Life and loss. . . and gain

My parents would have been married 72 years today.  Instead, my father died 7 years ago and my mother has been in a nursing home most of the last year.  All she wants is to die and be with Jesus and, along with Jesus, to see my dad again.  Amid the memory loss and physical frailty, there is the hunger for what life has taken from her and that hunger is focused on Jesus.

Life is loss. . . and gain.  There is no balance scale to make sure we get back as much as we give up or we are happy as much as we are miserable.  It only makes sense in Jesus.  In fact, the only thing that makes sense to my mother is Jesus.  Jesus was her refuge in the losses of life and Jesus is her hope for gain.  That is always the way it is although we so often muddy the waters with all sorts of strange concepts foreign to Scripture -- things like a successful life or a well-lived life or happiness.  Instead, the only contentment in loss and the only promise of gain lies with the One who lived for you and died in your place and rose so that you would never be alone.

We are all liars.  We insist that we are all alone.  Sometimes the world looks at us and agrees.  To the world my mom is all alone -- dad is dead, she lives in a care facility, most all of her friends are dead.  But she is not alone.  She knows at least that.  Jesus is with her.  That is all that matters.   Jesus is her past and Jesus is her future.  Life and loss and gain only make sense to her in Jesus.  The rest of us struggle with this sort of clarity -- we are too busy living the lie that our lived experience and our feelings are what counts most of all.  How foolish we are.

I wish that I knew as a child and youth and young adult what my mother knows now.  Jesus is all that matters.  He is the one and only thing.  If only we knew this as we were making plans for our lives, when those plans went awry, and when we waited for death.  We used to pray for a good death.  It did not mean a death without pain or suffering but the death of the faithful, whose hope rested in Christ in life and now in death.  Because Jesus is everything.  To a woman in a nursing home this is not some fake promise she is resigned to trust because nothing else is left.  No, to her it is the only things that makes sense.  With a memory loss and physical frailty has come the wisdom of faith.  Jesus is the only thing that matters.  Not even what would have been a 72nd wedding anniversary.  Only Jesus is her hope.  What a shame that such wisdom took 92 years to figure out.   But that is how long the wisdom of faith takes -- until we finally realize that the only thing that is real is Jesus and our only reality lies in living in Jesus by baptism and faith.