Mary of Bethany:
Prepare Her for Heaven
My first “prepare her for heaven” experience happened some seventeen years ago. A sister four years younger than me was ill. Lola happened to be the very first convert the Lord graciously gave me in our family. She literally looked up to me and adored me. She was my darling and kindred spirit through the first few months of my faith, which came with the sore persecution that would be expected for one raised in another religion. Lola and I found a lot of comfort in each other’s Christian experiences in those first few months before our older siblings began to come to faith in Christ too.
A few years into her conversion, my beloved sister got married and had a beautiful daughter, called Precious. Barely three years later, Lola took ill, and it was bad. I was heartbroken, all of us in the family were. How could someone so young, so given to the Lord, become terminally ill? I asked many questions from God. I prayed, and cried, and prayed some more, and cried a lot more. I wanted God to heal my sister.
He did not.
One day, as I was praying and crying, thousands of miles away from my terribly ill sister, I heard the Lord telling me to prepare her for heaven because He wanted her to come and rest. I sorrowed and grieved, but I knew the Lord had spoken. I relayed the message to our older sister, a woman with a heart of gold who, ever since I knew her, had been there for all her younger siblings. Professor Folajoke Bestman is still there for us, more so now that our beautiful mother has gone to be with the Lord.
“We have to prepare her for heaven,” I said to my big sister over the phone. Amidst tears of sorrow and prayer, we hung up. The next few months of Lola’s life were full of pain, but they were also of joy unspeakable and full of glory for her. She had rapturous fellowship with God through the refreshing message of redemption that came to us some years before. God gave her the assurance of heaven which she needed to have, and that uplifted her spirit throughout all the final stages of her illness.
When Lola left us in her thirties, we were devastated but quickly comforted because we knew where she went. We sorrowed, but not as people who had no hope. I would so have loved to have her healed and living her life raising her young family and serving the Lord who she loved so much.
Obviously, it did not happen that way, but God taught me many lessons through my loss that got me praying often: “Oh Lord, make me a catalyst. Help me to prepare as many as you bring my way for heaven, so that if my prayer will not heal them here, my interaction with them while here would prepare a thoroughfare for them to walk through the gates of splendour.”
Mary, Mother of John Mark:
Every Member Is Precious
Having had a problem with one of my clavicles and seeing the discomfort it gave my whole body has brought this home to me. Before now, I thought nothing of my clavicles. In fact, I cannot ever remember thanking God for them. I never knew what their function in my body was.
When I dislocated the right one and the pain started, it was like a joke. Soon the pain shot up to my neck, then to my right shoulder. Sometimes the pain could be intense and make my whole body feel unwell so much that even with pain killers and a lot of physical therapy, I only got a temporary relief.
Now I know to pray for a miraculous intervention of healing to this very essential but ignored member of my body—the clavicle. Now I can appreciate and thank God for every member of my body, both external and internal. Every member is essential, every member is needed, and if any member is unwell, the whole body is unwell.
With this analogy of the human body, I am coming to appreciate the body of Christ and every member of the body—great or small. Every member means a lot to Christ our Head. We cannot all be the same.
If, for example, every member of a human body was an eye, then that would be a bizarre body. It would be an alien. Eyes everywhere! Can you imagine a human body made of eyes only? And that body goes everywhere—just eyes, in the train, in the bus, in the mall—just a human frame but full of eyes. Walking eyes, sneezing eyes, talking eyes, etc. How scary that would be!
Is this not what we try to do sometimes in our faith communities? We try to make everyone the same, then we complain of people not doing well. Would a human frame full of eyes do well? We have to rethink our ways and allow God, who is the only perfect manager, to manage His body.
Christ promised to build His church. He did not promise to contract the building of His church to human beings. With the help of men’s leadership and discipleship, every member of Christ’s body should find and fit into his or her space. If this happens in any community, we will have a healthy, holistic community where people are happy and blossoming, not where they are turned into spiritually impotent, emotional wrecks and physical nuisances.
Oh Lord, please come to us again as You did before. Help us to leave Your control to You and see how beautifully You make all things in Your own way and time. Thank You for making us members of Your mystery body. It is the best legacy any human being could receive.