"Beneath the Same Wings" - 10/11/25


Scripture (NIV):
“Even to your old age and gray hairs I am he, I am he who will sustain you. I have made you and I will carry you; I will sustain you and I will rescue you.” — Isaiah 46:4
“Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you.” — 1 Peter 5:7


In the hush between hospital visits, medications, and whispered prayers, a sacred space opens—thin, fragile, yet real—where the journey of love and loss mingles with the abiding presence of God. In that space, one walks a path both tender and heavy, caring for a mother whose strength fades, yet whose life is still wreathed in the dignity of love. This devotion is a companion for that journey.

The words from Isaiah 46 echo across years: “Even to your old age … I will carry you.” Here rests a promise: the Lord who formed our frames will also sustain us in seasons of frailty and uncertainty. The very One who breathed life into our mothers now carries their breath when it grows shallow. This is not a promise of painless days, but a promise of sustaining Presence.

To care for another is, in many ways, to roam in the borderland between gratitude and grief. Gratitude for years of love, for heritage, for stories shared; grief for diminishing capacities, for the loss of vitality, for the approaching farewell. There is no neat resolution, but there is grace—a kind of grace that inclines our hearts toward compassion, tenderness, and holy awareness. In choosing to remain, to continue, to offer presence, we participate in God’s own steadfast love.

Peter’s gentle invitation to “cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you” offers relief—not in minimizing our difficulties, but in drawing us into God’s hands. When nights feel long, when decisions weigh heavy, when the burden seems more than one can bear: place them before the One who cares intimately. To cast is to surrender trustingly, to release into divine care what we cannot carry alone.

In this caregiving, love becomes both a vocation and a liturgy. Each moment of feeding, each hour waiting, each hand held, becomes a quiet offering. In those acts, God dwells. Even in fatigue, even in tears, love gestures toward resurrection—to the deeper life that pulses beneath the thin veil of suffering.

There will be days when the body falters, when the heart aches at the changes, when one must say “I do not know, but I trust.” On those days, let the horizon of God’s goodness comfort the inner horizon of your soul.

The One who carried your mother from birth to now is not absent. The One who carried you through past trials is with you still. The One whose plans are beyond our full sight is weaving faithfulness into the unseen threads of this moment.

Perhaps one day, when the sun lies low, you will look back at this season and realize that something eternal was being shaped: a deeper compassion, a tethering to God’s heart, a softening of despair into sustained hope. For love withheld is not unvalued; love offered in weakness is, in God’s economy, among the most beautiful worship.
May your journey be held by the great love that never lets go.


Prayer
Loving God, you who carried us from the womb and who now carry those we care for: grant strength for the days, patience for the hours, and your peace for the nights. In our weariness, breathe your presence. In our doubts, kindle hope. Let your compassion flow through our hands, our words, our quiet attentions. May love offered become for us a doorway into deeper communion with you. Amen.