October 2019 - LPNI

                                                                                                   Theodor Fliedner

In 1836 Pastor Theodor Fliedner and his wife, Friederike, founded the first school of nursing.  In many cities, there were no hospitals at that time.  Following somewhat the model of the early Christian Church’s diaconate, incorporating ideas learned from Elizabeth Fry in England and the Mennonites, and applying his own thoughts, Fliedner developed a plan whereby young women would find and care for the needy sick.  For this, he needed to create Kaiserswerther Diakonie, an institute where women could learn both theology and nursing skills.  He opened the hospital and deaconess training center in Kaiserswerth on 13 October 1836.  Gertrud Reichardt was the first deaconess commissioned by the new school.  Florence Nightingale trained there as a nurse in 1850.

“The more grateful you are, the more you will be given to be grateful for”.  This quote from Fliedner opens up a truth to us that we often forget.  In our daily life we forget to be thankful for what God has given us.  We tend to see the things we don’t have, and what is not going well in our life.

It is not that we actually will get more when we start to thank God for his gifts, but our eyes will open to see what is good in life and we will develop a grateful attitude.  Research (for example, Emmonds and McCullough: “Counting Blessings Versus Burdens: An Experimental Investigation of Gratitude and Subjective Well-Being in Daily Life”) has proved that putting our focus on what is good in our life will strengthen us and even help us to sleep better and live a well-balanced life.  We can practise this by writing a “diary of blessings” or focusing on the “good of the day” every evening and thank God for it.  Through this we can learn to trust that God knows what is best for us even when we can’t see it.

Growing gratitude in our lives will strengthen our trust in God and help us, and the people we serve, through rough times in life, such as disease and loss.  The most precious proof of the influence of gratefulness and trust in God in hard times in life is, to me, the song the German pastor and anti-Nazi dissident, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, wrote in December 1944 in Flossenbürg concentration camp, where he was executed a few months later in April 1945 just before the end of World War II.

By gracious powers so wonderfully sheltered,

and confidently waiting come what may,

we know that God is with us night and morning,

and never fails to greet us each new day.

Yet is this heart by its old foe tormented,

still evil days bring burdens hard to bear;

Oh, give our frightened souls the sure salvation

for which, O Lord, You taught us to prepare.

And when this cup You give is filled to brimming

with bitter suffering, hard to understand,

we take it thankfully and without trembling,

out of so good and so beloved a hand.

Yet when again in this same world You give us

the joy we had, the brightness of Your Sun,

we shall remember all the days we lived through,

and our whole life shall then be Yours alone.

Angela Glaser, MA, RN  Vis-à-vis/Parish Nursing coordinator and educator in Germany