If a sick poor person be righteous and pray fervently would he stay sick and poor? Have you ever known such a person?
In that regard, I recall my pastor's wife in her final days of physical life [2012]. I had always looked up to her but in the end when she was suffering from pancreatic cancer, which from what I have heard and read, is one of the most painful ways to live and die, her Light seemed to brighten to all of us.
Yes, she knew that she was dying, but she never changed her routine of attending every church service until the very last one. She was the primary piano player playing beautifully every service until she physically no longer could. In in her last few weeks when she could no longer sit up at the piano, she would sit in the front row with the congregation singing and worshiping God.
Early on her final Sunday morning, she called my wife and another sister to come to the little mobile home where she and her husband had lived for many years. It was located about 25 yards behind the church building. She had always walked that short distance previously to attend service, but on that last Sunday she needed help to get to the church building. With a sister on each side supporting her frail weakened body she made that final walk to her final service.
Our next service was on Wednesday evening but for the first time ever she told her husband she would not be going. He went alone leaving her in her sickbed.
A person from hospice was already with her daily caring for her physical needs, but in addition to that she never lacked for company. She was well known in many church assemblies all over the United States and dozens of people traveled to visit with her during those last days knowing that her time here would soon be done. They came to bless her and pray for her... but it was rather she that prayed for and blessed each and every one of them. Both my wife and I had received many blessings from her during our time together with her over the years.
During those last few weeks I watched the bright smiling blessed faces of all those who had visited her as they departed... in most cases for the last time. Even when she could no longer get out of bed, she never refused to receive a visitor and she prayed with each one. On the Saturday morning following that missed Wednesday evening service she never woke up from her night's sleep.
Her husband, the pastor, knew she was dying, but he did not know about her physical pain because she would never complain to him about it or even admit that it was there. She only spoke of it to my wife when no one else was around telling her how very severe the pain was. She passed from this life in the flesh at the age of 90 years. Our little church building was too small, so we held her funeral service in the largest funeral home in town which was filled to overflowing with people from across the USA and Canada. They truly loved her for she had certainly she loved each one of them.
