Margaret’s story | Coming to Jesus at age 98

“If you declare with your mouth, ‘Jesus is Lord,’ and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.” (Romans 10:9)

“My mother (Margaret) was born in 1920 and died in 2020, six weeks off turning 100. She had a Christian upbringing, but she was in her twenties in World War 2, and all her friends went off to war. Not many of them came back. She decided God wasn’t worth knowing. She became a secular humanist – she believed in the goodness of man, and she saw science as having the answers.

It continued her whole life, until she was 98. I became a Christian at age 17 and I talked to her about Jesus but after a while, she told me to back off, and I did. I said I wouldn’t mention my faith again until she had questions. Life went on for us both. Twenty years later, in 1992, my brother died suddenly of a mysterious illness. It was devastating. He was only 34 and for the first time, my mother had questions. Why are we here? What happens afterward? Why did he die? My father said it was the worst day of his life.

But again, life went on. Fourteen years later, my father died, aged 92. Mum was 86 by then and she found it very hard. She moved into a retirement village in Sydney which wasn’t too bad at first. She still had her poetry groups and her Shakespeare groups outside of the village. But then one day, aged 95, she had a breakdown. She suddenly came to the end of herself. She wanted to die. She became aggressive to the staff, and they had to give her tranquillisers.

Afterwards, I told my siblings I wanted to bring her out to Coonabarabran, where my husband and I lived. She thrived there, in a retirement village and I would visit her every day. On the weekends, we’d take her to family events, including church.

It was the first time she’d been to church as an adult. She knew some of the old hymns and she seemed to be enjoying it. One day, two years later, at 98, she said to me, “How do I become a member?”

I explained to her that we don’t do membership at our church. We just attend and we belong. But then my husband said, “I don’t think she’s talking about membership. She’s looking for a relationship with Christ.”

For the next few weeks, I read Romans 10:9 with her, “If you declare with your mouth, ‘Jesus is Lord,’ and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.”

By then, mum could only concentrate for 5 minutes at a time, so it took us weeks to read that verse and understand it. We read a few words each day and she had questions. She didn’t know if she could believe. Finally, I said that Jesus asks us to come to him like little children. Before that, mum had said she felt like a child, so I said, “You don’t have to understand everything. You can come to Jesus like a child. It’s a heart thing.”

She said, “Oh, yes!” And she did. She believed in Jesus for the first time. She was 98. Soon after that, she asked me if she could do a public declaration of her faith at church. She did. She went up the front of church, in her wheelchair and shared. Everybody sang, ‘Blessed Assurance, Jesus is mine.’ Then a group of people gathered around her and laid hands on her to pray for her.

She died just under two years later. But she was different in that time. She sang hymns and prayed. She enjoyed being a child of God. The staff loved her. On the day she died, she seemed distressed, so my husband recited Psalm 121 to her, and she calmed down. I held her hand and I said Jesus will take you home. She died at peace.

In looking back, it amazes me. We never pushed her to faith. In 50 years, we always respected each other’s beliefs. But in the end, she came to Jesus herself. God answered my prayers. I was so excited! I started praying for her when I was 17. It took all that time (49 years) till she was ready. It’s amazing!”

Margaret’s story is part of the Faith Stories series, compiled by Naomi Reed.

Visit Koorong to purchase Naomi’s Faith Stories book, Every Moment, Everywhere: https://koorong.com/everymoment