no regrets

There was a lady I called on today whom I've not really known before.

I've seen her before, but not much more than that. She's now in a home, getting on in years; frail and weak and none too well.

But still entirely with it, so far as her mind is concerned.

"I've no regrets," she said, as she reflected on a life that's been long and full. Even if hardly spectacular. Just another very ordinary individual, living her life in the context which was given her.

Finding work and doing a job each day throughout her working life for those who paid her wages.

Caring for her parents, with whom she'd lived for the bulk of her life, while they were still alive. And bearing the brunt of the burden which that care increasingly brought.

Tending the garden and keeping it trim through the 57 years she's lived there.

Coping with loss, in the deaths of her parents, her sister, and the untimely death of her nephew.

As I say, nothing exactly spectacular.

A civil servant. A spinster.

No high profile career. No fulfilling romance. No remarkable dramas.

A very ordinary life.

But one in which, as she nears its close, there were no regrets as well.

She had a good home, good friends, and a good life.

And now she's not afraid to die. We chatted about that for a while. The God who does us good through life enables us now, through Jesus, to have a good death. To die well, at peace, assured, and confident of a surging resurrection hope.

Sometimes the biographical books we read make us think that there needs to be drama in our lives. All sorts of thrilling, exciting things to punctuate our lives with all the mundane routines they comprise.

Not so.

There won't be a book being written about this lady's life.

There were no great dramas, no romance: no fame, no honours, no headlines: no notable achievements, no rags to riches story.

But no regrets.

A very ordinary life.

Act justly, love mercy, and walk humbly with your God. That's all the Lord requires of us.

It's not complicated.