We asked God, "God, why all these sufferings that my granny has to go through?"
My granny is panting for breath.
My granny cannot eat as she cannot shallow.
My granny lies in bed.
(But she is mentally alert, and amazing her dementia seemed to have totally disappeared. She is so mentally alert.)
God asked, "My dear child, do you remember, when you were a child down with a cold and a fever, how your mum tender loving love, waking up and staying up with you in the night, sponging you with ice-cubes, made you feel so loved and cared for?"
Me: "Yes God, I remember, and I am doing it for Joshua now. If I haven't been down with cold and fever, I would not have experienced such tender loving parental love."
God: "Similarly, it is a chance for you to show tender loving care to your granny, to clean her, to make her feel comfortable."
Sufferings is a result of the fallen creation. God does not take delight with sufferings, but He sometimes allow it.
Late in the night, I asked my Auntie Siew Hong, how she is able to give up her job and work part-time, to clean my granny her mother-in-law, to stay up in the night to watch and hold my granny, day-after-day, night-after-night.
Auntie Siew Hong said that she couldn't do it by herself. It is by walking with Jesus everyday, that Jesus enables her to do it.
The depth of what human love can show is only tested in the depth of sufferings.
In sufferings, love is glorified.
In sufferings, God is glorified.
I look at my granny.
She looks so loved.
She looks like a baby, like a child bathed in parental love.
She smiles, she is pampered.
She is bathed in love. She is enjoying it. In the evening, when her eight children come to visit her, I could see that she really enjoy the evening. She is mentally so alert (perhaps God has granted her the alertness to enjoy this, as her dementia seemed to have amazingly disappeared), so happy to see her children. All these years, how she long for her children and her grand children to visit her, few came. Now they all come. She is so happy.
In the end, it doesn't seem like she is suffering.
She is enjoying all the love that she is receiving.
She is still panting for breath.
She still cannot eat and cannot swallow.
She is still lying in bed.
Despite that, she is not giving up on life, she is still treasuring it, and living it courageously.
And she seems to be enjoying all these love, all these visits, that she has longed for for years...
Yes God, I understood it now. We have to be thankful for this opportunity, for this time with my granny. Our sufferings have meaning, although we may not have fully grasped it yet. It will in your own time, God. For now, I thank you God that you have answered my question sufficiently.
In sufferings, love is glorified.
In sufferings, God is glorified.
Of course, we should not only gather together during such a crisis. But alas, such is the down side of human nature - we don’t learn in good times. But God worked everything for the good, He used it to pull the family closer together.
There is a lesson to be learned in everything that comes our way. We are learning it the hard way. But we are thankful for this extended time given to my granny, and this extended time given to us.
God helped us realized that what my granny is going through is an opportunity to show love. In the midst of sufferings, love increased. Bonding tend to take place in the midst of sufferings. It helped the whole extended family to come together and unite the whole family.
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