“Pleni sunt cœli et terra gloria tua”
”Heaven and earth are full of thy glory”. We know this and have heard it often. Do we ever think about it? I’ve often wondered. Heaven is full of His glory, yes, I can believe that, wherever Heaven actually is. But earth? 34th St in New York? Soho in London? An undistinguished B road in the British or French countryside? Full of His glory?
A few days ago I had a sudden revelation on the subject. I was in hospital, in a clinic in a French provincial city near where I live. For three days I had a room in the cardiology department. And over each 24-hour period, a succession of nurses and care personnel came into my room, took my blood-pressure and temperature, did the cleaning, gave me blood-tests, brought me charmingly inedible salt-free meals, shaved my body hair in embarrassing places, and gave me unfailing smiles, encouragement and gentleness. And as I lay on my rather uncomfortable bed in between snoozes, two great truths came to me. First: medical science is one of God’s languages. If you have ever wondered why we see so few healing miracles these days, you haven’t been looking. From the invention of CoVid vaccines in less than a year to the possibility that a bypass operation might actually work, they are all around us: just not being performed by itinerant rabbis but by hardworking doctors and laboratory specialists. Second: the glory of God is all around us, right down the hall in the nurses’ station. If God is love, His glory surely shines through these young-to-middle-aged, always-tired-but-never-showing-it women of pure care and kindness to patients who range from the stoically quiet to the roaring and screamingly rebellious who bang the walls of their rooms (an old lady next door to me). I left feeling instructed and overwhelmingly grateful. Heaven and earth are full of His glory. Indeed.
