As many of you know, my mother suffered from Alzheimer's disease and for a number of years was confined to a nursing home in Spokane. About two weeks ago I had a dream in which my mother called me on the telephone. She just called to let me know she was moving to another place. At first, that was cool with me, until I realized that in her current condition she was unable to move to anywhere. Wait a minute, not only could she not move, she was unable to dial the telephone and even talk to me about such a journey.
After I woke up, I realized that the only place she could go and be able to tell me about it, would be if she was moving beyond the veil of this life, to that place we call heaven. As you can imagine, that day and the next, I was anticipating a phone call to tell me that my mother had passed on. When it didn't happen I figured that my dream was something of no consequence.
Late last Wednesday afternoon, May 29, 2002 I learned from my stepfather that my mom at indeed died earlier that day. Now to most that would be really of no importance, but it was also my parent's wedding anniversary, not theirs. My parents were married for 33 years here. Putting the circumstances together in hind sight, I also realized that the time her condition really began to deteriorate, was about the time I got the dream phone call from her.
Now if this was not significant enough, from the time of the dream until her passing I had been thinking about my own mortality. Not only because of the phone call, but earlier that preceding Friday, I had peeled the skin off the side of my thumb with a belt sander. This was not that serious of an injury, but my dad had died because of a staph infection in his blood, which he got from a relatively minor cut in his thumb, doing some carpentry work.
Just random coincidences, I think not, because this is just small potatoes to some of the things that I have experienced and have attributed to the sovereignty of God. But life is really a choice on who or what you are going to believe in. Yourself, a non personal force(s), or a personal God that desires to interact with His created personalities. I have chosen the latter and that choice has reaped more intangible and tangible benefits than most can even imagine.
Now the standard argument goes something like, "I'm glad you are happy with your God (thing), as for me I can get by on my own, I don't like to be dependent on anyone, or anything. The only one I can trust is myself."
I am not going to dwell on the inherited selfishness of this argument. It really doesn't take a rocket scientist, or as we have discussed over the last number of weeks, a physicist to get by on your own. Under the constructs of what we call normal people, everyone has that capacity.
My question is why do you want to make your own way in this world? Not because you can't, or because you are lazy, but because you miss out on all the incredible joy that awaits the child of God, through the circumstances, not out of them.
So then is suffering fun? Of course not, but through the brokenness that suffering brings, you find that it is only temporal. We clutter our lives with stuff and then wonder why we can't ever get anywhere. Stuff of course includes not only physical stuff, but emotional stuff, all of which drags us down from what we were created to be.
The human will is a powerful force. The Bible says that mankind was created in the image of God. For a moment just think of the will power (for lack of a better term) that it took to create something out of nothing, only by a spoken word.
But mankind is not God, and until the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead two thousand years ago, all mankind was subject to the limitation of man's own fallen will. Man could truly not know the will of God, especially as it related to their specific personality as a total concept. This is still true for most of humanity.
Through Christ's atoning, or propitiatory sacrifice, that veil has been torn apart, just as the temple veil was torn at the time of Jesus' crucifixion. That means that those God chose from before the beginning of time, His elect, have the ability to cross over that veil and move into the presence of God, as the preacher says. Contrary to many modern preachers however, when you ask Jesus into your heart, you receive not only the fullness or presence of Christ, but also the Father and the Holy Spirit.
Just because we do not understand the concept of God's election does not alter it's reality. A few hundred years of contrary teaching aside, God, not man, determines who will get saved out of the bondage of our personal will.
My mother, had the strongest will of anyone I have ever known. In that respect, her salvation is an increbible miracle. As I have had the opportunity to share these last few days, I have related many times when I thought I would get a better response talking to a wall.. But thinking of that, as I write this, I suppose that is my own delusion.
Her early years were not that easy, and as some of our family tries to put pieces together from dead facts, and unfaced limitations, we are beginning to come to grips with not only the baggage that the Miller family carries, but also some of the giftedness. Some of us have done a better job of dealing with these opportunities than our parents, but then we had the opportunity to grow up in a different era, to get a good education, a good job, achieve or glimpse financial security.
My mother worried about all those things, especially the financial security stuff. Because of that she made some, many, unwise decisions. She tried continually to control those circumstances all her life and as best I can understand, she did a decent job of it. Until, she began to loose her mind to her disease.
But the ironic thing that I have gotten out of her last four plus years of long term care, was that when she could no longer control the course of her life, God let her achieve her goal. In her years in the nursing home, she didn't have a care, either naturally or emotionally, and contrary to many Alzheimer's patients she carried a joy, that even I had not seen before in her being.
What all that means, beyond the veil my mom now knows, and I too will one day understand. But as I continue to reflect upon my life and the circumstances that got me to this point, I realize just what a blessing it was to grow up in a Christian family, that loved and nurtured me and my potential, to the best of their ability. That is truly a very rare and precious gift in this life. And becoming much more so.
In turn, I have made my own long lasting mistakes and have paid much of the consequences. We all carry in us the legacy of our parents. But it is in the land beyond the veil, even in this world, where God allows His kids to overcome the limitations of their upbringing and their bad choices. To leave the bad stuff behind. To journey forward as I wrote earlier this year, to pilgrimage through Montana.
Don't get me wrong, Montana is not heaven, neither is anything that we can see. But as God overcomes the bondage of our fallen wills, in this journey through a land of limited vision and opportunity, we all strive to make our own way or, to make a difference for those who follow. Hence, the greatest gift we can receive presently is the fact the redeemed children of the living God can receive an understanding of why we are here, and also a foretaste of the excellence that is ours beyond the veil.
My mother is there now, marveling at that present presence. Her suffering, worries, and her tears past into memories of understanding. There she was reunited with my father on their wedding anniversary. Just my view from this side, In time, we all too shall pass that beyond, My reason and abilities here being used to help others see that not just that resistance is futile, but also just plain stupid. For the blessing and the gifts of God are our reason for being, and can be a joy in this life, even with just a brief glimpse to the land beyond the veil.
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