Parting is such sweet sorrow

Parting is such sweet sorrow … but only for the Christian. For, it is only the Christian who has certitude that his partings with his brothers and sisters are only temporary.  No divide can be contrived that can keep them forever apart. Miles don’t matter. They represent a geographic inconvenience. Time doesn’t matter; it will one day be rolled up like a carpet.

Parting ultimately doesn’t exist for Believers. We are one body, and the body is never parted from itself short of great violence, but there is no violence that can tear one from the body of Christ. So it would seem that parting is a kind of failing of eyesight more than a statement of truth or possibility. We just can’t see far enough. Parting for a Believer is a dirty trick of the material world, but a Christian is spirit too and bound to all other Christians of the Body in that spirit.

I will soon be parted from two beloved friends. Chicago is a long way but I must remind myself that they’ve not left me, they’ve just run off over the hill a piece and out of view and will be back in sight soon enough.  That at least makes the parting sweet. We have not been sundered from each other in reality. We are still bound to the Body. We are still whole.

But I am in sorrow. I will miss them dreadfully. I suppose that really I mean that my eyes will miss them and my ears. I will miss their bright young faces and the lilt of their voices. I will miss the strong handshakes and the affectionate hugs. But I do not grieve like those who have no hope. My friends and I are bound by nothing less than Jesus Christ, our righteousness and that defies space and time. We will be together again…but not yet. 

Ambition Should be Made of Sterner Stuff

No one is likely to stab me for being ambitious. Sometimes I wish someone might see the flame of self-promotion in me and seek to snuff it out with his steely blade that I might not interfere with his rise to the top of whatever it is that we’re duty bound to rise to the top of.

I’m just not a riser anymore. But, I can’t work up any shame in the fact. Once upon a time I was. I wanted to achieve lofty goals; I wanted to be the best at everything I set my hand to--- in that competitive ME way. I wanted the trappings of the best, recognition and stuff. But then my son’s battle with cancer stripped the ambition away.

When he got sick, I didn’t want to be the best anything but a Dad.  I had always wanted that, but the battle with cancer whipped that desire into overdrive. The nagging feeling that time as Jacob’s Dad would very likely be short pressed in from all sides, but intuitively I knew that the only way to be the kind of Dad I needed to be meant teaching and treating Jacob like he would live to be 80. Yet, an 80 year old man wouldn’t be enough. Really, I wanted to build a man suitable for eternity.

Cancer invests fathering with a sense of urgency. For the longest I couldn’t decide if my urgency was a lack of faith that Jacob would be healed or simply the recognition that fathering requires urgency at all times because death keeps no clocks and runs on no schedules. I had every confidence that the Lord could heal Jacob but no assurance that he would. No assurance that His will would bend to mine and my son would live a long long time.

It wasn’t so much that I crammed stuff in, but the battle afforded uncounted opportunities to teach. Every difficulty proved to be a teachable moment. Every difficulty required that I father and that I be Fathered. Every difficulty required the mustering of courage, the mustering of faith, the mustering of perseverance. And even still the doubt would creep in, the feeling that God and Scripture could not be trusted. I taught Jacob what Scripture said anyway. Feelings are liars. I know that now.

For a little over three years, we fought on, Jacob, Heather and I. I fathered she mothered Jacob grew into a man. He died a man at the age of nine, the best man I have ever known.

After he died ambition lay moldering in the ash heap, without the power of a phoenix. It will certainly never rise again in its former iteration. I’ve learned to love different things now.  It’s just that none of them are things. 

Listening to Myself Talk

A power beyond reckoning lies in telling our own story. I had the strange sensation today of actually being able to listen to myself as I recounted an abbreviated version of my life story to someone. I had started my tale the day before in my classroom as part of an interview for some school publication but had to continue it today in the office of my interrogator. I had come to the part of my life where my son Jacob had been diagnosed with cancer when I began to hear myself.

Most of the time I ignore me when I talk; it’s just noise to me, but today the words found traction in my ears as I shared Jacob’s fight with cancer. It crashed in on my thick noggin that his story, my story were compelling testimonies of the grace of God. I listened to me tell about his resilient faith in Christ despite the terrible disappointment we all had when he first relapsed. I heard about the gracious kindness and patience he showed in the midst of difficulty and inconvenience. I heard me once again tell about his last words to me and his mother. He told us to “Be Strong”. Then he went to be with Jesus.

I wasn’t the only one listening today though. Another overheard the recounting of my story, his story. She was moved to tears and even moved to a sense of awe that I could even share so difficult a story. Then it occurred to me yet again that not only can I tell the story I must.

I have always known the story of my son Jacob had power for other people, but today I realized the power it has for me. That story is mine and no one can tell it like I can. No one can convey the joy and no one can convey the pain like I can. And no one can convey the grace that Christ poured out on me like I can.

My wife Heather has a different story. Many of the events are the same, but the telling must necessarily be different. That is her story and the power is great indeed. It is the power of a mother telling what a mother knows and feels. It is the story of the grace of Christ poured out on her and no one can tell it like she can.

We all have a story. And the story of all Christians is one of power. The power of grace poured out, running over us and spilling out into the lives around us. May we be faithful to tell our story. 

Stout Fences

“They were testing the fences for weaknesses systematically.” --- Robert Muldoon, Jurassic Park

I cannot help but think that there is something savage and carnivorous in us all that requires us to be hemmed in by stout fences. It doesn’t require much introspection to imagine the possible destruction I could bring on myself and others if my baser inclinations were allowed to run free. But even now the use of free in this instance is a lie. The phrase should run more like if my baser inclinations were set loose…sounds more like the releasing of an animal and would be more accurate.

We live in a culture that cries freedom but has only really cried let us be animals. Ours is a degenerate, base freedom that has grown only to mean lack of restraint. Our culture has tested the fences for weaknesses systematically and has breached the barrier that long held us back from the destruction that must come when men become beasts.

The beasts ripped a gaping hole in the fence of Marriage. Men and women in search of freedom dashed to pieces the idea that sacred vows are just that, sacred and inviolable bonds that can only safely be severed by death. For the freedom of sex with anyone and everyone, they dashed to pieces the idea that being constant and true are of greater worth than the treacherous pleasure of adultery. Destroy this fence and be free…. to wreck and maim countless lives, especially those of your children.

Having started down that road and destroyed the image of the sacred, absurdity and rabid insanity rush to pull up the posts and throw down the rails still standing. The sacred image and symbol of marriage that adultery defiles would be corrupted utterly through the ultimate perversion of same sex “marriage”. The fence once breached is the more easily destroyed in the name of freedom… the freedom to be absurdly less than even animals and defy the very nature of anatomy. And lives are destroyed and lies masquerade as truth.

We are so free now that we can destroy with impunity the weak and the helpless who prove to be inconvenient impediments to our freedoms. We are now so free that for years without interruption a man in Philadelphia can slaughter children by the thousands, get rich doing it and the silence is deafening. Animals have been known to eat their own young.

In so many places the fences lie in ruin and the velociraptors are free. Cultural destruction at the hands of free animals is inevitable… unless the men who are left hem us in again with stout fences. 

A Ruined Routine

Routine gives us security. For instance, the alarm goes off on my IPhone every morning of the work week at 5:00 am. I do the double click click and go back to sleep. Five minutes later I am double click clicking and trying to make up my mind if I really have to pee bad enough to get up right that minute. Five minutes later I am up and in the bathroom staring at the toilet bowl from on high, ---not the up close college stare. I let the dog out, start the coffee and jump in the shower. I brush my teeth first, lather up head to toe next, and then break out the razor to tidy up the beard outline. The curtain is pulled back from the right side; I grab my towel, close the curtain to dry off, then pull the curtain all the way back from right to left and step out. Any deviation from this routine can send the whole morning spiraling out of control. Routine is good.

Many mornings I stop at the rural Shell station just down the road from me. I park in the same spot most days, walk in, get my Diet Pepsi and ask for a sausage-egg-and cheese biscuit from the guy who has been working mornings forever. Our relationship represents the perfect world of mindless transactions. I ask for the biscuit almost every day; he walks over to the warmer, deftly plucks me a biscuit from the mass of biscuits with his shiny tongs, and plops it down on the counter and every morning, promptly asks me if I would like a sack, to which I reply every morning “No.” I swipe my card and every morning he asks me, “Debit or credit?” to which, every morning, I reply, “credit.”

This scene was played out every morning for several months with no mishaps, no prying questions about me, my family or my health, and certainly no feigned wishing me a great day. I came I bought I left. He could care less about me and my day. It was a nice arrangement. Then one morning all that changed.

The day started as usual, and I arrived at the usual time and the usual spot at my rural Shell station. I walked in, got my Diet Pepsi and came face to face with New Guy. He didn’t look like my Old Guy---a balding, frumpy fellow with an 8 o’clock shadow whose sparse hair was always disheveled and who had a haggard hang dog look most mornings.He had to be in his mid-thirties going on old. No, New Guy looked crisp. A thick head full of black, I suspect Persian, hair neatly combed and slick to the eye. His dark, bright eyes peeped out from behind his not unstylish glasses and his broad mouth peeled open to dazzling white teeth and the words, “Good Morning.”

The whole incident startled me. My routine appeared in jeopardy. I asked for my usual sausage-egg-and cheese biscuit. New Guy’s movement to the warmer seemed sure and practiced. He slid back the rear glass deftly but then haltingly took the tongs in hand. He repeated again what kind of biscuit I had requested and I concurred. He nervously clicked the tongs together and peered in amongst the biscuits like a clerk at Petco trying to decide which Neon Tetra to nab. He nervously clicked his tongs again and then started lifting every biscuit under the hot lights and looking at their undersides like he was trying to pick out a male kitten. After a considerable number of misfires, he settled on the biscuit with the right look and marched it over to the register.

 Without asking my druthers, New Guy commenced the painful task of rubbing open the plastic sack that I was apparently required to take along. His thumb and pointer finger couldn’t manage the task, so an application of saliva to the finger tips made the operation possible and my biscuit and Diet Pepsi were bagged as I swiped my card. I derived some security from the inevitable “Debit or Credit” utterance but that small comfort was destroyed with the beneficent benediction of “Have a good day, sir” being flung at my back.

I crawled in the truck depressed and out of sorts at such a bad start to the day and drove under a cloud all the way to work. Perhaps my Old Guy was just sick. Tomorrow’s a new day I told myself. But it wasn’t. 

For weeks now New Guy has been picking out my sausage-egg- and cheese kitten, forcing me to take a sack and flashing that dazzlingly bright smile of his. I suppose this is to be my New Normal. But, it is maddening that on those days when I lather up first and brush my teeth second and let the dog make the coffee and start my day out all wrong that I can’t just hustle in for my Diet Pepsi and biscuit. No, I have to wait for the search and wait for the bag and feel the weight of “Have a good day, sir” cast on my hurried back. But it is a routine…I guess. 

Hold the Fort

My sweet wife just asked me why she has to have a child who needs so much help on school work. I didn’t answer. I know her heart.

She wasn't faulting our kid or lamenting having a child with a learning need. Neither of us would trade Caleb for some genetically altered picture of human perfection. She was asking a question with deeper roots: Why is life so full of toil and vexation? Oh, she knows the answer. We both know the theology of the Fall of Man. What we struggle with is the accumulated weight of that Fall, the weight that bears down on us from every angle all the time with never a reprieve. Or so it seems. Heather speaks as a battle scarred mother who has lost a son to cancer after a long, loosing fight. I heard her words not as a complaint but as a plea, a plea for the rest promised in Christ.

Living makes us weary, and for the life of me I cannot see how anyone can look at this world and not see the weight looming over all creation slowly grinding all things down. What fool can look out their window at the world and glory in the progress of Man? Where is the upward climb from the primordial sludge? I look out and see a rapidly accelerating slide back to that sludge. Since we will not return to our real origins as image bearers of the Most High God, we return to the ones we fabricated. We reduce ourselves to single celled filth dwellers and wonder why we live in a world of filth.

But what to do for now, until Christ returns or calls us home? We do like Paul and pour ourselves out like drink offerings for those who need us and by so doing we pour ourselves out to Jesus. When Heather slaves with our son over the math that he just can’t seem to get, she does something eternal. She is pouring herself into another, someone weaker, someone who needs her just as much as she needs Christ. She wears herself out once again--- at a good thing --- and grows weary.

Scripture commands us not to be weary in well doing, but does it command us not to be weary of having to do well? It strikes me that on some level we should be weary of this sin cursed world and long for another. But like good soldiers, we are called to fight on, weary as we may be, knowing that where and while we fight the weight of this world is pressed back and hope springs anew. The rest of Jesus is coming. We just need to hold our forts. 

Salute to Hot Biscuits

I just recently rediscovered the power of biscuits. The other evening I came in from the cold, dark, dampness of winter to be greeted by a cookie sheet bejeweled with golden brown goodness. Honestly it was a nostalgic moment as I wedged my butter knife into their flaky middles and gently pried upward in an attempt to get the perfect proportion of top to bottom. Then I sliced off a pat of butter, a generous pat, pinched its slippery sides with my fingers and tucked it between the two halves. Then I repeated the whole process for every biscuit on the sheet.

Biscuits and Karo syrup will forever represent all that is really good in the world to the little kid in me. Biscuits mean security. Biscuits mean Granny Lou and Aunt Motel and Aunt Lucille. Their homes were places I could go and stay a week or even two and never miss home. At their homes there were always biscuits, iron skillets, and the sliding of iron cookware on oven racks followed and the warm thump of oven doors closing. I don’t ever recall worrying about anything at their homes, except maybe if there might not be enough chocolate gravy for my second pair of biscuits.

Growing up so often ruins appreciation. I think I had forgotten the beauty of hot biscuits. So that night, to honor the biscuit, the ladies who made them for me, and the security of warm places, now and from my childhood, I ate three, butter laden, Karo sodden, perfectly parted symbols of warmth and security. And toasted their perfection with a tall glass of cold milk. Sometimes it’s good to be  a kid again.