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Topic: Reward (09/27/04)
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TITLE: A Wild Ride of Life By Joanne Sampl 09/28/04 |
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The new mom has 2 others at home. She’s desperate for rest before she goes home tomorrow. She’s already started praying for the day her littlest one accepts Christ as her personal Savior. Her exhaustion fills her face as her eyes flutter in a yawn. It’s time for me to go, and then I remember the other woman I need to visit in the hospital today.
The father of the newborn is exhausted already from the long nine months of wakefulness and changes in the home getting ready for their first and last daughter. The other husband is also exhausted, from the extensive mending his own injuries in the accident as well as from the countless hours he’s spent at his wife’s bedside.
Their faces still have a sense of joy, though.
The other woman won’t be going home for quite awhile. An inexperienced teenager drove her family suburban off the road, and in the rolling collapse of metal, this woman’s body was crushed, leaving her paralyzed. She’s a mom, too. The difference is her children are practically grown. In so many ways, they’ll be holding her now.
“She’s getting a weekend pass,” the husband shares with me. “And, in three weeks or so, she’ll be coming home for good.” His eyes are bright that he still has a wife to bring home.
My heart is still breathless from the spectacular beauty of a nursing mother just minutes before. The joy in that room was so apparent, but four floors below, there is another kind of joy.
“I didn’t have much faith before the accident,” the husband shares with me after I tell him I’m continuing to pray for him and his wife. “But now I believe.” His words of new faith ring in my ears. I stopped by to bring him comfort, and yet his faith has comforted me even more.
So, I sit and wonder at the quiet mystery of the rewards of these two families. Home looks different for them all now. Joy looks different. Life looks different. But, their reward is the same: Eternal life. They each are looking forward to eternal communion with our awesome God, who is always in control, even when situations are extraordinarily different.