Tonight, Wesley and I visited the nursing home where our church ministers one Sunday afternoon per month.
We spoke to two ladies in the main lobby, (Mary Jo and Pat), who, sadly, never remember us. It’s always like the first time we’ve met them. But they’re always thankful for visitors and they really enjoyed my son playing the piano for them. He was shy about it but he did it.
Then I went and saw an old saint named Helen, who is a very sweet woman. She wondered why I came and I told her I just wanted to see her and visit her. She was very grateful that I came to see her and apologized that she didn’t want to visit because she was about to be out to bed. I told her that was quite all right; that I was happy to see her for even a moment. That seemed to make her very happy.
Then I went down the hall to another woman’s room named Esther. Esther is always exuberant when we come and attends the “church” service we have there.
Esther and I talked for a long time. She was very happy I was there and hugged me right away. She showed me her paintings and her new wheely chair that her daughter had brought for her.
I was commenting on her Bible; she has a very nice large print King James Bible that sets on an exquisite Amish made wood Bible stand. She said something about not knowing what she was going to do with it. And I said “Why don’t you read it?”
She responded, and told me it was because “She was stupid.” That’s why she doesn’t read it. And I said, “Well, I don’t think you’re stupid, but even if somebody is stupid, God‘s word can speak to them.” She looked at me with interest. She seemed not quite to know what I meant by that.
I exhorted her a couple times to try to read it. And I could tell that she wasn’t committing to that. So I asked her if I could read it to her and she smiled BIG and said yes.
I sat down and opened the Bible, which automatically opened to a couple of pages with bookmarks: bookmarks from her parents’ funerals. She told me all about her mother’s surprising death at the hands of a drunk driver while traveling with two of her mother’s grandchildren. I read the obituary of her mother, her sister’s kids who died, and her father.
I noticed that her parents are buried in the cemetery next to my house I just bought. I said I’d visit their graves. She told me how to find them. I vaguely remember seeing the names Don Clayton and Ella Ruth Clayton. What’s funny is her dad, Don is a twin and his brother’s name was Donald!
After this conversation about people in the grave, I opened to John 11, and I read to her the story of Jesus and Martha. I didn’t even get to the part where Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead. I was explaining things to her and she was asking questions, and I could tell by what she said she was getting confused.
I got to verse 25 and Jesus said He is the resurrection and the life. So I focused in on Esther and asked her “Do you believe this?”
She said she did and we talked a little bit about sin and redemption, and clinging to Christ, knowing that he will always cling to us. She isn’t quite lucid enough to give a clear testimony, but would you pray that she truly is a saved woman or that God would grant her faith even in her last days?
