Category: Life Reflections

July 2, 2022

Pain and peace, grief and gratitude, tragedy and triumph. The last few days have been a study in paradox.

Carrie? Buried?

No way. Surely not. Surely we’ll all wake up tomorrow and find this was just a terrible dream. She’ll round a corner, greet her people with raised brow and broad smile, extending her characteristic warmth and welcome.

Surely it’s not true that her eyes remain closed, her hands carefully folded by someone else’s, enclosed in a coffin. That thought is just too harsh, too piercing to be true.

The statement in Thursday’s email was simply absurd: “Funeral arrangements have been made for Carrie…” Surely those words indicated we had entered an alternate dimension. Surely there is a portal back to reality, back to a world that made better sense than this.

But we didn’t. And there isn’t. The shocking truth is that this IS reality. Reality is a world where a lover loses the privilege of growing old with his beloved. Daughters in early seasons of life miss the mentoring friendship of mom. Grandchildren will not know the woman who thought of them with fierce fondness before they even were. Parents watch their daughter buried. Friends feel a part of themselves torn away.

And this comes with no announcement. There’s no prequel, no warning. Reality is a world where any of these tragedies can happen to anyone at any moment. Reality is that we are all weak. Fragile. Vulnerable.

Reality is that the world we knew was tinged with shades of blue on Wednesday – deeper hues for those who knew and loved Carrie best.

July 23, 2022

What to do with that?

Loss doesn’t change reality: it changes our perception of reality. In a sub-culture largely insulated from catastrophe, we tend to think the world is safe for us, that life just goes on as we enjoy all the good gifts. But ever since Genesis 3, we’ve inhabited a dangerous world. Threats to life abound. We suffer violence from nature, from other humans, from within the brokenness of our own bodies.

We live in a world of contradiction. We were created for eternal life, and death shouldn’t be part of our existence. The nagging feeling of “this can’t be happening” reminds us of that. In horrific technicolor, death displays the tragedy of our fall from God’s design. That’s reality.

But that’s not the only dimension of reality.

Reality is a world cursed by sin, receiving the promise that a Deliverer would wreck death and ransom God’s people from its bondage.

Reality is a world God has invaded at every point of human history, displaying His power and faithfulness to bring life from death.

Reality is a world that received its Maker in human existence, to descend the depths of death’s disgrace.

Reality is a world of cursed natural law reversed when the Lord of Life burst from His impotent grave.

Reality is that His life, death, resurrection, and ascension secure and ensure total redemption of sinners through forgiveness of sin.

Reality is a world of God’s redeemed children facing death’s fleeting sting with relentless hope of everlasting life with Him.

Reality is a world waiting for promised redemption to be fulfilled when every redeemed child of God receives an incorruptible body.

Reality is that the ground covering Carrie’s casket will erupt when Jesus says, “Rise” and she will rise – glorified, forever.

Reality is that we wait in the tension of sorrow and joy between what’s happening and what’s coming.

When the reality we see seems too awful to be true, we need to rehearse what God has done and what He will do. His faithfulness and promises shape the present perception of loss, infusing the soul with durable joy.

And in the unthinkable present, He is present. He does not love us from a distance: He empathizes, always with us. He has already carried our griefs and sorrows, along with our sins (Isaiah 53:3-6). The One Who knows the sting of death invites us to humbly receive the strength of His care.

Today’s painful realities remind us to gratefully receive good gifts with open hands, but firmly grasp the Person and promises of God. And while we wait for the fulfillment of eternal reality with Him in the kingdom, He will hold us fast.

Summer often ends with a note of sadness, doesn’t it?

This fall finds me heading back into teacher mode, after a three-year foray into other fields. I’m excited to be back: lesson planning no longer feels like the bane of my existence, communication has grown easier, I love to teach writing, and my soul is burning with literature content that could totally change these junior-high students’ lives. (They’re much less excited, I’m sure. It’s fine. I’ll be excited enough for all of us.)

At the same time, I feel the sigh of summer’s end. A flexible schedule, vacations, family visits, sunny days, and (for students and teachers) a two-month break from the routine work of education…all over, for now. We roll back into the mundane. The evenings will be shorter. We’ll set alarms, get up earlier, and work our minds harder. We’ll have to do things we don’t like to do. And the next day, we’ll do the same thing. (Last time I checked, that’s part of everyone’s job, whether we’re students or teachers or mechanics or moms or musicians.)

It’s so ordinary. We do the same things, over and over. While that seems wistful at the end of an exciting season like summer, it’s actually glorious.

Think of how God relates to and works for His people. In the Old Testament, He certainly reveals Himself in extravagant events: creation, the flood, the Exodus. But much of the story highlights what He does in the mundane.

Lightning falls, thunder rolls, and the ground shakes at Sinai when God reveals His law. Extraordinary. Then for centuries, God’s people simply speak to each other, daily telling their children what God commanded and promised. Ordinary.

God tells His people to assault the impossible fortress of Jericho by walking around it. After seven days of this seeming absurdity, He miraculously disintegrates the walls. Extraordinary. And for the rest of Canaan’s conquest, men wield swords and throw spears and shoot arrows and swing clubs and exhaust themselves in hand combat over rough terrain. Ordinary.

Fire falls from heaven to consume the sacrifice on Mt. Carmel. Extraordinary. But for centuries, God’s people daily bring sacrifices to burn on an altar, the flames fed by wood cut with hand tools. Ordinary.

The New Testament is the same. An angel shows up and breaks the 400-year divine silence with a shocking message to a teenager in Nazareth. A virgin conceives. Extraordinary. Then Mary spends the next thirty years loving a Son who was literally the perfect child, but didn’t seem particularly miraculous. Ordinary.

A Healer touches demoniacs and diseased and cripples and corpses, and they rise to new, whole life. Extraordinary. A Teacher travels on foot with a mismatched band of followers, sleeping under tents and eating food cooked over a fire. Ordinary.

Peter walks down the street, and his passing shadow heals the sick. Extraordinary. Paul shows up in Corinth, finds some coworkers, then spends his weekdays stitching tents so he can go evangelize on the Sabbath. Ordinary.

The whole story of Scripture is a combination of God working in extraordinary and ordinary ways…and more often than not, quite ordinary. Sometimes we don’t like that dynamic in our lives. We marvel at the miraculous but mumble at the mundane. But God meets His people as we do the same things, in the same routine, over and over. He’s even chosen the mundane to be steady streams of His grace in the church.

We stand with brothers and sisters to sing. We listen to teachers talk about the Bible. We eat bread and drink the fruit of the vine. We confess. We listen. We hug. We pray. We read. We think. We write. We speak.

And in all these things, God is working in us, for us, with us. Extraordinary grace flows to us in ordinary ways – from the Spirit, through the Word, in the church. It seems fitting for the end of summer to celebrate the rhythm of routine mercy God provides.

There’s nothing truly ordinary about that.

Every day, I see pictures of two men whose influence has outlived their time on earth. At my desk, I reread the laminated life story framing Steve’s face, on the 4×6 card prepared for family and friends at his funeral last year. Every time I get into my car, I see Nick’s picture that I folded and tore from the program at his memorial service last year.

Every day, I see their faces and remember something really important. I’ve kept thinking, “I really should write about this…” 

And this week, I can’t get away from it. Tonight, I added another picture beside Nick’s. Silas, a nineteen-year-old, a son-brother-uncle-friend, was buried today.

What do Steve, Nick, and Silas teach me? In three different ways, the same thing: life is short, and every day could be my last.

I remember talking with Steve’s son after his funeral. “Any regrets about the days leading up to Dad going into the hospital? Anything you feel like you missed?” After battling long with cancer, beating cancer, and suffering cancer’s return, Steve had gone to the hospital with concerning symptoms. But nobody expected the hospital stay to end the way it did. Steve went to sleep, and three days later, God took him.

There were no cognizant last moments. Steve didn’t get the chance to formulate the last words he’d want his family to hear before he was gone. Did they miss that?

“No, not really,” Jordan shook his head and smiled a little. “If Dad had known that his last words were going to be his last words, he would have just said the same things he already said. He told Mom, ‘I trust the Lord with my soul – how much more can I trust Him to care for my family?’ He was constantly telling us that he loved us, that God is sovereign, that he was at peace trusting the Lord.”

Steve didn’t know those words would be his last. And yet…if he had, he would have said exactly what he did. He spoke a legacy of last words.

I remember sitting at Nick’s memorial service a few days after Steve’s funeral. Though we both studied on the same campus, I never met Nick. But when a student dies, it seems right for the student body to gather and collectively honor the Lord in lament and worship. So I went.

Pastors, parents, sisters, fiancée, friends – everyone who spoke at the service said the same things. Nick was a godly young man who pleased the Lord, honored his authorities, welcomed outsiders, and loved his friends, family, and fiancée well. His character was above reproach, blameless. He was passionate for the kingdom and its advance in his home country of Canada.

Nick’s death was inexplicable. He had gone to a park with his fiancée, sister, and friends, and collapsed. All medical interventions couldn’t bring him back. He was young and healthy. Why…?

Nick got up that morning with no idea that was the last day of his earthly race. And yet…if he had, I imagine he would have done exactly what he did. He went to classes to prepare for ministry. He loved the people around him. He walked with God. And then God took him.

So this week, here we are again. Silas got up on a Saturday morning with no knowledge that was his last day. And yet…if he had, I imagine he would have done exactly what he did. He brought joy to his sisters by his words and acts of service. He spent time with the people he cared about, who cared about him. And then God took him.

Each man lived a life of last days.

Life really is a vapor. We never know which day will be our last.

When a believer dies, we have a sure hope that we will be reunited in resurrection…but it still hurts. “Where, O death, is thy sting?” will be a rhetorical question in the future, when Jesus swallows up death in victory. Right now, it’s a real question with a real answer.

“Where is your sting, Death?”

It’s right here. It’s in that casket, it’s beside that grave, it’s in the tears of the saints who remain when one departs. We know his soul is with the Lord, but we grieve the loss of the beloved’s words and living presence with us. That’s what we lose at death.

So if I believe that my life is in the hand of the Lord, and I am not promised another moment past this one, what would I want my last day to be? How do I know if I am faithfully stewarding the time God gives me for His kingdom’s cause?

If at death I lose the opportunity to love people with words and presence, then every day I live should maximize opportunities to do those things. Every morning, I aspire to ask…

How can I speak words today that will encourage? How can I speak love to my neighbors? What should I write that might build up a brother’s faith? What saint should get a letter, email, text from me?

How can I use physical presence to bless people today? Whom can I be with? Who may need a hug, a hand on the shoulder, a smile? Whom will God put in front of me that just needs to be seen?

And at the end of the day, I want to go to sleep trusting my soul to the Lord, with a clear conscience. If I wake up in His presence, which would certainly be far better, I want that day to have been a faithful investment in the kingdom. May I speak every word as if it would be my last, and live a life of last days, for the glory of the King.

October 14, 2019 – My niece was perched on the porch steps, sorting a rock pile to select a suitable candidate. The pecans beside her would be no match for her brute strength, provided she could just find the right pounder.

Fortunately for the integrity of the porch, her papaw stepped outside. “Rosie, I have a nutcracker. Come inside and I’ll show you.”

She popped up and stomped in behind him, closely followed by her older sister Reni. Papaw cleared the table. The cacophany of his rummaging through the kitchen drawer made my phone call a challenge, but he eventually found what he was looking for: two silver nutcrackers. 

Seated at the table, with Rosie and Reni pressing against him, he gave a demonstration with full explanation. My conversation ended, and I hung up in time to watch and listen.

“You put the pecan inside, like this, and hold it in place, and then squeeze these metal parts together, but not too hard. If you want, you can take the pieces and turn them like this, then break each half apart even more.”

Their blue eyes sparkled, riveted on Papaw’s hands holding the shiny metal and now fragmented pecan. This was exciting stuff! A new world opened to their minds, a world in which nuts can be enjoyed without the assault and battery of whatever surface the girls happen to be sitting on.

“See, then you can break apart the rest with your fingers, and get the meat out. This part is the meat of the nut.”

Rosie’s hearty voice echoed, “Yeah, we gotta get the MEAT!”

Reni wanted to try, so Papaw wrapped his hands around hers and they cracked another pecan together.

A lump formed in my throat as I grabbed my phone and snapped a picture. I had already felt a bit sentimental as soon as I saw Rosie’s pink wool hat loaded with nuts. Pecans still in their shells mean something special to me.

See, childhood summer visits to MY papaw’s house guaranteed immense delight. On those roadtrips to Mississippi, I anticipated many things: a full set of Sugar Creek Gang mysteries on a shelf in the living room, a screened-in porch out back with tables for board games, an outdoor fridge stocked with orange and grape sodas, a massive hammock in the shade, a huge yard where we could play football, mayhaw bushes on the fence, and pecans everywhere. The yard was a veritable pecan orchard, and the ground was a treasure trove of nutty goodness.

For a kid, it was paradise. We’d play all day, in and out of the house. Then, in the evenings, we’d crack pecans and eat them. My fingers would get sore, and often my impatience would land a bitter, crunchy piece of inner shell between my molars. Oh well. The citronella lamps smelled funny, but a weird smell was better than swarms of mosquitoes. Mississippi summer evenings are warm, but that porch magically always had a breeze.

I learned to crack pecans at Papaw’s house. Now for the rest of my life, every time I see them unshelled, I think of him. I can still see his hands squeezing the silver nutcracker, and I can hear his quiet voice telling a joke or a story. He always made me laugh, with his dry humor and Southern country boy persona. He teased as only a papaw can, gently needling but never belittling. He’d get this look in his eyes, though, so you could tell (if you knew him) when he was kidding.

I love that man, and I miss him. He died when I was fifteen. I didn’t realize the pain of losing him would grow deeper as I grew older. My sixteenth birthday, there was no silly granddaughter card with the same scrawl as every other year, “I love you, Papaw.” High school graduation, college graduation, my brother’s wedding…he wasn’t there. And that still hurts.

How can something as insignificant as a pecan evoke such an array of profound emotions? 

The gift of memory. God created us with the ability to remember, to associate events and emotions and facts with items or songs or smells or pictures. We see and hear and smell and taste, and we remember. And this gift is for more than mere sentimentality. It helps us look to the Lord and keep trusting Him while we wait for His promises to be fulfilled.

May 25, 2021 – The story of God’s people is a story of waiting…for a looooooong time. Waiting for the promised son. Waiting for deliverance from bondage. Waiting for a home. Waiting for a word. Waiting for the Deliverer. How do you wait so long for something you can’t see without losing heart? Remember. Look at the things you CAN see, and remember.

The Old Testament is full of commands to remember, and God gave His people help to obey. Feasts, fringes, offerings, and more filled their calendars and their homes. 

“Chew these herbs, and remember how bitter was the slavery of Egypt.”

“Eat this meat, and remember the way I delivered you from both your slavery and your sin.”

“Build this fort, camp out in it with your kids, and remember how I provided safety for you in the wilderness.”

“Bring this lamb to the temple, sacrifice it, and remember that your sin demands a bloody death but my grace provides a substitute.”

“Look at that rock pile from the riverbed, and remember the time I piled a river into a heap so you could cross over safely, with all your kiddos and your cattle.”

Perhaps the sweetest material remembrance God’s people now enjoy is communion. In this, I think, we taste the sweetest blessing of the gift of memory in two directions.

Eat this bread. Drink this cup. Remember His body broken and blood shed for you in the past. Remember that He is coming in the future. Remember what happened. Remember what will happen. Remember that He is waiting to eat this bread and drink this cup until He sits with you in the kingdom. He remembers His people and anticipates a feast with us around His table by refraining from what He freely gives to us now. Remember this. Remember Him.

Pecans aren’t anything special. But they remind me of something precious. They evoke joy in the blessings I had with my Papaw, sorrow in my present ache for his presence, and then longing for eternity in God’s presence with all God’s people.

A piece of bread and fruit from the vine aren’t anything special. But they remind us of our precious Savior, His death, and His return. As we touch and taste and chew and swallow something so miraculously ordinary, may our hearts be enflamed with love and longing for him.

I’d love to hear from you below! What memories stir your longing for eternity? How has the Lord’s Table deepened your affection and anticipation for Christ? How can we use the gift of memory to bless our neighbors, children and otherwise?

The large room was comfortably filled with people, friends and family, friends that are family. A slideshow played on large screens, the reel of a life filled with meaning. The background murmur of many conversations was occasionally interrupted by a laugh or sob, in the irony of grief mingled with fun memories.

Standing a few yards from the casket, I asked a friend how he was doing. “I’m okay.” He shared funny stories and final memories of his friendship with a dear brother. Then his voice failed and his eyes filled. He shook his head and managed three more words. “It ain’t right.”

True statement. It ain’t. We know this.

We know it when a mother loses her boy, and her heart is never the same.

We know it when a tiny casket is lowered into the ground, and with it hopes and dreams for a life gone at its beginning.

We know it when one rocking chair is robbed of its occupant, and another beside it creaks with the weight of lonely longing. 

We know it when every graduation, birthday, holiday, or wedding rolls around, and joy is always mingled with the ache of who is missing from the pictures.

Death is never “right.” He is always the villain. If his approach is swift and surprising, or if he slowly saunters closer with sluggishly suffocating grasp, we always wrestle and recoil in rage or horror.

People created for eternal life always die too soon. My friend at the funeral home knew it. I know it. You know it.

Is that okay to say? Can we agree “it ain’t right?” We don’t mean that as a moral judgment, but as acknowledgement that death disrupts what we were created for: bearing the image of eternally living God. Death displays the end of our fall from this design. 

But death is not the end.

“It ain’t right,” he stammered. My brother is not a man of many words, but after a long pause and a hard swallow, he had three more. “But God knows.” 

What does that mean? It means everything. God knows.

He knows that death “ain’t right.” He knows the sting of death. The Father watched His Son tortured, abused, and murdered. He added to the agony, pouring out righteous wrath for my sin on His perfect Son. The just One died for the unjust, the most unfair death in history. God knows the horror of dying. 

He also knows the end of death.

Jesus lay in cold, stony tomb as His followers caved to despair and grief. Yet before His body decayed (His body like ours, of bone, tendon, muscle, vein, and nerve), death was reversed. His heart leaped to life, beating, pounding, pulsing blood through His arteries. His diaphragm contracted, and air rushed into His lungs. The miracle of perfusion restored strength to limbs and thought to mind. His eyes opened, and He sat up. Freed from graveclothes, He folded them into a tidy pile and left them on the bed of death.

Light blazing, thunder roaring, earth quaking – the stone rolled away from the door. The sentinels guarding a dead Man became as dead men when He stepped out from His grave, the LORD of LIFE.

Jesus entered everything that “ain’t right” in our world. He faced our greatest enemies, took their most devastating blows, and then decimated them.

Curse, be cursed. Death, be damned. You are vanquished, and Jesus is Victor.

God knows, the beginning and the end of death. He shows us the first glimpse of resurrection, eternal life, in Jesus. And He knows everything in between, every step that brings His people closer home. 

In this between, why do we still die? If Jesus is Lord, and we live in Him, why do we still gather at funerals? Because He has already redeemed us from the grave, but not yet completed the work of restoring all things. 

As He does this, even death is servant to the Lord of Life. How could it be otherwise, when death’s terror unleashed on Jesus accomplished its own destruction and the eternal blessing of God’s people?

 “But God knows” is a posture of humble trust in this sovereign Lord. He does know best. His wisdom surpasses mine. When He deals the undesired answer, will I bow in worship to gratefully receive His gifts, trusting the goodness of His heart – His heart that knows the sting of death? 

Because of Jesus, not even death can separate us from His love. It ain’t right. But He knows. And He is near.