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| Volume 25 Number 8 August 2023 |
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| Volume 25 Number 8 August 2023 |
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Louis Rushmore, Editor
Friday evening, May 15, 2015, Bonnie Sue Rushmore was very weak. Bonnie and I both knew that she was losing her three-year-long battle with pancreatic cancer. It was a common occurrence for us to travel two hours away to a hospital for fluid in her abdomen to be drained or to otherwise stabilize her before returning to our home.
Sitting in the loveseat in our living room and covered with a blanket, Bonnie engaged in what turned out to be her final conversation with me. My dear wife must have realized that she was closer to death’s threshold into eternity than I grasped. After all, I had grown accustomed to the medical visits that somewhat rejuvenated her. This time, however, we would not be leaving the hospital together.
Bonnie uttered the following words in an almost shocked tone. “But I’m not done, yet!” She wasn’t bemoaning her frailty and premature death on account of personal or selfish reasons, which would not have been the least unreasonable. Her words on the page could be misconstrued and lead one to the assumption that she thought death was not near for her. Instead, Bonnie lamented that by dying she could no longer serve our Lord Jesus Christ on earth. She was always and fully immersed in the service of Christ. Since I was an evangelist and Bonnie was my wife, Christian service was a way of life for us and for our three children. In addition, Bonnie and I were missionaries to India, Myanmar, Sri Lanka, Singapore and Guyana (South America). We routinely changed planes in Moscow, Taipei, Hong Kong, Tokyo, etc.
Saturday morning, our daughter Rebecca and I managed to get Bonnie – semi-conscious – into the car and to the local hospital. Shortly thereafter, she fell unconscious from which she never recovered. I kept repeating over and over to her that I loved her, and finally in a stupor, Bonnie’s last words were, “I love you.”
Transferred to a hospital two hours away, I followed the ambulance. I was with her in the emergency theater and later upstairs in a room. I held one of Bonnie’s hands for the balance of Saturday, all of Sunday and until she finally breathed her last on Monday afternoon, May 18, 2015. Rebecca had arrived Sunday morning and held Bonnie’s other hand. We had mixed feelings of relief and sorrow.
A few days afterward, brethren from several states came to a little white church house in a small clearing in the woods and kudzu of north central Mississippi. The meeting place was packed, a testament to the servant Bonnie had become. She had a servant’s heart to the end of her life, expressed in the words, “But I’m not done, yet!”
Perhaps in some little way she resembled Dorcas in her good deeds.
At Joppa there was a certain disciple named Tabitha, which is translated Dorcas. This woman was full of good works and charitable deeds which she did. But it happened in those days that she became sick and died. When they had washed her, they laid her in an upper room. And since Lydda was near Joppa, and the disciples had heard that Peter was there, they sent two men to him, imploring him not to delay in coming to them. Then Peter arose and went with them. When he had come, they brought him to the upper room. And all the widows stood by him weeping, showing the tunics and garments which Dorcas had made while she was with them. (Acts 9:36-39 NKJV)
My late wife had done all she knew to do to prepare for meeting God in the Judgment (Amos 4:12). That fateful Friday evening, Bonnie asked me if she had left anything undone that would garner God’s disfavor. Then, she thanked me for leading her to Christ. “I commend to you Phoebe our sister, who is a servant of the church in Cenchrea” (Romans 16:1).
Whereas my wife of 42 years had a servant’s heart, each child of God ought likewise to possess a servant’s heart for as long as he or she lives – even if serving Jesus Christ results in the loss of one’s life (Revelation 2:10). We all want to possess for ourselves the mind and the preparedness of the apostle Paul preceding his death. “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. Finally, there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will give to me on that Day, and not to me only but also to all who have loved His appearing” (2 Timothy 4:7-8).
