I very recently lost my mother to a long fight with Parkinson's. As I watched the end approach and arrive with my family, I was struck by mom's loneliness in the last hours. We all spoke to her, read to her from books and the Scriptures, sang to her, played her favorite music and mostly held her hand in an effort to comfort her. However, when I watched her, it was obvious our efforts were temporary at best. Death is such a unwelcome, heartless and terrifying intruder that looks and feels permanent. There's just little human consolation for those staring into that reality.
My mother was a living dichotomy. She could shoot a gun and bake a wonderful meal. She had a hot temper but was full of compassion. She would cuss in anger and sing hymns in church. She could manage the family business and care for her children and grandchildren. She definitely worked hard but she could also play hard. She was a strong and tough woman with a heart full of love. I have a multitude of memories of my mother, just as all sons have of their mothers. While the images and events are with me, the most tangible are the lessons of life in which she taught. The work ethic she instilled, the love of music she imparted, her love of life in the moment but always planning for the future and the faith she shared.
I love my mother and only remember her as a saintly woman. In the loss of a loved one, our desire is to “shake our fist” at God in righteous indignation like Job. Just like with Job, God quickly reminds us who is the Creator and who is the creature. Who is Holy and righteous and who isn't. I know, like all of us, she was a sinner. Paul tells us in Romans 6:23 that “the wages of sin is death” so, in the end, we all rightly earn our temporal wages.
Life is precious and we should savor the time God gives us with our loved ones during this earthly sojourn. However, life's cruel companion, death, will arrive for all of us at some time. It's in that moment that all we have is stripped away. As, I sat with Mom in those last hours, the world became very small. Every concern or care seemed to disappear except for her and my father. Faith in Christ was my only real comfort, as I know it was for mom. We stood exposed and helpless, Christ was all we had.
As mom's life left her, I know Christ was to whom she clung. Even though Mom's mental faculties were limited due to her disease, I know her faith anchored her to Christ. Paul tells us in Romans 8:26-27:
“Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness. For we do not know what to pray for as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words. And he who searches hearts knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God.”
Because faith and the Spirit are inextricably linked (1 Corinthians 12:3) and the Spirit (and by extension faith) is a gift of Baptism (Acts 2:38, Ephesians 2:8), I know the Holy Spirit did for mom what she could not do for herself...cling to Christ.
Martin Luther wrote in his theses “The Bondage of the Will”:
“I confess that I would not want “free will” even if it were given to me! If my salvation were left to me, I would be no match for all the dangers, difficulties, and devils that I have to fight.”
While Luther was making a spiritual argument, it is right to understand him literally. My mother was in bondage to her disease, which is a symptom of sin, the world and the devil (Ephesians 6:12). She was unable to lean on her faith in a conscious way. While universally true, it's most evident in those situations that the Spirit works for us. I know that my mother is in Christ due to the work of the Holy Spirit just as when she was able to confess her faith.
I have dealt with the death of loved ones on many occasions, but with my mom, it laid us all bare. Paul wrote in Romans 8:24-25:
“Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what he sees?
But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience.”
The Christian faith is about trusting our ears and not our eyes. Our eyes deceive us as we experience the sufferings of this life but God's Word assures us of His promises (Hebrews 11:1). If we trust in what we experience, we find quickly that we have no hope. If we trust God's Word, we understand all of life's sufferings are temporary. So, I know my mother's exit from this world is just a temporary separation because Christ has promised His elect a permanence with no suffering. A promise I know my mother held in her heart even in the face of death. At the end of her life, she was a great confessor of Christ and that's the saint I will always remember.
1 Thessalonians 4:13-18 But we do not want you to be uninformed, brothers, about those who are asleep, that you may not grieve as others do who have no hope. For since we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so, through Jesus, God will bring with him those who have fallen asleep. For this we declare to you by a word from the Lord, that we who are alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord, will not precede those who have fallen asleep. For the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a cry of command, with the voice of an archangel, and with the sound of the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we will always be with the Lord. Therefore encourage one another with these words.
