JOHN DEMPSTER: Remembering his dad and his belief that ‘God knows our thoughts, motives, and secrets’
Register for free to read more of the latest local news. It's easy and will only take a moment.
I REMEMBER the metal light box – an essential tool in my father’s work as a radiologist. Bright bulbs behind its opaque screen illuminated the X-ray images he clipped to the front, enabling him to make a diagnosis.
Sometimes he’d speak at churches about his work. He would take along the light box and show the audience what a broken leg looked like, a kidney stone, a diseased liver. And then he’d say: “I can see so much with the help of X-rays. But God can see so much more – God knows our thoughts, our motives, the secrets of our hearts.”
I’ve been thinking a lot about dad William Dempster this week – it’s 100 years since his birth on October 2, 1922. He ran the X-ray department at Law Hospital in Lanarkshire from 1961-1987, leading his colleagues into the new era of diagnostic imaging.
His life and work was shaped by Christian faith. He took the story of the Good Samaritan as a model for his patient care – “a personal relationship,” he said, “expressing itself in love, sympathy and unstinted personal service.”
People often spoke of the peace which seemed to accompany him in the workplace. He felt the pressures (‘Slow me down Lord,’ said the poster on his office wall) and yet colleagues and managers spoke of being able to ‘relax’ in ‘the calm atmosphere which you generate’.
He relied on God for help, advising one young man: “We need courage and strengthening from a Higher Power, and it’s amazing how God makes the way clear to us when we ask him humbly what he wants us to do in a particular situation and trust him to do what is best for us.”
Such was the mature simplicity of dad’s trust that he received Bible verses as personal messages. “The Lord your God is with you, he is mighty to save. He will take great delight in you. He will quiet you with his love.” Was that the secret of the preternatural calm dad’s colleagues experienced?
Dad spent hours in front of the light box ‘reporting’ – identifying each patient’s condition with a view to applying a cure.
God sees more penetratingly than dad ever could, yet we need not fear. For dad, in his work, was modelling the Good Samaritan God, who in love works with us to forgive us and heal our brokenness.
I regret that dad and I never managed to communicate as effectively as I’d have liked in the years before his death in 2011. But as I reflect on the centenary of his birth a moment comes when I realise that I love him more than ever, and he seems so close – only a word away.
