Patient literally means one who suffers. It makes sense that this is the term used for people who visit a doctor since outside of routine tests, people who aren’t suffering tend not to visit their doctor. So, a patient is someone who is suffering but has sought out a doctor in the hopes of easing their suffering and regaining their health. In pursuit of this goal, a patient will typically submit to the doctor’s orders, even when such orders seem nonsensical, scary, or even seem to at least temporarily add to their pain and misery. A patient lacks the Doctor’s knowledge and training and so they have to trust that the doctor knows what they are doing. By following their doctor, a patient may need to cut out things that they like doing, or add things that they don’t like doing. They may have to give up certain freedoms. They may have to become accustomed to dealing with their suffering for far longer than they had anticipated or hoped. But patients suffer all of these things, make all of these sacrifices, and listen to their doctors even when they don’t like what they’re hearing because they are working with their doctor towards the goal of recovery and an end to their suffering. In short, these patients are embodying the true essence of patience. Thankfully, most of us are fortunate to spend only a fraction of our lives as patients in a hospital. But whether we’ve never broken a bone or have spent so much time in a hospital that we’ve become jello connoisseurs, all of us are patients of the Master Healer, Jesus Christ. All of us have suffered the sickness of sin, the infections of iniquity, the trauma of trying to simply live our lives in this crazy, messed up world. As patients of Jesus Christ, we must recognize that our Savior’s greatest goal is our recovery and an end to our suffering, and we too must make this our goal. We must submit ourselves to His orders and cut out the things in our lives that are making us sick, however fun and tempting they may be, and we must start adding in the things that are going to make us healthier, however unpleasant and difficult they may seem. We have to accept that as part of our recovery, certain of what we assumed to be our freedoms may be restricted. Just as a doctor doesn’t do anything to their patient to be cruel or mean-spirited, neither does Christ ask us to suffer needlessly. Sometimes the side effects of the medicines that our Savior gives us are painful, but they are not as painful as the disease would soon grow to be if we refused our Savior’s help and allowed the disease to metastasize and potentially even kill us. It can seem sometimes when we are a patient that we have no agency and must simply bear whatever suffering comes our way, whether from the disease or from the doctor, and there is nothing that we ourselves can do. But we can remember that we are not suffering for no reason. We are putting up with all of this nonsense because we have hope for recovery. It is that hope and that willingness to endure with true patience and for a good purpose that transforms mere sufferers who will only get worse into patients who will only get better.
