Waiting to Die

Eight miles north of the California border with Mexico there is a plethora of senior citizen mobile home parks with lofty-sounding names such as Del Rio Estates, Palace Gardens, Golden Sands.

Names with such high aspirations but filled with people who seem to be just waiting to die. 

A trip to the local casino, a visit from a grandchild - something to look forward to while they wait.

I talk to some of the residents.  One woman suffers much with physical ailments.  She believes her next life will be better because she has had to endure such hardship in this life.  Another woman with cancer believes, as Buddhists do, that she is one with all creation and when she dies she will become part of the cosmos.  When I speak with her about Jesus, she calls me 'religious'.  I ask an ancient woman, 92, if I may pray for her.  She says yes and then tells me that I am a 'good pray-er' and wants to know where I learned how to do that.

There are many older lonely people here.  Like flowers which have lost their bloom and are possibly hours, days or weeks away from fading into eternity, they wait.

"When Jesus saw the crowds, He had compassion on them because they were...helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.  Then He said to His disciples:  "The harvest is plentiful but the workers are few.  Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into His harvest field."  (Matt. 9)

Lord forgive me.  As I think of the mission field in exotic locales like Africa or the Dominican Republic or even the inner cities of America, I never realized Your harvest field was also eight miles north of the border, in a community of our very senior citizens who are waiting...