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PROGRAM D-7719
Like many of you, I have experienced that stage in life when my parents were aging and my brothers and I took on the responsibility of caring for them—role reversal, if you will. My Mom’s life did not end the way I had planned. Instead of living with me after Daddy died, and traveling with me, and doing fun things together in her last years, as I had imagined, she was confined to a wheel chair with dementia, in a home where she received 24/7 care. And I simply didn’t like it.
My prayer for months was, “Lord, her quality of life is so poor; her memory doesn’t work well; just take her on home to Heaven with you.” And then, God rather abruptly reminded me that I wasn’t in charge of the number of her days; he was. I was not the one to judge her quality of life; he was. I was not the one to determine whether her latter days were worthwhile and useful; he was.
As I’ve been reminding us, we are living in that “just a little while” that Jesus referred to in John 16—that little while between his first coming and his second. And what sometimes seems long and intolerable to us takes on a different perspective when we live in light of eternity instead of constantly focusing on the “little whiles” of our present lives.
David wrote in Psalm in Psalm 39:4:
Show me, O Lord, my life’s end and the number of my days; let me know how fleeting my life is.
And Moses prayed:
Teach us to number our days, that we may gain a heart of wisdom. (Psalm 90:12)
When Mom passed, God pulled back the curtains of Heaven and gave me a glimpse of how her life had been a blessing in that place where I thought her life had lost meaning. So many people told my brothers and me stories of how Mom had blessed them, just by being who she was right there in that place. The “little while” which seemed so long to me was part of God’s plan for using my Mom in a different place and a different way than I had planned.
Whatever your “little while” is looking like right now—for you or for someone you love—I want to encourage you to not to lose sight of the end of the story. “Little whiles” really don’t last forever and as Jesus told his disciples, “Now is your time of grief, but I will see you again and you will rejoice, and no one will take away your joy.”