My father is lying in a coma. He’s been that way for the past 24 hours or more, following an operation to replace and repair two of his heart valves. There are more than a dozen machines and just as many wires finding a way in and out of my dad’s body. I’m watching his chest rise & fall but I know that he is thoroughly dependant on machines. One machine to give him oxygen. Another machine to pump his heart. My dad needs help and a lot of it just to stay alive.

He’s 79 years old and He loves Jesus. He’s not afraid of death, as far as I can tell, and he won’t object to going to meet his Lord. But who knows right now what is happening with my father? A coma is not quite dead, not quite alive.

It’s a strange thing sitting with someone you love who is in a coma. They are asleep but you cannot wake them up. So you wonder can they hear you? Are they dreaming? What, if anything, is happening in their mind right now?

As I sat with my mum, while she held my dad’s hand we wondered together about these things. My mum said, “I just keep asking God to tell him that he is loved.” That’s not a bad thing to pray for one of God’s children is it?

That in this moment when his hold on life is weak, that as he draws near to the edge of life and looks into eternity that he would do so without fear. But more than that, that he would somehow know deep in his soul that he is loved. In Christ we know the love of the Father, a love that has been lavished upon us.

So yes I pray too that my dad would know that he is loved. Not just by us, his family, but above all by His heavenly Father. That he would know in these mysterious moments while a machine is pumping his heart & another filling his lungs & others scanning his brain that underneath it all are the everlasting arms of the God who loves him.