In a tender reflection on her mother\u2019s death, author Jen Wilkin describes standing at the bedside of the woman who once held her hand as a child. As her mother\u2019s breathing slowed, Wilkin noticed something she had spent years teaching in Scripture but had never fully seen in life itself: the symmetry of a human life.
She realized that the way her mother left the world mirrored the way she had entered it\u2014through great labor, surrounded by caregivers, dependent on others for comfort and care. The end echoed the beginning. Birth and death formed bookends, and in between stretched a long arc of giving and receiving, strength and weakness, dependence and responsibility.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Wilkin calls this pattern a kind of chiasm\u2014a mirror structure often found in Scripture, where the most important truth sits at the center. Life, she suggests, follows the same design. We begin helpless, grow strong, care for others, then slowly relinquish control and learn again how to receive care. What looks like loss is not wasted. It is part of God\u2019s wise ordering.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
At her mother\u2019s bedside, Wilkin whispered words she had spoken often in the final years: “You are a person to love, not a problem to solve.” In a culture that fears aging and resists dependence, Scripture teaches that human worth does not diminish with ability. Bodies may fail, but people continue to grow\u2014especially in wisdom.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The symmetry of a long life reminds us that God is faithful in every season\u2014from first breath to last\u2014and that none of it is wasted in his hands.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"template":"","tax_ctp_audience":[],"tax_ctp_authors":[],"tax_ctp_categories":[165],"tax_ctp_format":[171],"tax_ctp_illustration_types":[],"tax_ctp_multimedia":[],"tax_ctp_point_editor":[],"tax_publications":[140],"tax_ctp_tags":[3401,3760,3894,3942,4067,4520,5265],"tax_ctp_topics":[],"class_list":["post-65352","sermon-illustrations","type-sermon-illustrations","status-publish","hentry","tax_publications-ct-pastors","tax_ctp_tags-aging","tax_ctp_tags-dependence","tax_ctp_tags-euthanasia","tax_ctp_tags-faithfulness","tax_ctp_tags-god","tax_ctp_tags-national-sanctity-of-life-day","tax_ctp_tags-weakness"],"acf":{"scripture_references":[{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null},{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null},{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null},{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null},{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null},{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null},{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null},{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null}]},"yoast_head":"\n