Here we are seeking Your face; asking for Your Answer. Give us mercy. It is the one thing we know to ask for. Here we are and we admit that we don't know the answer for this situation and so we pray for mercy.
Grandma Helen signed a "living will," but did she know then the value of her life today? Everyone who knows and loves her considers her precious and valuable even in her condition. We vacillate. We want her to stay with us. We don't want to lose her, but we think it would be better for her to die today and come home to You, Lord. It seems the best for her not to suffer, for her not to be consigned to a bed the rest of her days, unable to open her eyes, unable to speak, unable to eat.
But we are only human and we make such decisions while only able to see one side of eternity and that not clearly. We make such calls in fear of the fate of all men; in fear of the human condition that You wrote to us about in the Bible. That fear of having to be tended in our old age. Fear that others will come to feed us and dress us and take us where we don't know and where we don't want to go--a second infanthood.
Does going there or being there change the perspective enough to contradict it? Does Grandma now want to stay alive?
We are fools, Lord. We don't know. We can't judge.
Your mercy endures forever. It is best that You decide these things, that You allow our emotional convulsions to hold no sway in this situation.
We don't know what to ask for her, God. So, we ask for mercy; not for mercy as we define it, but for mercy as You, Lord, know it.
Amen and Amen
Love you,
Elece
Note to readers: Grandma Helen died peacefully in a hospice in Rogers, Arkansas one month after her collapse as a result of a brain aneurysm. She died with her family around her and just after Joseph had visited with her. God knows best. Bless His holy name.
Isaiah 57:1-2 says: Those who are right with God may die, but no one pays attention. Good people are taken away, but no one understands. Those who do right are being taken away from evil and are given peace. Those who live as God wants find rest in death.
