Margaret was 90 years old and no longer able to stay alone in her own home. She had lived in the same small apartment for more than 50 years and was none too happy at being told it was no longer safe for her to do so.
She was admitted into the hospice center late one afternoon and settled into a lovely private room. She quickly fell in love with the place and the people she saw caring for patients there. The social worker called to tell me that Margaret wanted to see me and an attorney to “arrange” things.
As God would have it, the attorney’s mother had lived across the hall from Margaret for years, so an immediate rapport was established between them. In a matter of hours, arrangements were made for Margaret to leave all her worldly possessions to the hospice center so that others might be cared for there as well. It mattered not that she had so little; what mattered was that she wanted to “give it all away for others.”
Before leaving for the night, I stopped by again to see Margaret, who by now was all snuggled in her new bed and smiling. She told me that she had never really known about God or visited church in her lifetime but that she was now experiencing a newfound peace in the faces and words and touch of those tending to her.
“Is that what God is all about?” she asked. “When people say that God is love, is that what they mean?” I assured her that this very night God would make himself known to her through everyone he put around her and that she would recognize him when he did. “Whenever I see you and the people here look at me and smile, I know he must be close by,” she said.
God saw to it that Margaret was safe and peaceful in her new home, that she had been able to give “her very self away” in leaving all her possessions for others. She had found him in the people he placed around her with tenderness and care and she met him in the wee small hours of the night, when she saw him face to face in heaven. Isn’t God good!
