not to have pretty young nurses take your blood pressure. A dragon with flaming nostrils on the other hand would frighten one so much that blood temperature would probably freeze to below zero and register no pressure at all.
But what has all this to do with the title to this article?
Well, whilst waiting in that waiting-room I wondered what it's like waiting in God's Waiting-Room.
You know ... when you are waiting there for your final diagnosis and decision.
Fumbling through whatever magazines they have there, like how to fit new wings on an Angel, or how to learn to play the harp in ten easy lessons. I bet you all the magazines will be in Latin or Aramaic. Why can't the magazines be in English? I always thought God is English. After all, all the Bibles I've read are in English, so He must be English.
Anyway, imagine sitting there in God's Waiting-Room fretting and worrying about what He will say. Mentioning all the things we have done or omitted to do in our life on earth. All the things we've said or not said. Hurting other people. I wonder what results will show up on God's computer monitor and whether the results will be pleasing all round or not. What if His computer is wrong? But then, God is never wrong is He?
Too late to worry now. What's been done has been done and now is the time for the final reckoning. Now is the time to find out whether we are really "dead" for eternity or whether we'd be welcomed into His loving arms.
But then ... the moral of this story surely is ... just as we have plenty of opportunities now to keep our health in check and to monitor it when it is not as well as it should be. Surely now is also the time to monitor the state of our soul's health so that when we are in that Heavenly Waiting-Room we'd have no reason to worry at all.
