Dear One,
I was at the hospital this week for the first time in a long
time, once again accompanying a friend. My errands took me past the utterly
insufficient, hallway within a hallway, printed paper signs proclaiming, area of
chemotherapy. It was not good enough for you, when they called you to come and
then didn’t have your medication yet again … and again … until you were gone.
It is not enough still (and worse) with masked patients and providers and
restrictions and remonstrances due to the current reality of COVID-19.
I saw people packed in that narrow corridor hoping for a
crack in the door, for answers and entrance into what I knew was just a small
waiting room lined with hard chairs and hopeless faces. I knew because I had
been there with you one day.
And that day was just a fluke, just a passing thought, a
confluence of circumstances that had us downtown, within reach, inspired by the
Spirit to see you and try to be present at a time when you had a need.
But it is a day I will never forget.
I understood that day what it means when we say someone has “confessed
Christ.” Confession is “owning up to something you know or believe” and that
day I heard you pronounce faith even as I tried with bumbling efforts to share the
concern on my heart for your soul.
You told me you understood that Jesus was the only way of
salvation. You told me you had decided to follow Him, and only Him. You said
you had told your dear saints you were sorry, but from now on you had chosen
only Jesus. You said it was frightening, a change of course into the different
and unknown from what you had understood before. You voiced concern at having
attended a religious observance for the soul of a departed friend knowing you no
longer stood for that creed but prayed God would understand you went out of
love for her. You didn’t have all the right words we are used to hearing in our
polished churches and practiced presentations.
Yet you believed.
“I write these things to you who believe in the name of the
Son of God so that you may know that you have eternal life." (1 John 5:13)
“If you declare with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart
that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.” (Romans 10:9) “Salvation
is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven [JESUS] given
to mankind by which we must be saved.” (Acts 4:12)
That hidden corner of the hospital is hallowed ground.
Dear One, it was there on that day you made clear your
allegiance was to the King of kings and Lord of lords, the Lord Jesus Christ.
And when you cried out to Him months later in the final painful night of your
earthly life, He heard you and took you Home.
Today was your birthday, and your family and friends gathered
virtually in celebration of who you were and all that you meant to each of us.
I want you to know that I tried to share the hope that you had found in Jesus.
I know that you struggled with past traditions, and tenderness towards those
who still held to them, and it was not easy for you to express your change of
course even to those who knew you best. I struggle, too. But I know you would
want them to know, and it is my prayer they will one day share that confession
which confirmed your eternal hope and destiny.
Happy Birthday in Heaven, Dear One. I don’t pray to
you or trust in you for any favors or supernatural intervention. I simply rejoice
that you are pain-free, happy and whole in the presence of your Savior and
surely playing joyfully on hands and knees with the children at your side as
you lovingly did with our little Silas. You continue to be an inspiration to
live life fully engaged with exuberance, and you give me hope to trust God to
illuminate those who have yet to understand their need for Him.
I carry you in my heart.
Love, Stephanie
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