Connie's Death



Connie

 Father God, I promised Donna that I would be "praying without ceasing" in response to her request for prayer for Uncle Tom.  I have been trying NOT to promise to pray unless I actually write my commitment down somewhere and then follow up on it in a way that I can confirm.  Hence, this entry.

It's sad to me, Father, that Uncle Tom and Connie probably did not respond favorably to the Good News.  It may be too late for Connie.  It's not too late for Uncle Tom.  So, Father, may I beg You to knock harder on his heart's door?  (Revelation 3:20 "Here I am!  I stand at the door and knock.")  He is very hardened, possibly--probably--in some measure due to his first wife's (may I say it?) "crazy" Christianity.  Tom is an intelligent man.  He doesn't do the emotional thing.  And yet...there is reason, emotion, and relationship in Your message, Your offer.  Please allow the Christians in his family to demonstrate to him Your invitation, Your really-not-crazy love.  Even as I type that, though, I recall the title of Francis Chan's book Crazy Love.  Maybe Your love is crazy.  But it's still real and powerful and important and necessary.

Poor Connie, though, to have lost her mind to Alzheimer's.  She was a very sweet lady, in a spicy kind of way.  :)  Uncle Tom wouldn't have been attracted to someone less feisty, I think.  Mercy, Father!  I know that I really don't know the condition of Connie's heart.  I wish that at the moment of death, or the moment immediately after, You might give each person one final chance to surrender to Your amazing offer of forgiveness and eternal life.  There's nothing in Scripture to tell us that, of course.  Still, there is nothing in Scripture written by anyone who has been at that moment immediately following death, either.  I wish....

Father, death is horrible.  You know that.  That's why You decided to provide a way to beat it.  May we take that provision seriously not only for ourselves but also for those in our worlds who don't understand it yet.  Give us--the Christians in the Nicols family--the chance to show if not to speak to Uncle Tom about it.  In Jesus's name and for His inroads into Uncle Tom's heart~Amen!