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This middle-aged couple had come through the supermarket checkout, with an elderly lady. Being next to me, I couldn’t help hearing what the man said to the old lady, even although he had his mouth against her ear, presumably because she was hard of hearing.
“Mother, that was very embarrassing for me”, he said. “Last night when I checked your purse you had $40 dollars in it. When I came to pay for your groceries, the purse was empty. You must have taken the money out and forgotten where you put it.”
‘Mother’ just stood there with a blank look on her face. I recognised the look of one affected by some kind of dementia.
It is very sad for family and friends, when a loved one ‘loses their mind’, as in Alzheimer’s or a similar mental disease. My father used to get confused as to who my mother was, his ‘wife’, or ‘Gwen’. In the latter years of his Alzheimer?s, they never seemed to be one and the same person to him. Sadly, for the last three years of his life, he couldn’t remember my name, or me.
Our minds dictate what we think, say, and do. If our minds are limited in their processing powers, then our lives reflect that by the way we act or speak. Sometimes that way of life becomes so muddled, specialist care is needed in a hospital, or a home for dementia-related illnesses.
Naturally, our hearts ache when we see our loved ones slip into that world where reality ceases to exist as it once did, and they no longer recognise us.
When a Monarch caterpillar grows too big for its skin, it sheds it for a new one. On the fifth and final moult, it gets a skin that looks different, and we call it a chrysalis.
Out of view from everyone, there then comes about a total metamorphosis. We’re told that the former caterpillar is ‘reassembled’ into the organs of an adult butterfly – the same ingredients, but a different construction.
I love the way ‘The Message’ bible describes how things will be for us.
“We know that when these bodies of ours are taken down like tents and folded away, they will be replaced by resurrection bodies in heaven – God-made, not handmade – and we’ll never have to relocate our ‘tents’ again. Our firm decision is to work from this focussed centre: One man died for everyone. That puts everyone in the same boat. He included everyone in his death so that everyone could also be included in his life, a resurrection life, a far better life than people ever lived on their own. Now we look inside, and what we see is that anyone united with the Messiah gets a fresh start, is created new. The old life is gone; a new life burgeons!”
Of course those words apply only to those who are ‘united with the Messiah’, but in heaven we will recognise each other once more – no memory loss!
Related Stories & Links:
Mourning Into Joy/
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