Too ill to die

 I was feeling very ill and waiting for an ambulance to take me to hospital, so how was it that I had the assurance that it was not my time to die? After all, I am now 93 years old. Surely a ripe old age.

Back home now, and recovering my strength, I will tell you the story. A faithful Christian lady had once told me about her mother. At the age of seventy she had been healed of heart disease and she had told her, ‘Mother, don’t forget. You do not have to be ill to die.’

And she didn’t and indeed wasn’t. In her nineties, she had been helping her daughter with her jobs around the house all morning, enjoyed her dinner and sat back in a comfy chair to enjoy her cup of tea, closed her eyes and was gone.

What a lovely story and somehow I had believed this was a promise for me too.

I had come into this wonderful Care Home, having survived a cardiac arrest and for two years have been enjoying a busy and fulfilling life style. A lovely Christian friend had been hoping to join us in this same home, but the only way there would be room for her was if the Lord called one of us home to glory. It could be any one of us. Was the Lord ready for me?

A friend reminded me that if I were no longer here, then this lady might not want to come, but soon after that one of our long-term residents suffering from dementia, but otherwise hale and hearty, slept her way through twenty four hours. They had kept her on a recliner downstairs so that she had constant care, but the next day she very gently stopped breathing. Indeed, she had confirmed to me the assurance that we do not have to be ill to die.

And though, if we are trusting in Jesus as our Lord and Saviour then we can say with Paul that ‘to be with Christ is far better’, yet I know that I am very privileged to be returned from hospital and am beginning to take up again my fruitful life style – rejoicing in every opportunity I am given to shine for Jesus. And yet with the blessed hope of soon being home, home at last with our wonderful Saviour, having demonstrated, I trust, the truth that we don’t have to be ill to die.

 

THE ROAD TO EMMAEUS

 It was Easter Sunday, and I was taken back in  memory to a service many years ago when I was visiting in Denmark. Although I was dependant on an interpreter,  the message had come to me personally and clearly. God w as telling me that I could always know his presence with me, and experience a burning heart as had those two disciples.

Knowing that God was calling me to leave everything and everyone I knew and go abroad as a missionary, what a wonderful assurance I was given that I too could know that our risen  Saviour would be walking  with me every step of my long journey of life. I too could, and still do know the experience of the burning heart.

It was while I was in Australia, on my way to New Guinea that God confirmed to me his promise through a prophet.

‘You are facing vast distances, but I am pledged to come with you and you will be able to turn readily and easily to me at all times as to a friend at all times.’

What a wonderful word of assurance, and how faithful God has been, still is  and will be to each of us who dare to trust his word.

So here I am, an old old lady . Yes, I may be in need of a hearing aid, but thank God, I am not deaf to the voice of the Holy Spirit. How thankful that God has brought me to this day; not too old for God to still reveal himself in deeper and yet more meaningful ways.

For now, I am able not only to know the experience  of the burning heart in my daily walk, - yes, even with a walker,- but even more so as I come to the Table of Communion.

Those two disciples had pressed this stranger to come in and experience their hospitality but it was only in looking back that they had realised the wonder of the miracle, that it had been Jesus himself, this same Jesus and yet not the same for he had endured the terrible weight of our sins, suffered the mocking, the shame, the unbelievable cruelty and now, having conquered every strategy of Satan he was there, for them and for each of us,
and still here to make himself known to each one of us in the breaking of the bread.

Yes, he had walked and talked with them, explaining the Scriptures that had foretold all that had happened, but now, - he was revealing himself to them in  the Breaking of the Bread.

And this has been the wonderful revelation that God is bringing to my heart this Easter time.

I am 93 years old, and often  tempted to think I may have tarried too long, but now I am being reassured that God has kept me ‘for such a time as this.’

Oh Lord, open my eyes that I may always recognise your presence with us, and very especially in the Breaking of the Bread.   

HOW DID YOU DO IT?

 The question had taken me by surprise. It is so many years since I went as a single missionary to the remote land of Papua New Guinea, yes, sixty years ago.

My memoires,  ‘Wings of the Morning,’ had been published, soon after my husband’s death, twenty years ago, but this special lady who had invited us round to her Granny flat, had been rereading it.

She reminded me of some of the challenges which had faced us in daily life up in the highlands, but now she was asking, ‘Tell me, how did you do it?’

Words do not come easily to me these days. How could I recount in few words what I knew had been a series of miracles which had changed me from a fearful young woman, a ‘stick in the mud’ as one school chum had described me to a woman of faith?

One of our friends helped me out. ‘Why!’ she proclaimed, ‘We were young.’ And the moment was passed, but I do want to give an answer to my Sue.

How had I done it? My pastor had told me I was not strong enough to be a missionary. When I eventually arrived, my colleagues were not impressed.’ She won’t last a year, they had said, yet I lasted longer than many of them.

My friend Esther had gone to Africa seven years before, but she was strong, athletic, maybe a bit of a daredevil. Yes, she was cut out to be a missionary, but I certainly did not aspire to follow her.

Yet, in our church a word was coming again and again, that someone was going to other shores and would bring revival. I felt a tremendous burden until I asked, ‘Lord, can it be you are speaking to me?’ I knew it was.

For a little while I was sorry for myself, thinking how hard it would be, until the Lord showed me what a privilege he was giving me and told me, ‘Rejoice in your going out.’

So yes, it was tough. As dear Sue reminded me, I lived in tumble down houses, we had fires and floods and times when I could have been very lonely but in it all, I knew I was in God’s hand and he had brought me there.

And if ever I felt overwhelmed by some of the hardship and challenges and think that maybe I should have stayed in UK , gone on for a headship as they had wanted me to and a comfy flat and a car I would remember that God’s hand would still be on me and I would feel that pressure to go as a missionary.

And this same wonderful God has been with me, through those happy years back in UK as a minister’s wife but since then in long years of widowhood.

Yes, dear Sue. We each have our callings and we have sorrows as well as joys, but in it all Jesus is our joy, our strength and our song, and we are here for each other.

Thank you for asking me and giving me the opportunity to recall how wonderful our Lord has been and will always be.

His name shall be called ‘WONDERFUL.’ 

P.S. The Lord is reminding  me of his wonderful promise of ‘Joy and Peace.’ Not just for those on the mission field but for each of us, here and now.