by jphilo | Sep 30, 2013 | Church Newsletter Columns
We give thanks to God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ,
praying always for you,
since we heard of your faith in Christ Jesus
and the love which you have for all the saints;
because of the hope laid up for you in heaven,
of which you previously heard in the word of truth, the gospel.
Colossians 1:3–5
Sometimes, I don’t like being a grown up. Last week, when it was time to say good-bye to dear South Dakota friends and head home, was one of those times. A piece of my heart remained with them as I climbed in the car and drove away from the little town filled with people who loved and supported us during the early years of our very sick baby’s life.
But I had to leave because another piece of my heart lives in Iowa, in the town where Hiram and I raised our kids, where we have many friends who supported us during the trials and joys of life for almost three decades. Other bits of my heart are scattered all over the country and the world, wherever beloved rellies and friends now live. And every year, my heart cracks anew as I say final good-byes to dear ones God used to bless my life before he called them home.
With each good-bye, a bit more of my heart chips off. These good-byes makes it impossible to hold onto my foolish childhood belief that everyone who populated my secure world and loved me would be with me forever. Life…and death…continually prove that my childhood belief isn’t truth. The truth of the matter is this:
People change.
People move.
People die.
In the shadow of that reality, my grown up self longs for and seeks after Someone who is true and loving and secure. Someone who never dies. Someone who can repair my heart, and the hearts of all who seek Him, for eternity. Who can that be but Christ, the One Paul calls “the hope of heaven?”
Christ is our hope on earth and in heaven. He is hope a person can cling to when saying good-bye. Hope to share with those God uses to bless our lives. Hope to encourage us to pray for those we love who don’t yet know Him. Hope to makes mature believers rejoice, knowing they are drawing ever closer to the Hope laid up for them in heaven.
Hope to make us eager to join Christ and the cloud of witnesses surrounding Him in a heaven where there are no more tears.
No more sorrows.
No more pain.
No more broken hearts.
No more good-byes.
And no more grown ups.
Just children of the Father, His saints reunited with one another and worshipping God’s Son forever and ever.
Amen.
by jphilo | Jun 27, 2013 | Three Thoughts for Thursday
- Last Thursday, word came that a high school friend had died of cancer. On Friday, the mother emailed to say her son with special needs had died during corrective surgery. On Monday, a friend was killed when a car hit his bicycle as he trained for RAGBRAI.
- Yesterday I listened to the debate in the wake of the Supreme Court’s DOMA ruling, some reasoned, some fearful, some angry.
- Life is brief. Cultures shift. Laws change. But in the midst of loss and storm, take comfort in this truth:
All flesh is grass,
and all its beauty is like the flower of the field.
The grass withers, the flower fades
when the breath of the Lord blows on it;
surely the people are grass.
The grass withers, the flower fades,
but the word of our God will stand forever.
Isaiah 40: 6–8
by jphilo | Dec 6, 2012 | Three Thoughts for Thursday
- These days, we seem to run out of sympathy cards faster than any other variety of greeting cards. Most of the recipients are people of our parents’ generation rather than our own. Even so, this is not a happy trend.
- On the other hand, baby cards are running a close second since people of our kids’ generation are being fruitful and multiplying with gusto. Babies are always a happy trend…for those who get to send cards but don’t have to stay up all night with little ones who get their days and nights mixed up.
- Members of the Baby Boomer generation are wondering what this year’s trends for and against sending Christmas cards so
I can decide they can decide whether to send them, too.
Leave a comment to help me members of the Baby Boomer generation settle the issue once and for all.
photo credit: www.freedigitalphoto.net
by jphilo | Nov 9, 2012 | Family
Some people give the impression they will live forever, and my husband’s Uncle Harold Walker was one of them. So when the news arrived on Wednesday that he died of a stroke last weekend, we could hardly believe it.
Not Uncle Harold…
who climbed up and down the mountains in the Idaho panhandle as a boy,
who trained to try out for the Olympic track team in the 1940s,
who as a WW2 pilot saw the Enola Gay take off with an atom bomb in the cargo bay,
who gave the silk parachute that saved his life to his fiance for her wedding dress,
who loved his wife, children, and grandchildren beyond measure,
who, with his bride, spent a year homesteading in Alaska,
who gave selflessly to the students he taught in school and guided in youth groups,
who coached countless youth in basketball and football,
who loved to hike, bow fish, and hunt,
who earned a doctorate in administration,
who served as a church administrator and school superintendent for decades,
who logged in the Idaho woods well into his 70s,
who created, along with his wife and children, a family camp on a mountainside,
who wrote books about his long and storied life,
who helped coach his granddaughter’s basketball team just last year,
and whose life was a testimony of what it means to love God and others.
How can he be dead? This precious man…
who touched our lives by welcoming us into his family circle,
who made us feel as if we’d always been part of it,
who welcomed us, with his wife, into their home last March,
who took us to lunch at Red Lobster, his favorite restaurant,
who a few weeks ago sent an email describing corn harvest during his childhood,
whose bright eyes and smile in the last photo we have of him now move me to tears.
How can we not simultaneously…
weep for our loss,
rejoice to have known him,
thank God for his swift departure,
and imagine with joy his reunion with the Savior he loved so dearly?
by jphilo | Mar 5, 2012 | Family
Yesterday morning’s date, March 4, kept niggling in my brain. But until an email arrived from my youngest cousin Dan, the significance of the date escaped me. It was the anniversary of my father’s death. The fifteenth anniversary, to be exact.
Fifteen years since Dad’s soul left the body that imprisoned him for so many years.
Fifteen years since his wide grin graced my day.
Fifteen years since his family said good-by to the bravest man we knew.
Fifteen years later, my cousin Dan remembered the loss by sending this passage. I hope resonates in you as deeply as it did in him and in me.
I am standing upon the seashore. A ship at my side spreads her white sails to the morning breeze and starts for the blue ocean. She is an object of beauty and strength. I stand and watch her until at length she hangs like a speck of white cloud just where the sea and sky come to mingle each other.
Then someone at my side says: ‘There, she is gone!’
‘Gone where?’
Gone from my sight. That’s all. She is just as large in mast and hull and spar as she was when she left my side and she is just as able to bear the load of living freight to her destined port.
Her diminished size is in me, not in her. And just at the moment when someone at my side says: ‘There, she is gone!’ There are other eyes watching her coming, and other voices ready to take up the glad shout: ‘Here she comes!’
And that is dying.
~ Henry Van Dyke
In memory of Harlan John Stratton: May 11, 1929 – March 4, 1997
Here he comes!
