The staff at a Tennessee hospital are coming together to recognize the importance of spirituality, with nurses, doctors and support staff gathering each day to form a prayer circle around the medical center’s Christmas tree.
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And that tree, too, is pretty uncommon, as it includes an influx of prayer requests from hospital staff for their patients, friends and family who are in need of healing.
The group has been — and will continue to — gather each day at noon at Bristol Regional Medical Center in Bristol, Tennessee, for the 12 days leading up to Christmas in hopes of asking God to help their patients, WCYB-TV reported.
Chaplain Steve Playl leads the group of more than 30 people in a scene that is quite powerful, as nurses, doctors and others stand shoulder-to-shoulder and hold hands as they stand around the tree and invoke God.
“We consider the spiritual care of our patients to be important as well as the physical and emotional care,” Playl told WCYB-TV.
But this powerful display isn’t the only way many staff at the hospital have been turning to God this holiday season. As noted, the hospital’s Christmas tree also includes ornaments that are adorned with prayer requests.
And new requests are added to the spruce each and every day.
The effort is most certainly an encouragement to ailing patients, but it’s also a powerful testament to what can happen when people collectively have faith in God and come together to seek him amid life’s sometimes painful and chaotic seasons. Pretty inspirational!
(H/T: WCYB-TV)