Today’s post is the last from my new book Love Like Jesus: How Jesus Loved People (and how you can love like Jesus). Last Saturday we posted Chapter 31: Love Like Jesus–Jesus And Your Resurrection. Love Like Jesus is due to be published in January of 2020.

Epilogue

Inspiration for this short passage of fiction was drawn mainly from three sources: James Joyce’s famous short story, The Dead, Luke 11:5-13 (which I would encourage you to read before reading this epilogue), and my wife Kathy and my personal experiences caring for her mom during the last nine months of her battle with Lewy Body Dementia.

There was a time when I had earned my mother-in-law’s lasting enmity. And I felt the same about her. It was so bad that

when Kathy’s mother was struck with Lewy Body dementia, it was understood that whatever might happen, Kathy’s mother coming to live with us simply wasn’t an option. Our relationship was just too contentious. But then the Holy Spirit came. And what happened to everyone in my house during the last nine months of my mother-in-law’s life was the greatest work of the Holy Spirit I ever witnessed. The Holy Spirit came. And He inspired us to love Mom, and to love each other:

Like Jesus.

The air was too warm. The air in the house was always too warm. He gently shifted the blanket from his side to the middle and carefully drifted between the top sheet and the bed next to his wife. They were going the way of all the earth. She was going, his mother-in-law, the one in the next room who lay paling and withering. He thought of how she who lay next to him had bound herself to her mother these last few years.

Holy Spirit come.

John’s eyes yielded tears. He wasn’t good enough for her daughter, and for that she had hated him. She hated his hair. She hated his beard. She hated his irresponsibility and his arrogant manner.  And he hated her back. He hated her platinum hair. He hated her pasty skin peppered with pockmarks. He hated her for hating him. Until He came.

Holy Spirit come.

In the other room, Esther’s eyes yielded tears too. In the darkness she saw the form of a man standing in the corner. And other forms were there, children and pets and babies. Had her soul approached sheol where the hosts of the dead reside? There was no ambiguity. To her they were there: The man threatening. The babies crying out. Her own identity was in the throes of transmutation. The material world was shriveling, diminishing.

Holy Spirit come.

Her cry of dread and panic made him turn to the door. It had begun again. He listened sleepily to the moans and cries, woeful and tortured, falling upon his ears. Time for him to rise and set out on his journey — to the other room. Yes, he was right: “If you then who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!”

Holy Spirit come.

He was falling. He was falling upon all of his house. He was falling on every part of the plain of their souls, on the frosted fields, falling gently upon the ponds and lakes and, deeper still, gently falling into the dark rebellious parts at the core.

He was falling, upon the other room where Esther lay buried beneath the blankets.

He helped her sit on the edge and took a place next to her. He put his arm around her. She leaned on him like a snowdrift leans on a fence warm from the sun. He loved her now. He had loved her ever since He came. His soul rose above his weariness as he felt Him falling gently and heavily through his universe and gently and heavily falling, like a blanket drifting down upon one who is chilled.