I WAS A YOUNG PASTOR in my first parish, and a family in the church was nursing a dying grandmother. I did not visit the family. I wasn't lazy, I was scared. I didn't know what to do. I didn't know that doing something was the very thing I shouldn't do, and all I needed to do was be there.

When the lady died, I was so embarrassed that I never visited the family or even called them on the phone. I was not asked to do the funeral. Over the years the family never mentioned it, and as far as I could tell, they never held it against me. They knew I was a young buck without a brain in my head.

I can see now why I failed, but I can't forget the failure. Thankfully. When I want to ignore a hospital call, I remember that circumstance or ones like it—and I get up and make the call.

I'll admit it: a lot of times I make calls on the sick because doing so is my job, not because I feel compassion for them. Visiting someone in traction just to keep my proverbial hind end out of the sling isn't the high ...