Thus says the Lord:
“A voice is heard in Ramah,
lamentation and bitter weeping.
Rachel is weeping for her children;
she refuses to be comforted for her children,
because they are no more.”
(Jeremiah 31:15, ESV)

Moments before morning rounds, the nurses hustled into the medical ward to receive report from the night shift nurses. In the critical care area, there was a hospital bed with an attached clipboard holding two reports for two pediatric patients. One of the patients was a small boy who lay still on the bare mattress with his grandmother beside him, weeping quietly. The nurses were rapidly giving reports for each patient as they passed by the bed.

With the arrival of the rainy season, the hospital was teeming with patients and their caregivers, who the nurses were frantically trying to direct. It was visiting hour, and a humble gathering of visitors encircled the bed where the still boy lay. The mother of the boy, a strongly built figure clad in a black burqa, announced her arrival with a weighty presence. The gathering parted for her with whispered words of prayers. Without acknowledging them, she went directly toward the hospital bed, lifted her son’s still body, and then swooped him onto her back with agile grace and strength. She let out a loud cry, as if she was struck in pain. A few of the gatherers were trying to console the mother by encouraging her to wait. As if she did not see them, she covered her face and her son with her black burqa and walked out of the hospital with the still body on her back, like a wailing shadow.

The small gathering around the bed started to disperse upon the departure of the still boy and his mother. Unbeknownst to the distracted gathering and the hustling nurses, there was another small boy with his mother sharing the other half of the hospital bed where the still boy had laid. This mother sat quietly on the edge of the bed with her child’s head in her lap and tucked him a little closer. She had witnessed the passing of the night, and of that boy with his grandmother, until morning dawned. As the ward cleared up, the mother looked up from her small child and gazed upon the crowded room with tearful fear in her eyes.

The hospital bed was now half empty, and ready to be occupied again.

For all the mothers and grandmothers who waited and held their sick child through those insufferable hospital nights during malaria season- there is One who sees when others are not looking...

So she called the name of the Lord who spoke to her, “You are a God of seeing,” for she said, “truly here I have seen him who looks after me.” (Genesis 16:3, NIV)