A Tale of Two Prayers

Though my grandmother didn’t speak much English, I loved her very much. More importantly, I knew that she loved me even more than could be imagined—no words in any language were needed to convey that reality. While my grandmother passed away some time ago,—almost fifteen years now—she remains in my memory as one of the warmest, kindest, and sweetest souls that I’ve ever known.

The day she passed away was the first time I remember seeing my father cry.

It all happened so unexpectedly. It was the first week of the seventh grade and I was getting ready for school like any other morning. My father was outside lugging our garbage bins down the considerable length of our driveway, when suddenly my mother appeared in the room and let me know that Tata’s mom, Makica as we called her, had died and went to Heaven. I do not remember anything else from that day other than a single, momentary frame from my memory: as I was walking from my room to the kitchen, I glanced out the window and saw my father hauling the garbage bins down to the side of the road, pausing now and again to wipe tears from his face as he walked.

Several days before he went home to be with the Lord, my father expressed his excitement at the thought of seeing his mother again. Despite the fact that my father and I were separated by thirty-five years, I sense that she was the first significant loss for us both. Surely we had suffered the loss of others, but Makica was different. I lost a grandmother, he a mother, but we both suffered the heartache of saying goodbye to a godly woman who was very dear to us.

My father was just fifty-six when he passed away and I was only nineteen. Each in our own way, my father and I were still young and had not as of yet tasted the fullness of grief that accompanies aging: the sobering reality of life here below as those closest to us begin to pass from this age into the next.

Sitting by my father’s hospital bed all those years ago, I could only dimly understand his longing to see Makica again. While his eagerness to see his mother made sense to me, my heart could not yet grasp the depths of such a longing. Now, standing upon this side of my father’s passing, I have come to understand in a greater measure what I only caught glimpses of back then—a deep longing to depart and be with Christ and those closest to us who have left this world behind, yet constrained by another desire to remain here below with those who yet remain.

“For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain. If I am to live in the flesh, that means fruitful labor for me. Yet which I shall choose I cannot tell. I am hard pressed between the two. My desire is to depart and be with Christ, for that is far better. But to remain in the flesh is more necessary on your account” (Philippians 1:21-24).

As my father battled cancer, you can imagine that my prayers during this season were occupied upon a single point: “Lord, please heal my father; don’t take him yet.” However, as the weary days pressed on the Lord began to cultivate a change in my heart and in my prayers also. What if—I began to think—the Lord did not purpose in His heart to heal my father? Surely He could, but would He? Could it be that more good and glory would spring from my father’s passing than his healing?

In God’s perfect timing, it so happened that in the months leading up to my father’s passing I was making my way through C.H. Spurgeon’s devotional, Morning & Evening. As is so often the case with Spurgeon, his writing offered a treasure trove of wisdom and comfort for this particular season of my life. Sitting by my father’s bedside, thinking of Makica and what the days ahead would hold, I shared these words with him from a passage in Morning & Evening:

“Death smites the best of our friends; the most generous, the most prayerful, the most holy, the most devoted must die. But why? It is through Jesus’ prevailing prayer—‘Father, I will that they also, whom Thou hast given Me, be with me where I am.’ It is that which bears them on eagle’s wings to heaven. Every time a believer mounts from this earth to paradise, it is an answer to Christ’s prayer. Many times Jesus and His people pull against one another in prayer. You bend your knee in prayer and say ‘Father, I will that Thy saints be with me where I am’; Christ says, ‘Father, I will that they also, whom Thou hast given me, be with Me where I am.’ Thus the believer is at cross purposes with his Lord, for the soul cannot be in both places: the beloved one cannot be with Christ and with you too. You would give up your prayer for your loved ones life, if you could realize the thoughts that Christ is praying in the opposite direction—‘Father, I will that they also, whom Thou hast given Me, be with Me where I am.’”

This past Mother’s Day weekend as I was reflecting on the heartache that often accompanies holidays, anniversaries, and special occasions, my mind kept going back to these words from Spurgeon that my father and I wept over many years ago.

Spurgeon did not provide a title for this devotional, but perhaps I can be so bold as to offer one: “A Tale of Two Prayers.” How often we as Christians pray from the perch of our own comfort rather than pausing for a moment to consider not only the glory of God, but the ultimate good of the other. Or, as Spurgeon put it, are we not so often at cross purposes with our Lord? We cling desperately to our loved ones with the hope of healing in mind, all the while that is precisely what Christ is offering them. As we grow in Christ and in the consideration of our eternal home, let us pray earnestly for those God has given us while also ever resting in this glorious truth: “Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of His saints” (Psalm 116:15).

Death is no small enemy. Indeed, so dark was the shadow of death upon humanity that the Lord Jesus Christ was born, died, and rose again to abolish death and the sting of death, which is sin, for all who repent and believe in His name (1 Corinthians 15:56). And so, when “death smites the best of our friends; the most generous, the most prayerful, the most holy, the most devoted,” may we take comfort in the truth that the Lord is gathering His people home: “Every time a believer mounts from this earth to paradise, it is an answer to Christ’s prayer... ‘Father, I will that they also, whom Thou hast given Me, be with Me where I am.’”

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Photo by Annie Spratt, Unsplash