>>This is the day the Lord has made and let us rejoice and be glad in it. As we celebrate this fifth Sunday of Easter. Whenever I read this particular passage from John’s Gospel, I immediately go to a wonderful memory.
When I grew up, my dad died when I was fairly young, seventh grade, and my grandmother and my mother’s mother came and lived with us and she was wonderful.
My mother went off to work and my grandmother raised me and three of my siblings, along with my mom, she was kind. She was funny. She was a wonderful cook. She was just so good. As the years went on, my grandmother got Parkinson’s disease.
Many of you are familiar with the disease. It’s debilitating. It’s really rough. And it was even rougher than before they had some of the medications that we have now. She stayed. She lived with us, obviously, in the home and we took turns at night taking care of her. She needed to get up to use the restroom several times. And my poor mother was working all the time, so we took shifts. And on one particular night when my grandmother – she just couldn’t walk any longer – I remember going and lifting her out of the bed and bringing her to the restroom and then bringing her back into bed, 2-3 o’clock in the morning. And she looked with at me with these beautiful eyes and words of faith and a bit of fear as well. She said, “You know, I remember somewhere in the Bible that it says that there is a room, a room for everyone in heaven.” Do you think there’s a room for me in my father’s house? There are many dwelling places. Otherwise, how could I have told you that I was going to prepare a place for you? I told my grandmother, “Of course there’s a place.”
And she said, “You know, Scott, I just need a little bedroom. If they give me a broom, I’ll keep it clean. But I just want to be with Jesus in heaven.” Powerful, profound, and has never left me. The words of the gospel today are words of great consolation. The promise of Christ: Life with God forever. That He has prepared a place for all of us as we journey in these lives of faith, as we move closely and closer to the Lord each and every day.
Until our day comes and we see the Lord face to face. Until we enter that eternal paradise, whatever it looks like, with that confident hope that is given to us in the Gospel today, those simple words of my wonderful grandmother. “Do you think there’s a place for me?” “Grandma, not only a place for you, but a kingdom for all of us.”
How good is the good God?