The Choice

The Choice
RUTH 1:10-19a

When my wife’s multiple sclerosis was first diagnosed, I wrote to tell her pastor, who had also been a mentor of mine. I remember reading his reply. He told us how that morning he happened to have been studying the story of Jesus’ making the water into wine in John 2, which includes the surprised comment of someone at the wedding that the groom has kept the best wine until last. “God always does that,” our pastor commented; it would somehow be true for us. As Ann got more and more disabled over the years, I often pondered those words and wondered what they might mean. Of course they are true in the sense that Ann will rise to new life on resurrection day, but is there more to them than that? What hope could we have? They came true in the sense that God gave us an odd but good life together and that through my having to cope with the experience, God turned me into a less objectionable person than I would otherwise have been. Could there be more to it than that? Now that she has died, I know the answer is “No.”...