I've never really given sin the respect it deserves.
When life is moving along pretty smoothly with lots of happy things happening around me, it's easy to tuck sin behind a closet door or prop it up out of the way in a back corner. Out of sight, out of mind. It's easy to not think about how our whole existence was marred when humanity chose to bring sin into this world. It's easy to think that humanity is doing pretty well for ourselves.
Truth is, sin is a powerful force. No corner of this creation is left untouched.
I've never understood that truth more than while sitting at my mother's death bed. I watched her body slowly waste away. Day by day, I watched helplessly as death stripped every piece of life from her and replaced it with a something foreign and unwanted: trading walking for sitting; mobility for confinement; appetite for revulsion; privacy for intrusion; talking for silence; comfort for pain; consciousness for sleep; breath for stillness.
Several well-meaning and compassionate professionals tried to comfort me with reminders that what I was watching happen to my mom was "natural." At one point I really thought I would scream if I heard the phrase "the natural dying process" one more time. I wanted to burn all those little booklets on the dying process. Send them all up in flames– all those little blue booklets they give you describing what to expect in the final days of a loved-one's life.
I wanted to yell: Natural?! There is absolutely nothing natural about what is happening to my mom. This is not the way it was supposed to be! We were never created to have to endure this! Just because something has become "normal" doesn't make it "natural."
And in the midst of all this- now, NOW I can give sin the respect it deserves. I can look around this room and see my mom lying limp and dying on her bed, and I finally get it. Look what humanity has done! Just look what we've accomplished for ourselves! Death!
And so there's finally room in my world-contented heart for the Gospel– and a love for my Savior I've never known.
3 comments:
Thank you for sharing....I love reading what you are thinking, especially the way you have with words. Continuing to pray for you!
You hit that nail on the head, Sweet Girl. Oh that the world understood what sin is and that the only hope is Jesus Christ.
Praying for you, your dad, and the rest of the family.
Beautifully written and so true, thank you for sharing. Your mom left an amazing legacy and testimony to God's amazing love. You are in our thoughts and prayers...
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