A few months have passed since my brother’s death. He was eleven months older than me. It’s the end of an era when you lose a sibling. You knew them when… I knocked him out cold with a baby doll when I was five. – those 1950’s Tiny Tears had hard heads. We joked that I made amends when I gave him a kidney when his own failed 20 years ago. I prayed his health concerns and God’s goodness to him would draw him toward Christ. We remained close, even with our differences.
Of course, many years are behind us now. He was a genius in the computer field – married to his work and quite successful. My family was his family. He spoiled our children as if they were his and spent every Christmas with us among many other visits and weekly phone calls.
My husband and I became Christians almost fifty years ago. Through the years, that difference marked us but he appreciated our open arms to include him as family. That separation became wider with Covid, culture wars, and political changes. He revered Humanism and intellect. He considered himself a freethinker but fell in with the herd of discontent and rebellion.
He had a fall – the first stage of failure. He left this world in a hospice in Chapel Hill. We never saw the miraculous conversion we sought in prayer. No closure. No end-of-life testimony. We all must make a choice, for or against Christ. That choice was offered to him. I hope he wrestled with God. Maybe he made a last-minute decision in God’s direction. Later, we found a Christian apologetics book on his coffee table – a door of hope. Either way, I continue to trust in God. He has never failed.
~ Nan Robertson
Christ Fellowship