A Jon Post

I have a confession to make; I’m not great at my job. I have been doing it for 3ish years now and I’m still learning quite a bit each time I go in.

My Job: Talk to sick people.

That’s it. That’s really all I do. I go in and talk to sick people about home, about the farm, about my family, about their families, about life… about death, about Christ, about hope. And after 3ish years I’m still learning how to do it.

Last week I was reading the Bible with 4 sick men. Awhile back I was given a bunch of Portuguese New Testaments by my friend and partner Jorge Pratas, and I had distributed them to these men recently. Xavier (pronounced Sha-vee-AIR) had been reading from Matthew 5 and so we opened to that passage together and read Jesus’ teaching commonly referred to as the “Beatitudes”.  After reading verse 4 we talked about what it means to be comforted and how that promise can come true. As we talked about that, one man in the room, Bernando, spoke honestly about the comfort he needs when he thinks about dying from his cancer. Realizing that I wanted to have more preparation for that question, I spoke briefly on the subject, told him I wanted to come back another day and talk about what the Bible says about his fear, and we continued in Matthew 5.

Two days later, as Layne and I worshiped God together I felt Him moving on my heart to remember what I had told Bernando and to search the Bible for places he could find comfort in his fear. Layne helped and we found many scriptures that talked about God’s promises in and after death. I’ve been doing this for 3ish years and this whole time I’ve known that I want be able to speak about God’s comfort to the dying. It’s not an easy thing to broach the subject of death when someone is still clinging to the hope of health and life. With Post-Its™ stuck in my Portuguese Bible, I headed to the hospital praying that God would guide me in the conversations that were coming.

I arrived, I greeted, I exchanged news on family at home, I sat on Bernando’s bed with him.
“Can I talk to you about the fear you mentioned two days ago Bernando?” I asked, tentatively.
And we dove in together. Psalm 116 talks about David’s intense desire and worship for his Lord as he is brought close to death… then he utters the phrase “The Lord cares deeply when His loved ones die.”
We read John 14:1-4 and talked about knowing the way to the Father’s house.
And as I was reading John 14 with Bernando, Xavier and Lorenço, I realized that there is a Biblical character who knew of his impending death, knew of his coming suffering, knew of the pain that lay before him and pleaded with the Father to miraculously save him from those things. The answer to his prayer was an angel to strengthen him, and a deafeningly silent “No”.
Jesus Christ knows how it feels to look over the cliff into the suffering below and look at his death at the bottom and he knows what it means to for his heart to anguish over the silence of the Father.
And this Jesus Christ… this man of sorrows, acquainted with grief, this man is the mediator between us and the Father.

He knows… he knows.

And there is comfort in that.
So as my tears welled in my eyes and leaked down my cheeks, I told my friends we pray to a God who hates their suffering more than they. And at times He answers our prayers the way he answered David’s in Psalm 116.
Other times He answers like He answered Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane.
But he, himself, knows what it means in both cases.

So I’m still learning how to have these conversations.

I have a good teacher.

A Layne Post

The room was heavy.

She sat hunched over showing me the oxygen tube that had come out, and she needed me to go get a nurse. Her breathing was short. I could hardly believe where the previous 5 days had brought her. Just the week before we chatted about my growing Karasi, babies, and the blessings that children are, even three girls! In this culture boys are prized, so I am often given a sad smile and a reassurance that the next will be a boy. (Next?) That day before I left I remember her saying, “Eu gosto de Mae de Anaya.” (I like Anaya’s mother. – Our equivalent to a casual ‘I love you’.)

This day, even in her agony, she smiled and asked about my girls. And then she winced. Her breast had been taken over by the cancer and had turned into an open wound full of pain and infection. Another tumor in her stomach had appeared just three days previous. It was now the size of a grapefruit. As I sat by her side, she asked me not to leave her. And so I stayed a few hours. Then my friend Alice arrived to sit with her, and then another sweet volunteer, and then I returned, and then Alice spent the night with her. It was not good for her to be alone.

The days to follow would be her last.

Laying down was no longer an option for her as she felt she could not breathe, so as often as I could be there I would go and wrap my arms around her to hold and kiss her weary head that hung in front of her body. When she spoke of this pain and this cancer passing, I spoke of the next life and the hope we find there. Indeed, it would pass. More often than not, however, we were silent. I found myself in a position I’ve been in before – begging for death. There comes a point when the most gracious, most merciful thing the Lord could do is to take this precious life into the next. And what I pray is for an easy, quick transition between the two worlds. In those moments death is not terrifying, continuing life like this is. And so I called out to Jesus. Between the pain and the morphine, she didn’t always make sense, but I cannot forget a clear moment when she looked up  and into my eyes and with a smile asked how I was. Me. In her moment, she thought about me.

In my Christian American mind I felt her local family had failed her, leaving her too often alone, leaving me and my friends to care for her in these intimate last moments. I try to be gracious to cultural differences, but I struggled. I am so very thankful that on the night that she passed from this life to the next, it was her husband that was with her, not my friend Alice or me. In that way I believe the Lord was gracious.

And now we no longer pray for her, for she has been made new, but we pray for her family and her two young children that are left here with a large gap in their lives. We pray that Jesus will find His way to fill them up.