As I was reading my email today, I came across a blog posted by our director Seth Barnes. In it, he shares about his experience visiting a woman in Swaziland who is dying of AIDS. Her comment is that she is ready to die because she knows that Jesus is waiting there to embrace her, while here she lays in her shack alone.
It makes me sad to think of this woman being all alone, just waiting for death.
I got a message from my mom the other day. One of my supporters, a dear friend from their church, has been moved into hospice. She has battled cancer with a courageous and graceful heart, but there is nothing more that medicine can do. Now she lies waiting for death, just like our sister in Swaziland.
How do we honor those who have run the race, and given it their all? How can we make their death as glorious as their life? Certainly not by abandoning them to a private room to count down the days or moments. We have the amazing opportunity to be there and comfort them in their pain, and to celebrate the memories of their lives, and best of all…
… to usher them into the welcoming arms of Jesus.
Ruth, I honor your life and I am so blessed to have known you and to see the glroy of the Lord radiate from within you. The Lord is never early and He is never late. You have fulfilled all that the Lord has laid out for you to do here. Go dance with Jesus, and be ready to welcom the rest of us with open arms when our day comes.
