RECENTLY, I woke up with a mouth full of ulcers. Not one discreet little ulcer, hiding in the corner — oh no! A full committee meeting. Every syllable felt like sandpaper. Preaching with mouth ulcers is like attempting Handel’s Messiah while chewing gravel.
I rang the GP’s surgery. The earliest appointment? A week away. There’s a sentence that stretches both your patience and your theology.
In the meantime, I turned to the time-honoured British remedy: salt-water rinses. Then more salt-water rinses. By day four, my mouth tasted like the North Sea, and the ulcers were still thriving.
Eventually, the appointment arrived. My wife, Killy, came with me — partly for moral support, and partly to ensure that I remained Christian in the waiting room.
We entered the doctor’s office. No warmth. No welcome. No “How are you?” Just “What do you want?” It felt more like a cross-examination than a consultation.
He glanced in my mouth — and when I say glanced, I mean one second. I have had longer eye contact from a pigeon. Tap, tap, tap on the keyboard. “Go to the pharmacy. Pick up your prescription. Goodbye.”
Ninety seconds. We were in and out faster than a Formula One pit stop. He wasn’t offensive: he was efficient. Just distant, detached, and disinterested. You know the sensation: you’re not a person, but a problem to be processed.
THE prescription didn’t work. The ulcers and pain worsened. I rang again. To the surgery’s credit, they offered another appointment, three days later, with a different doctor. We walked into the second consultation. “Hello! Come in! Take a seat.”
Immediately, something shifted. He examined my mouth properly, checked my ears, took my blood pressure, and asked questions. We even had a little banter about football and life.
Ten minutes, same surgery, two doctors, two atmospheres, two prescriptions, two outcomes. The second doctor’s prescription cleared the ulcers in three days. But this isn’t really about ulcers. It’s about us.
We are living in an age of relentless pace. The NHS is under enormous strain. Staff are exhausted. Patients are anxious. Systems are stretched thin. Efficiency has become a survival strategy. But, somewhere along the way, efficiency has started to replace empathy.
The first doctor treated a mouth. The second doctor treated a person. That distinction may sound small. It is not. We underestimate the power of tone. We underestimate the ministry of manners. We underestimate how much kindness costs, and how much coldness costs more.
Attention is one of the purest forms of love. To give someone your full focus for even a few minutes says, “You matter.” In a distracted society, that message is priceless. The first consultation was quick; the second was human. Efficiency clears diaries. Humanity clears ulcers.
There are people walking around Britain today with invisible ulcers: of grief, of anxiety, of loneliness, of disappointment. They sit across desks. They stand in queues. They scroll through phones late at night. You cannot see their pain in a scan, but it is there. And, when they come into our orbit — at work, at church, in the supermarket, at home — we face a quiet choice: 90 seconds or ten minutes; a glance or a careful look; efficiency or empathy.
We are arguably the most technologically connected generation in history, and yet loneliness has become a public-health crisis. We speak constantly, but listening is becoming rare, and listening is not passive, but powerful.
Whatever one’s personal faith, the figure of Jesus is compelling in this regard. Read the Gospel accounts, and you notice something striking: he was never hurried with people who were hurting. There were crowds, pressure, and urgency; and yet, when when someone in pain stood before him, he stopped, whether it was a blind man by the roadside, a woman suffering silently, or a grieving family.
He asked: “What do you want me to do for you?” It is almost the same question as my GP asked. But tone transforms meaning, and presence changes everything.
WE TEND to think that society is shaped only by policies and speeches. But often it is shaped just as profoundly by small omissions: no smile, no warmth, no eye contact, no curiosity. These are not dramatic failures, but quiet absences that accumulate to form the emotional climate of a workplace, a family, and even a country.
Most of us will never sit behind a GP’s desk, but every one carries something just as powerful: our tone; our attention, our presence, our extra two minutes. We may be the only gentleness that someone encounters today: the only pause in their chaos, the only moment when they feel seen rather than scanned.
Sometimes, the greatest healing does not come from what we prescribe, but from how we treat people. We cannot fix everything. We cannot solve every systemic problem, but we can decide what kind of presence we bring into a room. In the end, that may be one of the most powerful prescriptions of all.
J. John is an evangelist, author, and broadcaster, and an Honorary Canon of Coventry Cathedral.
jjohn.com