Several months ago my father was ailing in the hospital. I’d flown down on the first available plane and was sitting in the intensive care waiting room waiting for the doctors to finish examining him when a lady approached me and asked if I was Bob Williamson. I quizzically looked at her and told her that I was and she introduced herself as someone who’d gone to school with me. I didn’t remember her, probably due to my attending three different high schools, but she remembered me.
She’d found out that I was in town because I’d written about visiting my father in Words for the Day. She’d subscribed to it a few years back and also had read my book. She told me several people from Columbus with whom I’d gone to school read it daily and keep up with me through that medium. I was blown away because I haven’t really kept up with anyone from that high school or Columbus MS. I had no idea that they even knew I existed.
We spent the better part of an hour talking about old times and some of the mischief that I used to get into, and through our discussions I was finally able to faintly remember who she was and it turns out that she used to date my brother on occasion. It was good to meet her and reminisce.
So you can imagine the shock the other day when someone from Columbus who was a good friend of my father wrote to tell me that the lady that had come to see me in the hospital had suddenly died from a heart attack with no apparent warning.
Yikes!
I wasn’t prepared for that piece of news I tell you, but she was. When we’d talked she told me that she she’d led a difficult life that had been marred by a couple of divorces and many serious problems; she smiled at me and said, “My problems weren’t as bad as some of the ones you lived through mind you, but they were very difficult”. I ruefully smiled and told her that my wilder days were perhaps a tad extreme and I was glad that she didn’t go there.
She went on to tell me that she eventually asked Jesus Christ to come into her life and through Him found the joy and happiness that had eluded her throughout the early part of her life. Her countenance verified that the Holy Spirit lived within her because she had a radiant glow about her and I could see the peace that can only come from God in her eyes.
She wanted to bring me some food or do something to help out with the situation with dad, but I told her I didn’t need anything and finally she told me she had to go back to work. We hugged for a brief moment and then she was gone.
This very moment her earthly body is in a grave slowly returning to dust, but her heavenly body is walking on streets of gold in heaven with Jesus Christ and come to think of it my dad and brother are experiencing the same thing.
I wonder if they’ve all met?
Sunday our preacher said he was in the Boy Scouts and that their motto was “Be prepared!” That’s good advice, because one never knows when our time on this earth will expire.
God did not create us to die. We will live forever either in heaven or hell. Jesus said there is only one way to the Father (and heaven) and that is through Him. My high school friend understood this concept and was fully prepared, packed and ready to go without a moment’s notice; are you?
John 14:6
Jesus told him, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one can come to the Father except through me.
April 24, 2014 – Click here to listen