TERMINAL

“Mommy, did you tell him?” Jessica asked.

I looked at Laura lying in the recliner. Her looks sort of startled me--the rapid change in her health. “Tell me what?” I said. Jessica’s grandma, also in the room, said, “She’s terminal.”

So am I. So are you. Though we know what was meant—the doctor’s pronouncement that Laura’s death was near.

Terminal? What pops into your brain? How about this. Terminal—so death is near; you’re at the train terminal of life. There are two lines. We each will get a ticket—either heaven or hell.

I asked Laura, “Do you have a ticket to heaven?” She weakly said, “I think I’m going to heaven.” Her answer could have put a smile on my face, still I felt compelled to check her ticket stub.

“O.K. now tell me why you think that way,” I said. “I’m going to write down your reasons.” I attentively listened as I recorded her words. Haltingly she listed her beliefs: “I know God; God knows me and my purpose in life; I want to go.”  While all truthful statements; not one of them is a ticket to heaven.

I dearly love Laura, who is my cousin, and I am thankful that we already had an open dialog about the things of God. Now at age forty-seven the ravages of her disease were extinguishing the remaining flicker of her life.

The first words Jesus spoke when He started His ministry became the focus of my conversation with Laura: “Repent! For the kingdom of God is near.”  

Doubting my sensitivity some might say: “You’re going to launch into repent! With a dying person? Sounds like fire and brimstone.

Could be . . . but to me Laura’s response that day made it sound like a ticket to heaven.