Twenty years ago my mother died.
She had been raised a Roman Catholic in a devout Catholic home.
In the years after my conversion, which baffled her (‘But surely your baptism washed away your sins’), I was able to speak with her about the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ. And then she died. Whether she died trusting alone, however simply, in the Saviour, God alone knows.
Last year my father died. In the years after my conversion, I found it so very difficult to speak with him about Christ. Whereas my mother’s Catholic background gave her some sense of the importance of ‘religion’, my father simply ‘suppressed the truth in unrighteousness’ and studiously avoided engaging me in spiritual conversation (though, to my shame, I rarely sought out the opportunity to speak with him of the Lord Jesus). I suppose in some sort of way they were proud of their son; not proud that I had become a Christian, but proud that I had gone to university, married a wonderful wife, and had four lovely (at least to them and to us) children.
