Thank You; It was Magnificent

Winter is gradually drawing to a close, and (here I must lower my voice so as not to be overheard by anyone who might doubt my sanity) on the day of the first thaw, I was surprised by the regret I felt that it had passed so quickly. I was not yet ready to part with air so clean and cutting that to take deep breaths of it must surely have added years of health to our lives; nor our weekly routine of bundling up against the piercing cold to throw and stack a week's supply of firewood outside our door, nor the countless treks late at night, returning home after long days in town with snow so deep we had to leave the car up the road and hike with arms full of groceries down our long driveway, through driving snow or under vast starry skies, through softly falling downy flakes or a hushed moonlit wonderland, but always through this deep stillness.

Whether softest powder, glistening ice, cold so dry it caused crispy crunching at every step, piercing micro-sleet, or smoothest drifts of whitest smoothest cream, I have not enough words to describe how deeply I have loved this winter here in beautiful Cape Breton. So much have I loved it and been moved by its unearthly stillness and its majesty and beauty that I am aware that my life on earth has been altered by it.

Every season is a gift, with the Creator's goodness imprinted in ways beyond counting. This year, winter's gift in this far northern wilderness has been a rarity of breathtaking purity so great that David and I have felt sometimes, standing in this profoundest silence of falling snow, or walking like a whisper under a thousand stars, or through the stillness of a corridor of diamonds more magnificent than any dream on earth, that surely we are just a breath this side of heaven, if not already there in one of God's most holy secret places.

"Have you entered the storehouses of the snow?.... And the frost of heaven, who has given it birth?" (Job 38:22,29) As long as we live, our hearts will be marked by the gift this season of beauty beyond imagining has been to us, and for this profound gift we give profoundest thanks.

Tall Like a Tree

"Oh, I get it!" I thought one day several years ago (sometime after fifty) as I surveyed in the bathroom mirror the downward drift of my face--sag under my eyes, drooping along my jaw line, jiggle behind my chin, and generally everything unamusingly dropping just a little. "I get it! It's the earth; it's gravity! It's the dust my body is made from unable to hold out against earth's magnetism; the earth is pulling my body."

For days after that, I thought about how youth is the season of life when the human body is coursing with the vibrant power of life, and cannot help but sing, twirl, skip, hop, leap, run, climb, and believe in flying and all other kinds of miracles. Life's force is anti-gravity, kept from floating off into space by earth's magnetism, but otherwise inspiring every kind of upward movement, from ascending musical scales to a spring in the step, from ballet and trapeze art and hang gliding and gliding birds to flying pole vaulters and skiers and parkour champions, from soaring architecture to even the smallest smile, defying gravity to lift our faces.

I became sharply aware of the very real difference between body and spirit, a difference that in our youth is sometimes hard to discern, but becomes more undeniably apparent with the years, that the body is one thing, the spirit is most definitely another, and our final outcome depends ultimately on which was the stronger during their inseparable bond in the earth-life.

And so my already great appreciation for the keen perceptivity of Paul's words in II Corinthians 4, about the outward, the physical, fading but the spirit within expanding with an increasing wealth, an immeasurable "weight of glory", became exponentially fuller, as I could see so up close and personal the reality of the "dustness" of these bodies.

Listening as my brother-in-law read through a psalm one day recently with my family, a familiar passage suddenly jumped into fresh imagery, "...the path of the upright." UPRIGHT! There again was a reference to the relationship between gravity and our spirit. Good straight posture of heart and soul, embodied in a word that when I checked it out has nearly a hundred references to the character of God or man in the scriptures.

I have always been drawn to trees, and to the woods, filled with their strong vertical trunks by the hundreds and thousands and tens of thousands, with crowns reaching for the light. This perfect straightness repeated countlessly, this light-focus, fascinates and intrigues me and somehow calls to my spirit.

Our God and Creator who is over the heavens has so planned and designed our world that from birth we are surrounded by invitations to look UPward, and thereby more possibly, with adjusted perspective, see ourselves in right relationship with our surroundings and our God. A dear friend asked me recently what really is the difference between the believer and the principled unbeliever. As I pondered the question, I could see that one very great difference is this upward focus, this vertical relationship with the eternally transcendent God.

It is the call of Jesus when He taught us to pray as He did, "Our Father WHO ART IN HEAVEN". In these words Jesus led us, in the immediacy and urgent press of our lateral circumstances and need, before all else to turn our eyes Upward, away from our surroundings to HIM.

It is this Upwardly focused living that makes us Upright in heart and life. In a world that pulls our souls toward earth, the upward call keeps us from being spiritually bent, disfigured, bowed down with cares and worries, heedlessness, narcissism, and distorted perspective. Think of the imagery of the psalmist's words, "Why are you cast down, O my soul?..." (with worry and discouragement). And his equally symbolic words to the Lord that "You are my glory, and the LIFTER OF MY HEAD" (Psalm 3). Think of the very physical effects of what the scriptures call the "deeds of the flesh" (the "dust" part of us) versus the "fruit of the Spirit (the upwardly attentive part of us) listed in Galatians 5. Jesus said, "Be on guard, that your hearts may not be weighted down..." The "dust-deeds", the dominance of the "dust" part of us, leave people--both the perpetrators and the victims--bowed down, heavy hearted, vengeance focused, oppressed, and stuck in dead ends and vicious cycles, while "Spirit-fruit" creates health, well-being, buoyancy, balance, and uprightness.

Without this uprightness that naturally occurs by our Light-reaching, our Upward-facing, we develop sicknesses of soul, perversions and twistedness and dysfunction, often without even being aware. The haphazardly straying path of lost sheep who have each gone off to their own way becomes our lot when every man does what is right in his own eyes, without the lifelong benefit of Heaven's GPS, giving us our bearings and a true equilibrium through our proper relatedness to Earth and Heaven, feet on the ground and head uplifted; gravity and Antigravity in a beautiful tension of rootedness and upwardly propelling force of eternal life.

Therein lies the transcendence that truly counterbalances the impact of earth's suffering and sadness, its pull to bitterness and resentment, hopelessness, unbelief, and eternal death, instead pulling us upright, as the sight of a lone bird flying overhead in the Nazi death camps strengthened Betsy ten Boom to remember that the evil surrounding her was not the only or final reality.

The God who is entirely upright in all His ways, calls us and causes us to stand upright, our lives on earth in these dust-bodies filled with grace and glory and upward mobility in the most literal sense of the word, because of the One who is the LIFTER of our heads.

Think of all the ways He speaks to us, calling us from living low, earthbound lives, confined under a ceiling, pointing us upward, lightward, heavenward in spirit! Majestic mountains, plunging waterfalls, soaring birds, towering clouds, geese in formation, starry night skies, the compelling drama of sunrises and sunsets all call us to know our smallness in contrast to what is infinitely higher and more vast than we are; not to diminish our significance but to give us a sense of the GREATNESS in which we are wrapped. Even the waters that cover the majority of earth's surface were created with reflective properties, neverendingly reflecting the sky.

Of these natural testimonies to our God, the psalmist wrote:

"The heavens are telling of the glory of God;

And their expanse is declaring the work of His hands.

Day to day pours forth speech,

And night to night reveals knowledge.

There is no speech, nor are there words;

Their voice is not heard.

[Yet] Their sound has gone out through all the earth,

And their utterances to the end of the world..." (from Psalm 19)

What a tragedy (and a travesty) it is that some would so misperceive God's call to worship to be evidence of an ego gone out of control, with an insatiable lust for flattery. The phrase repeated again and again through much of the Old Testament, "before the Lord", as well as the injunction to "know" that He is King of the earth, straightens our posture, relieves us of the weight of unabated earthiness, and calls us to remember what is glorious and eternally true.

"To Thee, O Lord, I lift up my soul. O my God, in Thee I trust." (Psalm 25:1,2)

"Hear the voice of my supplications when I cry to Thee for help, when I lift up my hands toward Thy holy sanctuary." (Psalm 28:2)

"...to Thee, O Lord, I lift up my soul." (Psalm 86:4)

"And I shall lift up my hands to Thy commandments, which I love..." (Psalm 119:48

"I meditate on all Thy doings; I muse on the work of Thy hands. I stretch out my hands to Thee; my soul longs for Thee..." (Psalm 143:5,6)

"Teach me the way in which I should walk; for to Thee I lift up my soul." (Psalm 143:8)

"TO THEE I LIFT UP MY EYES,

O Thou who art enthroned in the heavens!

Behold, as the eyes of servants look to the hand of their master,

As the eyes of a maid to the hand of her mistress;

So our eyes look to the Lord our God." (Psalm 123:1,2)

When come even the darkest of days foretold for the earth, Jesus, in anticipation of those days gave us our life-instruction to "straighten up and LIFT UP YOUR HEADS, because your redemption is drawing near"!! (Luke 21:28)

And so I carry on with great delight in smiling freely, letting the force of life prevail, streeeetching my waking dust-body, lifting high my hands in praise like the uplifted branches of the trees, climbing up into the windowed cupola of this house, turning my thoughts and my spirit to heaven, and day and night lifting up my eyes and my heart to the skies and beyond, to the Eternal One enthroned in the heavens. We and the trees, in the pleasant company of the upright, stand rooted in the earth, ever reaching for the sky! And one great day, gravity will give way to a great and final trumpet blast.

About "the Surrender"

There is a story that accompanies the preceding piece. The surrender referred to was long in coming, and the battle, though only internal, was not an easy one. But I have come to see it was necessary, and the freedom I am experiencing is the sweetest I have ever known.

For I am a settler married to a true pioneer. A pioneer in heart and mind, who does not have a reason to live if not forging ahead. I, on the other hand, move slowly, take more than a bit of time to survey my surroundings and put down my roots, but once my roots are down, they hold firm.

Over time I began to comprehend that our pattern, David’s and mine, was quite literally one in which about the time I had finally been somewhere long enough to put down my roots, make friends, feel like I was getting established, my pioneer beloved was looking at the sky, studying the movement of the clouds, testing the direction of the wind. And I could see it was soon going to be time to pull up our stakes and move on.

I reflected often on the fact that, in the universal magnetism that causes opposites to be attracted to each other, my dedication to the Lord in my youth led me to the ardently questing pioneer I saw in David, keenly aware of my own orientation toward settling and instinctively drawn to this counterweight to my potential complacency of spirit. I also reflected often, especially in recent years, how incredibly much richer I was in life and in personhood because of our journey together, because of his undying quest for the fulfillment of God’s purpose in our lives.

When in 1999 we came upon our “Psalm 23” land, both the settler and the pioneer in us found a most amazing synchronism, and the years following were for me filled with self-discovery, God-discovery, and delight as it appeared we had found the balance of my dream of building a sense of place for our children and grandchildren, and a base from which to make any number of outbound pioneer ventures. We came into a harmonious rhythm of travel and home, California, Israel, even visits to Australia added to our already established family ties in Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Indiana. And no matter where we went, there were the dear familiar gardens, paths, woodland streams, fruit trees, and beloved books, paintings, comfy corners and favorite reading chairs to come HOME to.

Then came the Great Shaking, the year 2009 that will go into our personal histories as the year, for David, that “his engine was disconnected from the train” and we embarked quite unwillingly on a season in which our lives were not our own to direct.

Coming out on the other end of that season, it became abundantly apparent to my disbelieving heart that my pioneer husband could not see us resuming our lives as they had been. I loved our life. But once again, the upward call mattered to him more than anything else in the world. Or more accurately, years ago he set himself to follow the One who is Life, and now once again he heard that One calling.

And for the first time in my life, I recognized in myself the very real capacity to say No to the Lord of my life.

I did not at first see the real crux of the choice for what it was. I stood for all the noble and faithful and inspiring principles of our commitment and our calling as it had come to be defined. I argued that the present felt dried up not because God was leading us onward but because we had been so traumatized and disconnected and needed to reengage, reinvest, redefine our purpose. I longed with everything in me, after what felt like the relentless battering of months of stormy winds, to return to the sweet haven of life resumed, normalcy, productivity, and fruitfulness. And home.

With ALMOST everything in me. There was still a place in my heart that the Faithful One knew was tucked down deep, and He was not going to leave it untended.

One evening this summer, 2010, sitting in the presence of the Lord with a few others in a time of quiet “soaking”, my heart was opened, and I understood all at once that I was also being called by the One who calls, and that He had in fact been calling me for many, many months. Loudly, softly, with words, without words, calling and then waiting with unending patience, nudging, then waiting, whispering, then waiting, lining my path with lovely invitations, watching while I ignored them all.

There had been my father’s often-repeated words quoting his father’s: “I never lived in a place I didn’t enjoy, and I never lived in a place I could not leave.” There was February in Florida, sitting with David’s parents watching the winter Olympics, David switched channels for just a moment and fell into the Diary of Anne Frank, a scene with the unhappy couple hidden with them in the attic, the husband mourning his wife’s stubbornness, having long before that refused to flee while there was opportunity: “You could not leave your dishes and your things…”

There was the unwelcome but persistent memory of that poem I had written fifteen years previous, awakened by one of those midnight revelations in which I saw our journey of the past twenty years so marked with the constant nearness of the Lord that I saw HE was my home more than any address we had ever had; it had been a realization so forceful that I got up and with random pen and paper squeezed into the laundry room of our apartment in Antioch, Tennessee, and wrote of God being my home here on earth, with a peace wrapped then in awe and wonder. The revelation of heaven’s nearness no matter where we were over the years had illuminated my understanding like a beacon. But that was then, I felt, and this was now; I had completed that “phase” of my life.

But now I saw, in opening up my hands to receive the gift of a home and land from my Father, had my fingers closed around the gift? Had it gone from being His to Ours to Mine? In fact, if He was calling us onward, or even if my beloved thought He was calling us onward, and I could not lay down what I considered a gift from my Father, then had not the gift become more important to me than the Giver? If that were true, then the gift had become an idol.

The words my father loved called to me: “I have fought the good fight; I have FINISHED the race”; and I knew a good start was important, but meant little unless the race was completed. I thought of Solomon, Rehoboam, Asa, Hezekiah, who started out strong but faltered and dropped out in the end. “Be faithful UNTO DEATH, and I will give you the crown of life.” “For our citizenship is in heaven…” “For here we have no continuing city…” “You are not your own; you have been bought with a price…” “These are those…who did not love their life to the death.”

But most of all, I saw the body of Christ torn and bleeding, the “veil” through which I passed at my second birth. It cost Him His life, it cost Him His own will to become my salvation, and how could I then think I could hold onto my will? The very greatest mark distinguishing the believer from the unbeliever is this laying down of one’s right to self-determination, to yield to the will of One greater. To belong to this One and call Him Lord has always meant no longer being a sheep turning to my own way. My own way was only an option if I was no longer following my Shepherd.

And then I remembered the words of Jesus, that the one born of the spirit is like the wind, blown here and blown there. I remembered His invitation to come to Him and be filled with His living Spirit that would flow from the innermost being. Flowing, blowing, living, breathing I saw all in a rush were linked entirely to yieldedness, surrender, the opposite of the rigid stiffness that comes with atrophy of body or stubbornness of soul.

Outside the quiet room where we sat, surrounded by worship and candlelight, was the music of a forest stream, and I saw clearly that eternal life is a yielded life, a life that remains supple, that can be directed like the wind or like a flowing stream.

And with that realization, as this poem says, I surrendered.

It is hard to describe the immediate lightness of my spirit, so exhilarating I felt nearly that I could fly, like I had been cut free from a tether, and the joy and the freedom were nearly intoxicating. I felt like Pilgrim at the cross, whose heavy load carried on his back for the entirety of his long journey broke away and went tumbling down the long mountain and he was free! Free from the fight for my future, my responsibility, my material possessions, my this and my that, my-my-my and me, and free to just say Yes! and enter in with my whole being to the invitation being extended to a future defined by Someone bigger than myself, who loves me with a patience beyond comprehending.

The part that brings me to tears is that this season defined by Him is filled to the brim with gifts and opportunities and surprises that I could not have dreamed of, that are sweeter than anything I even knew to imagine, gifts that are refreshing long-dormant places in my heart, in our relationship, in both of our walks with God.

I am getting to see what I would have missed had I continued to hold out for what I understood. More than ever before, I am in awe of His kindness, His patience, and the depth of His love that only seeks our greatest good. With everything in me, I want never again to drift from this place in which I have been set free to move, to be led, to follow, to flow, to yield, to trust, to surrender to such a One; I want only to come even more fully into this yieldedness for the rest of my life.

Because once again, I have decided to follow Jesus, no turning back.

O Happy Day

"What is that in your hand? Would you let Me hold it for you?" sweet this surrender not as seafarers to the Sirens' tune lovely lurid lethal nor as Lee to Grant dignified depleted destroyed not as the mighty oak yielding to age and gravity in one thunderous crash. no, surrendered to Your kindness Your quiet love waiting whispering wistful longing to loosen the tether to take me flying casting off the lesser for The Greater, sending cheery notes from Laura, "this is not the time to stay in the prison of oneself, is it?" sparkling in the brook beckoning in the breeze whistling with Farsight "Further up and Further In!" until my unlistening ears catch the sound and selfbound heart turns upward and sluggish toes begin to feel the rhythm and I look up and see You dancing O Lover of my soul, Lifter of my head Keeper of my clearest vision Seeker of my greatest joy Guardian of my highest good how Sweet the Surrender.

October

"Earth is crammed with heaven.

Every bush is aflame with the fire of God,

but only those who see take off their shoes.

The rest pick berries."

--elizabeth browning--

"Only those who see..." I want to be one of those; there is so much to be seen and heard and touched and smelled!

These days it's golden glory overhead and in all the air around,

Amber glory spread beneath our feet in every direction,

A scarlet and crimson riot softening into gentle hues,

And freshest of spice-tinged air.

It stretches all credibility to imagine heaven being any more crammed and crowded with magic.

WE ARE SO LOVED!

In Praise of Rainbows

"Ten thousand times ten thousand,

In sparkling raimant bright,

The armies of the ransomed saints

Throng up the steeps of light;

'Tis finished, all is finished,

Their fight with death and sin...

Fling open wide the golden gates

And let the victors in.

What rush of allelluias

Fills all the earth and sky!

What ringing of a thousand harps

Bespeaks the triumph nigh!

O day for which creation

And all its tribes were made!

O joy, for all its former woes

A thousandfold repaid!

O then what raptured greetings

On Canaan's happy shore'

What knitting severed friendships up

Where partings are no more!

Then eyes with joy shall sparkle

That brimmed with tears of late;...

Orphans no longer fatherless

Nor widows desolate.

Bring near Thy great salvation,

Thou Lamb for sinners slain;

Fill up the roll of Thine elect,

Then take Thy pow'r, and reign;

Appear, Desire of nations,

Thine exiles long for home,...

Show in the heav'n Thy promised sign;

Thou Prince and Savior, come."!!!!

by Henry Alford, 1867

Life is full to the top with blessings. For some future day I have reserved a post about the "ocean of grace" in which we swim. For the present, numbered among God's greatest gifts to me in my ocean of grace is a husband who truly loves me and is my nearest and greatest cheerleader. Our path in the course of this year has led us to an island in Cape Breton, which is itself an island in Nova Scotia. On this blessed island is a further blessing, the home we have been provided in this season, tucked away in the forest by the ocean. In this home, just outside our bedroom is a small library lined with select books, and in the library is a winding staircase into a rooftop cupola. For me that tiny cupola, softly carpeted, windowed from all sides, and from which I can see the ocean, is my nest into which I can climb to be with my Abba, in body and in spirit perched above the noise of the everyday. Today, October 14, 2010, he (my cheerleader) stood as a guardian over the hours of my day, knowing I had a great desire to spend quietly the first anniversary of my father's Homegoing. Such were my great blessings this day: that cupola, with my zealous soldier standing guard over my hours.

And what precious hours. As is obvious by the small number of posts over the past twelve months, there have been more thoughts than words in my life this year, and even more spirit-prayer than thoughts. Have I just been "stuck" in the loss of my father? No, but I have been stuck in the Refiner's fire, of which that loss has been part of the flame. Has this season been void of joys? By all means, not. Instead, I have more deeply discovered depths, and have found the precious Spirit of Christ had gone to those depths before me.

This year, I also "discovered" another mystery of Christ, as usual hidden in words I have read numbers of times through the years, but this time I was caught in the illumination of their truth --and oh! in its sharing may it be illuminated for you as well! I was reading in one of my very favorite books, the writings of the prophet Isaiah. In chapter seven is recorded an exchange between Isaiah and the king of Israel in which Isaiah instructed the king,

" 'Ask a sign for yourself from the Lord your God; make it deep as Sheol or high as heaven.' But Ahaz said, 'I will not ask, nor will I test the Lord!' Then he said ... 'Therefore THE LORD HIMSELF will give you a sign: Behold, a virgin will be with child and bear a son, and she will call His name Immanuel...' "

Did you get that??!!! King Ahaz could never have dreamed of a sign that encompassed both heaven AND the grave, but our God did! And that sign was Jesus. Because of Jesus, and the way His life encompasses the deepest depths and the highest heights, this year has been a sacred one, of tears but also of celebration, of weakness but in the end of overcoming, of perplexity but even more of worship.

A weekend ago we experienced a day of enigma; I posted a facebook status that read something like "rain sun rain sun rain rain rain" ... and that was not nearly the extent of the extremes of the day. But as we compared notes the following day, the talk was of the rainbows one after another in succession throughout the day. Rainbows, covenant prisms of light that appear at the place where rain turns to sun, and sun shines through rain, and all is wrapped in the scope of our Abba's love and His all-encompassing plan.

And so I close the door on this day, and on this year, by once again scribing borrowed words. I have no knowledge of their author, Henry Alford, or the circumstances that inspired their writing more than a century and a half ago. But I do know that his words capture the rainbow overarching all the clouds that have passed through our sky--and still stand timelessly triumphant.

And just one more -- if you have read my blog at all you know that I am a lover of old treasures, so please bear with this eccentric affection! This hymn, sung by Enya, is so old as to be nameless, undated and in the public domain -- and captures the present melody of my own heart.

"My life flows on in endless song

Above earth's lamentation;

I hear the real though far-off hymn

That hails a new creation.

No storm can shake my inmost calm

While to that rock I'm clinging;

Since Love is Lord of heaven and earth

How can I keep from singing?

Through all the tumult and the strife

I hear the music ringing;

It sounds and echoes in my soul;

How can I keep from singing?

What though the tempest round me roar,

I hear the truth: it liveth!

What though the darkness round me close,

Songs in the night it giveth."

For rainbows, and for the upward call!

Get yourself a BIG cup of tea...

This bright Wednesday in April marks six months since the beautiful October afternoon on which I received the news of my father’s death. Six months, and I have still not shared the story on this blog. Life has been continuing since then with events in such rapid succession that my heart seems just beginning to catch up. For anyone out there who may still happen to check in on this blog and is even interested, here at last is the sequel to my last post.

On that terrible day, Wednesday, October 14th, David was still recovering from a life-threatening illness for which he had been hospitalized in intensive care. In the midst of preparing for a wedding we were hosting in our home three days later, I had just finished a birthday luncheon for a dear friend. The phone had rung during the party, but I did not check the message until the last guest was gone.

The news was beyond my ability to fathom. My father, who has traveled by air, sea, and land in all kinds of danger in the Middle East, Africa, and South America, while making a midmorning drive up the road he has traveled thousands of times, was met less than two miles from home by a frenzied young motorist who crossed over into oncoming traffic at a speed that took both her life and my father’s in an instant. It did not matter that he was in a full-sized Landrover rather than his VW, nor that the airbags deployed. The devastation took hours to clear, and was given priority coverage in the local papers, radio and television.

Most amazingly in the mangled wreckage, his dear, kind face was spared, and we were granted the mercy of seeing him in death with the dignity that accompanied him all through his life. I referred in my November post to the goodness and mercy that was present even in “the valley of the shadow”. To describe these mercies in detail could fill pages.

**********************************************

My first thought after I began to comprehend what I was hearing in that first phone call was of the vacancy on the earth left by a man of such rare character and conviction. The personal grief and loss was more than any one of us were prepared to fathom, but more than that, beyond our loss was the desperate need of the world for men like him.

“And there was silence in heaven for half an hour…” (Rev. 8:1). We here on earth cannot begin to comprehend such a silence in a place where worship and singing in greatest crescendos perpetually reverberated through all space. Yet even here on earth there are times and events of such deep impact that silence is all that is possible.

“The Lord is in His holy temple; let all the earth keep silent before Him.” These words of scripture sung in a reverent old hymn are another of my earliest memories of my father’s voice.

Silence was the tribute paid to him as his funeral began, my brother seating my mother almost as one would at a wedding, and then a solemn processional down the aisle through the many hundreds who had gathered, with first David and I, carrying flowers, then my sister and her husband, with flowers, then the next and the next, all seven of his children with spouses, then the firstborn grandson of my parents, Austin, with his family, and the first granddaughter, back from Kazakhstan, and the next, from Australia, and the next, and the next, and the next, until the beautiful cherrywood casket crafted by my brother-in-law was heaped and mounded with blossoms, the wordless witness of our forty-seven lives to a saint who, though he lived the simplest life imaginable, without the titles and degrees by which the world measures achievement, walked in a greatness of character and stature of soul surpassed by few.

And for me there has been a long silence internally following this profound loss, a stillness compelled by the homegoing of such a man. Every time I have thought of reducing the towering thoughts and emotions filling my heart to mere words, I have been able only to return to silence, waiting, listening, pondering, resting as before in the great everlasting arms. “How are you doing?” my dear friends have asked. “Fine”, I have responded. And that is the truth. Fine, yes; yet my inner being has been focused, at attention, honoring the man who shaped me in the earliest years of my life, pondering the ongoing significance for me of what he loved, fought for, and lived for.

***********************************************

With my mother recently, coming across the last birthday card I sent my father, I stumbled upon the key for which I have been waiting, and today, six months after he left, I am able finally to unwrap these thoughts.

I knew that when I would have something to say, it would be about gladness. “Make a joyful noise unto the Lord,” begins the hundredth psalm. “Serve the Lord with gladness”.

GLADNESS. That is the word that stood out above all else as I thought about his life in the hours following the news. It is what I would have said about him at the funeral if I could have cut through the numbness in my heart. Gladness was the glow that permeated his words, his actions, his waking, his sleeping. I have called it endless initiative, vitality, zest, undiluted love of life, energy of soul, buoyancy of spirit. But as each of these swirls together in the glass and begins to separate into its individual color, I see that the joy of the Lord—his constant daily joy in who God is, and his joy in belonging to the Lord—was the deep spring from which all his vitality flowed, the clear water--to carry on the swirling colors analogy--in which all his energy found its medium. His was the joy of a life lived constantly in the light; the uncompromised, clean fear of the Lord that kept him free from all other fears.

He was not a charismatic man, nor did he have an iota of appreciation for charismatic expression. To raise his hands in worship was for him an act of obedience that broke with his deeply conservative bent. Yet his was a life suffused with joy in being yoked with Christ.

This gladness pulled him out of bed and onto his knees every morning of his life, for many years long before dawn. It kept him poring over the beloved treasury of the scriptures late into the night hours, brought songs to his lips day and night, brightened our household with his homecoming, and early in life awakened in my own heart a deep hunger for purity and reverence. This gladness in his Eternal God filled life with delight, whether in a sunset or a child’s innocent sweetness, the antics of a baby goat or the completion of a building project. He delighted in the work of his hands in the same way he delighted in the richness of a passage from Isaiah. Because he so served the Lord with gladness, his left hand did not keep track of his right hand; there was never a counting of the late nights spent exploring the scriptures with a visitor, nor the times those nights concluded with a hike to the nearby stream to rejoice over the baptism of a new believer (including myself, and one by one over the years, each of my siblings).

There was a costly aspect of this gladness as a true follower of the Christ of whom Isaiah said, “…and He will delight in the fear of the Lord.” In his dedication to the way of Christ, he experienced the suffering of choosing, again and again, between what was most comfortable and what he read in the scriptures. His uncompromised commitment to the fear of the Lord led him out of the denomination he loved deeply, and into a lifelong mentorship at the feet of Jesus. In his quest to be completely true to Christ and His word in all ways possible, he sometimes walked alone, and his love of the truth led to great travail of soul on behalf of countless others, especially his children and grandchildren.


One day I sat down and began to list the passages of scripture that he especially loved. The list goes on and on and on, weighted with the Psalms, the prophets, the letter to the Romans, the book of Hebrews, the letters of Peter and John, the benedictions, the prayers of Paul; how he loved and delighted in these truths and nourished his soul continually with them! He carried them on index cards to memorize as he worked, he placed them on his walls; he sang them, he recited them at the dinner table, and their richness is forever imprinted in my heart with sweetness, because of all the times I heard him read or recite those passages with a gladness and a tenderness that saturated the very words with a living dimension.


“For it was fitting for Him, for whom are all things, and through whom are all things, in bringing many sons to glory, to perfect the author of their salvation through sufferings.”

“For both He who sanctifies and those who are sanctified are all from one Father; for which reason He is not ashamed to call them brethren…” How he cherished these words!

“Since then we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession. For we do not have a high priest who cannot be touched by our infirmities, but one who has in all things been tempted as we are, yet without sin…”

“Although He was a Son, He learned obedience by the things He had suffered. And having been made perfect, He became to all those who obey Him the source of eternal salvation…”

“This hope we have as an anchor of the soul, a hope both sure and steadfast and one which enters within the veil…”

“Hence also, He is able to save forever those who draw near to God through Him, since He always lives to make intercession for them.”

“For it was fitting that we should have such a high priest, holy, innocent, undefiled, separated from sinners and exalted above the heavens; who does not need daily to offer up sacrifices first for His own sins and then for the sins of the people, because this He did once for all when He offered up Himself…”

“Since we have a great priest over the house of God, let us draw near with a sincere heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water. Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for He who promised is faithful…”

“Consider Him who endured such contradiction of sinners against Himself, lest ye grow weary and faint in your minds…”

“And coming to Him as to a living stone, rejected by men, but choice and precious in the sight of God,…”

“But like the Holy One who called you, be holy yourselves also in all your behavior; because it is written, ‘You shall be holy, for I am holy.’”

“But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for God’s own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of Him who has called you out of darkness into His marvelous light…”

“Finally, brethren, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is of good repute, if there is any excellence and if anything worthy of praise, think on these things. The things you have learned and received and heard and seen in me, do; and the God of peace shall be with you.”

“Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on Thee, because He trusts in Thee.”

And the benedictions:

“The Lord bless you, and keep you; the Lord make His face shine upon you, and be gracious to you; the Lord lift up His countenance on you, and give you peace.”

“And after you have suffered for a little while, the God of all grace, who called you to His eternal glory in Christ, will Himself perfect, confirm, strengthen and establish you. To Him be dominion forever and ever. Amen.”

“Now to Him who is able to keep you from falling, and to present you before His glorious presence without fault and with great joy, to the only wise God our Savior, through Jesus Christ our Lord, be glory and majesty, dominion and authority, both now and forever. Amen.”

And with especially vibrant emphasis:

“I have fought the good fight, I have finished the course, I have kept the faith; in the future there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will award to me on that day; and not only to me, but also to all who have loved His appearing.”

“Therefore, my beloved brethren, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that your toil is not in vain in the Lord.”



You are quite forgiven if you glanced over these words, having gotten the general idea, yet I share them as but the “tip of the iceberg” of the treasury of his heart, because to this day, when I remember these words and many others–which I do with little effort, having heard them so ardently articulated from an early age—I hear them in my father’s voice, with his gladness in the truths therein resonating and adding rich emphasis to every word.


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It was in going through boxes of memories with my mother, that she came upon the birthday card I had sent this vibrant, rugged, great, earthy, simple, loving, wholeheartedly faithful and victorious champion at his last birthday, that became the key to unlock my “logjammed” heart. I was amazed and grateful as I read, that I had been able to touch that gladness while still unaware of the path before us all, as I wrote on the eve of what would be his final trip to Africa:

“Daddy Dear,
“Blessed be the Lord who has brought you safely to the fulfillment of your 78th year!! Seventy-eight years of blessing, fruitfulness, fellowship with the One who created you and brought you into the world, fellowship with His Son, our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. “Through many dangers, toils and snares you have already come; ‘Tis grace that brought you safe thus far, and grace will lead you home. “ And what grace this has been, that has taught you to live righteously and godly in this present age, so that you have created a faithful inheritance for your children and your children’s children! It seems altogether fitting that you would be given not only the physical strength but the vision and spiritual energy to make another return to Kenya, and not alone, but with Mama by your side, and two generations accompanying you. Riches, wealth, and honor of the truest kind are yours, and may the Lord grant that the riches of harvest may only continue and increase through all your remaining days on earth and into eternity!
“I have been pondering this week the words regarding Jesus: ‘You have loved righteousness and hated iniquity, therefore God, your God, has anointed you with the oil of gladness above your fellows.’ What an amazing truth it is that though in this world loving righteousness and hating evil is not the easy road, that in the end it produces an oil of gladness that permeates our being. May there be much oil of gladness upon you in this year ahead, and may goodness and mercy follow you all the days of your life! I so continually give thanks for you.
With love always, …”