God visits, brings grace

I am leaving in the morning for south Louisiana. This was a planned trip, but it has taken on a special urgency because my grandmother Helen is in the hospital dying, and could go at any moment. I have been praying today that she will have a good death. She's in a lot of pain.

It's strange to me how little I know of her inner life. I was thinking this afternoon, praying for her, that I have never heard her speak of God. I don't know that she's ever been inside a church, or if she had been baptized. She was a poor, working-class woman, and faith never seemed to figure in her life, as hard as it has been. I've been worrying since my mom phoned earlier in the week to say that Helen had been taken to the hospital, and was in very serious shape, that my grandmother might not have the comforts of faith to rely on during this physically and emotionally difficult passage.

My father phoned this afternoon after he and my mother returned from the hospital. He said something extraordinary had happened. Helen was wracked with pain, pain so intense she wept constantly. My father and mother prayed in the room for her, and tried to comfort her. Daddy told me Helen was visibly frightened. At one point, she turned her head toward the door of her hospital room, and said, "God is at the door. Let him in."

She "talked" silently with someone no one else could see for some time. She told my mother, "God tells me he will take care of me, and will take care of y'all." And then: "He wants me to go with him. Tell him I don't want to go yet." My mother told her that it was fine for her to leave, to go in peace. The old lady said no, it's not yet time, and to please let God know. So that's what my mother did. And then Helen's pain went away.

As it happened, when my father called with this story, I had just started reading Terry Eagleton's "Reason, Faith and Revolution," which came in today, and as I read, I couldn't help thinking about Dan Everett's book about life among the Piraha tribe, and what it taught him about the nature of truth (we had a great discussion about that here, you'll recall). After I finished the call with my father, I prayed a bit more for my dying grandmother, and later returned to the book. I found myself thinking about the poor thing, lying in that bed, scared out of her wits, in excruciating pain, knowing her life was coming to an end -- and then God came, and ministered to her. Was it really Him? I don't know. But this afternoon, the presence of the Almighty, if only in her mind, eased the suffering of a dying woman. Reading Eagleton, an apparent nonbeliever who defends Christianity in this book, I found myself resentful of those who would strip the solace granted by faith from souls like my grandmother. And one day, we will all be like she is tonight. Whether my grandmother had a hidden faith, or only this afternoon acknowledged her Creator, praise His holy name for coming to her at the hour of her death, and showing mercy. As Eagleton writes of Jesus, "His mission is to accept men and women's frailty, not to rub their noses in it."

But that's not all that happened today in that hospital room. A greater miracle occurred, one that really touches me.