Almost a year after my mother-in-law, Jeanette, was diagnosed with brain cancer, it became clear that the Lord was not going to bring healing. The tumor, located behind her left eye in the temporal lobe, could go anywhere, destroying abilities at random. I asked the Lord where was the abundant life in her slow death? Here was a born-again Christian who had served the Lord faithfully since she was a young girl. She had been active in church and community, a vibrant testimony for years. Why would God allow her to suffer such a debilitating and humiliating death? If it was His will that she would die, why not a death that would allow her to witness to others?
As I began to ask myself these questions, I knew that God not only gives our lives significance but gives meaning to our deaths as well. After all, Jesus said that a sparrow does not "fall to the ground apart from the will of your Father" (Matt. 10:26 NIV). He must certainly, then, have a reason for taking her in this apparently meaningless way.
But where was the meaning in losing the ability to speak? The ability to walk? Where was the meaning in not being able to understand Bible passages? She couldn't even pray because the brain cancer took away her ability to formulate words.
However, through her suffering, she showed me-and those who were willing to see-a moving picture of God's abiding love. No, she was never able to give the inspiring testimony from her deathbed that she wished, for her ability to communicate never returned. All too soon, her strength was taken as well, bit by bit. Soon, even her personality was chipped away, piece by piece. No, she didn't show us God's grace through what she said but through her extreme helplessness.
Early in her illness, she had said that she wished to tell people about all God had done for her. She never fulfilled that desire, but watching her during the long slide to death, I realized that our most eloquent prayers are only babbling words to God anyway. He doesn't hear our words but our heart. What Jeanette had was a yearning for God, and that was enough for Him.
She was frustrated by her lack of mobility, for she could no longer do the things she once could. But God doesn't need our deeds, He only wants us in a restored relationship with Himself. Like her, we are all terminally ill, not with cancer, but with sin. And the guilt and penalty of that sin, unlike the cancer, was removed once and for all at the cross.
When she slipped into a coma, I saw her as God often sees us, sometimes unresponsive, even ignorant, at times, of His presence. Yet He continues to sit by our side, watching over us, caring for us because we can't care for ourselves.
Cancer took away her ability to make rational decisions. But years before, when she had made the decision to accept Jesus, she was cleansed by the blood of Christ. Because of that, she now knows His eternal peace. Regardless of her final comatose days, her eternal destiny was decided the day she trusted her Lord. As the well-known hymn states, "What can make me whole again? Nothing but the blood of Jesus." In His arms, she is whole again.
The challenge for me-for all of us who will one day sit by the side of the terminally ill, perhaps frustrated, perhaps confused, perhaps discouraged-is to recognize that before God we are all invalids. Whether "new" Christian or "mature" Christian, we are all helpless. He alone gives us the ability to pray or walk or grasp or understand.
At her funeral, family and friends clearly heard that they, too, could know that they could go to heaven, based not on good works but on a childlike act of faith through grace, an acknowledgement of our own helplessness. Though she never was able to utter an intelligible word in her last days, Jeanette did finally get her wish--she did give a testimony to the love and grace of God, her death speaking clearly to the saved and the unsaved. The Lord gave meaning to her death, just as He had given meaning to her life, just as He seeks to do for each one of us, each moment of our lives.