A 102-year-old invalid saint was healed Friday afternoon, and this Lord’s day she is worshiping in the church eternal. For five and a half years I have been visiting Marjorie Lopshire monthly. For that entire time, and for 12 years prior, she spent her days in her wheelchair at a card table, Bible and devotional reading within reach, beside her bed in the living room of the home where she had lived for over half a century, cared for by her devoted daughter. Her vision was bad, her hearing was worse, and her hands were paralyzed and minimally functional. Her memory files were a bit musty, tho no more than mine. There was nothing wrong with her mind. It was at her front door where I learned that all you have to do to make an old saint happy in shut-in ministry is to show up. I also learned how to keep the conversation going between a 78-year-old former fighter pilot whose swagger is now stooped and slow, but whose arrogance is still untamed, and a 100-year-old outspoken elder’s widow and mother of three: just interview her–explore every bunny trail with questions, then listen.
Marjorie rode her own motorcycle. She was a golfer. She got a hole-in-one once and I marveled anew every time she told the story. She remembers, as a little girl, standing with her uncle in front of a Christmas tree at his home in Chicago as he told her about his time on the campaign staff of Abraham Lincoln. He concluded his story with, ‘…and that is why you must always vote Republican.’
She said, “And I always have.” For her 100th birthday I arranged for her to receive a birthday greeting from the President of the United States, a Republican.
Marjorie wrote numerous articles for our church periodicals over the years. For her 102nd birthday her daughters gathered several of them up and published them in a book. She was overwhelmed with joy and gave me a copy as a gift. I asked her if she would please autograph it. She painstakingly signed her name with her nose nearly touching the book, then looked up at me, handed me the pen and said so sweetly, “Would you please dot my ‘i’s?”
We always ended our time together with devotions and prayer. She got the most wide-eyed angelic look of concentration on her face as I read scripture to her (picture above). When we prayed I put my hand on top of her permanently clenched fist resting on the table and she moved her other hand on top of mine. I then put my hand on top of the stack and we prayed with stacked hands. On my departure she always expressed the most heart-melting appreciation for my visit.
Marjorie often reminded me that she prayed every day that God would heal her. I always replied that indeed he would, either in this life or in heaven. On her deathbed, after I finished reading the 23rd Psalm and praying with her, I reminded her of her daily prayer for healing and told her that she would be healed very soon. She could not reply to anything I said, but her eyebrows arched and her eyes went from a half-open glassy stare to wide-eyed angelic, a profoundly moving image that will never get musty in my memory file. An hour after I left she was healed.
As I left her presence for the last time on Earth, she bequeathed to me, via her daughter, her favorite piece of pottery art that she had made and fired in her own kiln many years ago–praying hands. Sometimes arrogant old men cry too.
“Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his saints” (Psalm 116:15).
See you in church.
COGITATIONS 
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