My dearest cousin’s husband is dying.  How odd that phrase when , in fact, we are all dying, just at different times.  For an atheist the idea of death must be one of great loss and despair.  To have as your only hope, “like the little dog rover, when you’re dead you’re dead all over,” would not be extremely comforting.  I suspect most atheists don’t remind themselves of death very often.  Yet, we are surrounded by it.  Every day the local paper reports them in the “obit” section.  I am very happy to report that my cousin’s family are not atheists and have a comfort available to them that is not the case for people that prefer to “go it alone” without God.  There are days when my cousin’s husband just wants to go on and leave the old shell behind, but he lingers.  Even in asking, “why,” we know, if we’re honest in our quest for the answer.  I believe the answer is the one given by one actor to another in a movie I saw once.  One asked the other on the occasion of leaving this life for the next, “It’s hard to let go isn’t it?”

Physical life is precious, it’s a gift of God, yet, eternal life is so much more a gift.  The transformation from one to the other is a great mystery.  In his great novel, “If Winter Comes”, A.S.M. Hutchinson describes how a young man named Freddie Perch who had just been killed in the war (WW I) came back to help his mother die.  He was the type of son that would never allow his mother to even cross a road without him.  And here he was to help his mother cross the greatest road in her life.

She was moaning….  That inhabitant of her body had done its preparations and now stood at the door in the darkness, very frightened.  It wanted to go back.  It had been very accustomed to being here.  It could not go back.  It did not want to shut the door.  The door was shutting.  It stood and shrank and whimpered there…..  It was old Mrs. Perch that stood there whimpering, shrinking upon the threshold of that huge abyss, wide as space, dark as night …

Recently I discovered a wonderful poem entitled “ The Universal Prayer” by Alexander Pope.  In the tenth stanza Pope writes:

“Teach me to feel another’s woe, To hide the fault I see; That mercy I to others show, That mercy show to me.”

Perhaps Pope was inspired by Luke chapter 18 which mirrors his poem.

“ To some who were confident of their own righteousness and looked down on everyone else, Jesus told this parable. Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector.  The Pharisee stood by himself and prayed: ’God I thank you that I am not like other people – robbers, evildoers, adulterers – or even like this tax collector.  I fast twice a week and give a tenth of all I get.’

But the tax collector stood at a distance. He would not even look up to heaven, but beat his breast and said, ’God have mercy on me, a sinner. I tell you this man, rather than the other, went home justified before God” ( Luke 18: 9-13 NIV)

We should be very careful how we interact with our fellow travelers, for we are interacting with the personification of Jesus.  How we treat others is how we treat Jesus.  “Bear with each other and forgive one another if any of you has a grievance against someone.  Forgive as the Lord forgave you” (Col. 3:13).

Weighed in the Balances

By Lou David Allen

He fed the hungry,

Visited the sick,

Gave his money,

For a great cause.

But warm works

Came from a cold heart,

That would not

Forgive the sins of another,

And so he barely registered

On the Angelic Applause – O – Meter.

“And he measured its wall,

seventy-two yards, according to

human measurements, which are also

angelic measurements.

Rev 21:17

Lost, a terrible word.  Rhoda, my lovely wife, was separated from her parents years ago at the Madri Gras parade in New Orleans.  Years later, that memory is still poignant.  If you have ever been lost, you will never forget it.

Bob Berman, in his column in the October issue of “Astronomy”, relates “A dozen cool facts.”  One of them is that a neutron can live for more than 10 billion years as long as it stays in its place snuggled deep within its atom’s nucleus.  But if it escapes, it will vanish in 10 ½ minutes, not even a blink compared to 10 billion years.  Bob said one lesson that might be learned from this “cool fact” is that kids should stay home with their parents so they will never be lost.  That’s pretty good advice, but I think there is more solid advice gained from this example.  As God’s children we are safest when we stay close to Him no matter what happens in life.  “Busting loose” from that safety net is not a wise thing to do.  We will surely be lost.

In 1898 Lelia Morris wrote a beautiful hymn, “Nearer Still Nearer.”  Her hymn speaks to staying close to God:

Nearer still nearer close to Thy heart

Draw me my Saviour, so precious Thou art;

Fold me, O fold me close to Thy breast,

Shelter me safe in that haven of rest,…

Nearer still nearer, while life shall last,

Till safe in glory my anchor is cast;

Thru endless ages, ever to be

Nearer, my Saviour, still nearer to Thee…

Why would we want to be anywhere else?

Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Come near to God and he will come near to you.  James 4:7-8 (NIV)

Photo by Chicago’s North Shore Conventions & Visitors Bureau.

“Jesus wept.” (John 11:35)

The shortest and perhaps one of the saddest verses in the bible.  The occasion was the death of a dear friend, beloved brother of Mary and Martha.  Weeping for a friend – the human face of the Master – like us – grieving when death deals its horrific blow.  In this case, though, Jesus knew He would raise Lazarus from death shortly.  So why did He weep?  Perhaps He was touched with Mary and Martha’s grief.  Perhaps He was sad that His friend had to suffer through the pain of the death process.  Perhaps He knew how happy Lazarus was, and He didn’t want to call him back to earth, far and away from Paradise.

Whatever the reason, Jesus was so moved that He mourned, deeply, for awhile.  Even Jesus, with the universe at His beck and call suffered a period of deep, unfathomable grief.  Grief of that magnitude cannot be hurried, cannot be wished away, can only be lived through.  When grief becomes our lot, our friends, because they love us, want us to be whole again – like we were.  They honestly think they know what is best for us, and sometimes it’s not.  They want us back like we were before, and not only that, they want us back as soon as possible.  What is difficult for those who haven’t taken residence on “Grief Mountain,” is that they have a hard time understanding that what we were before has forever changed.  We do not have it in our power to return to what we were.  We are different people, and eventually stronger for the Mountain we have ascended, but different.  This difference is the by-product of an event we would never have chosen for ourselves, or even an enemy.  We will be back, but not exactly the same, and it will take time, more time than some are prepared to invest is us.  And that’s ok; we understand and love them anyway.

Please, and I hope you do, enjoy a poem I recently wrote that considers the foregoing thoughts.

THE JOURNEY

Good friend,

Please do not interrupt my flight,

For sometimes I alight

On leaves of loneliness,

Sometimes, on twigs of tears.

And please,

Do not try to catch my wings

As I try to pass,

For somewhere,

In the great Sometime,

I will alight again,

In a sweeter place, on better flowers.

And then I will be again, alright,

If you, dear friend,

Do not interrupt my flight.

Photo by LiebeDich  http://www.flickr.com/people/liebedich/ used under Creative Commons agreement

Do you have a good friend? What a great blessing if you do! If you have several as I do, then you are many blessed. In the great movie, “A Wonderful Life”, the angel Clarence wrote in the book he left George, “ no man is a failure who has friends”. The wise Solomon said that there is a friend that can be even closer than a brother. I suspect that kind of friend is what we call a “true” friend.

Friends are the flowers of life – what a dismal place this would be without friends. Storms will come and go and when they do, friends are what carry us through when we’re weak and weary – too weak, too weary to take one more step. Shakespeare had Cassius say in his play, “Julius Caesar”, “ a friend should bear his friend’s burdens”. Perhaps Shakespeare was restating what the apostle Paul wrote to the Galatian Christians, “carry each other’s burdens…”. And what a blessing to have the Greatest Friend of all. “What a Friend we have in Jesus, All our sins and griefs to bear…..”.

I think the following poem by the great poet, Henry Van Dyke says so much of what a true friend is.

A MILE WITH ME

By Henry Van Dyke

O WHO will walk a mile with me

Along life’s merry way?

A comrade blithe and full of glee,

Who dares to laugh out loud and free,

And let his frolic fancy play,

Like a happy child, through the flowers gay

That fill the field and fringe the way

Where he walks a mile with me.

And who will walk a mile with me

Along life’s weary way?

A friend whose heart has eyes to see

The stars shine out o’re the darkening lea,

And the quiet rest at the end o’ the day,-

A friend who knows, and dares to say,

The brave, sweet words that cheer the way

Where he walks a mile with me.

With such a comrade, such a friend,

I fain would walk till journey’s end,

Through summer sunshine, winter rain,

And then? – Farewell, we shall meet again!

Down where we live it doesn’t snow much.  When it does, we love it, well, most of us.  The kids hope with the snow comes a snow day away from school.  Most folks never lose their wonder at snow’s beauty and its nature of covering the most unsightly sights.  Even a junkyard takes on a beauty not its own when snow falls and covers the old cars.  Snow! Snow is a transformer of the ugly to the beautiful.

Lewis Carroll had Alice in “Through the Looking Glass” describe snow to her kitty this way.

“Do you hear the snow against the windowpanes, Kitty?  How nice and soft it sounds!  Just as if someone was kissing the window all over outside.  I wonder if the snow loves the trees and fields, and that it kisses them so gently?  And then it covers them up snug, you know, with a white quilt; and perhaps it says, ’Go to sleep, darlings, till the summer comes again.’  And when they wake up in the summer, Kitty, they dress themselves all in green, and dance about – whenever the wind blows – oh, that’s very pretty!” cried Alice, dropping the ball of worsted to clap her hands.  “And I do so wish it was true!  I’m sure the woods look sleepy in the autumn, when the leaves are getting brown.”

You lied to me!  Perhaps one of the harshest sentences in any language is that one.  No one wants to be lied to, deceived, tricked or otherwise diminished by another.  The other day Rhoda and I were waiting for my daughter at her house when we noticed a hummingbird poised at my granddaughter’s basketball goal.  The goal is bright red and the little bird thought it had arrived at a great big red flower.  After a moment it was gone – after figuring out it was not a real flower.  It was one of those “ if only I had a camera” times.

Satan grows those great big red flowers for deceiving human hearts.  “…your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour…”. (I Peter 5:8 TNV).  He can also transform himself to make the real bad look real good.  “…for Satan himself masquerades as an angel of light”. (2 Cor. 11:14 TNV).  Elizabeth Browning brilliantly depicted Satan’s nefarious ways in her poem, “Aurora Leigh”, when she wrote, “the Devil’s most devilish when respectable”.

How much trouble will Satan take to try to deceive us “hummingbirds”?  Whatever it takes. He only quits trying when we draw close to God.  When we stay close to the cross, he can’t come there. But, we must be ever vigilant.  In the book of Revelation, chapter 2, John says that some folks simply do not know the depths of  Satan. Yes, he is real and yes he wants “hummingbirds” to fall for the fake great big red flower.  He desires all to follow him, not God.

Watch our for the great big red flowers!  Several years ago I wrote a poem and I think it speaks to the issue of not being on guard against the wiles of Satan. In this case it ends tragically as it always will when one becomes a friend of Satan.

DONKEY FLATS

Two men met where two roads cross.

One man was old and one was young.

Where to, young sir?

Where do you go?

To Donkey Flats, sir.

Why there young man?

Men only go there when all is lost.

All is lost sir and I am lost too.

Everything is lost that I held dear.

Cards, drinking and women

Took wife, children and home.

So I’m going to Donkey Flats sir.

And I won’t be coming back.

One day long ago, my buddy and I decided to drive his old car across a dry creek bed. A fun idea turned out to be a bad idea.  Half way over, we sunk deep in the gravel.  Everything we tried to get unstuck did not work.  Idea after idea failed.  Our “horse” was stuck, for sure and for certain.  Evening was coming on and our options were walking home or going to someone’s house and calling home.  In those days there were no cell phones.  Both plans were not acceptable to a couple of enterprising fellows like us.  Either option spelled defeat.  Of course, we were, in fact, completely defeated.  By now my mom, who kept close tabs on me, even though I considered that not needful, had dispatched my dad to check on the whereabouts of her number one and only son.  And there he was, in his company car, coming over the hill with the radio antenna whipping in the wind.  My hero, then and now, and always will be.  “What are you boys doing,” he asked. We replied as manly as we could,  “We’ve tried everything and we can’t get unstuck.”  He didn’t laugh or even chastise us for what we had done as I recall.  He had a way of teaching without saying one word.  He simply said, “Take some air out of the tires”.  We did and Ronny drove out easily.  Ronny and I learned a big lesson that day, and it was more than how to get a stuck car out of a creek.

Hummingbirds regularly come to our feeder outside the window to partake of the “goodie juice” we provide.  The feeder can be seen by Rhoda and me from our respective vantage points.  We alert each other as visitors arrive, usually unexpectedly, and they leave almost the same way.  One must be on one’s toes to see them, for hummingbirds don’t stay long.

We have noticed an interesting thing about hummingbirds.  When they approach the feeder and if a wasp is there, they don’t land, or if they do and see a wasp they quickly fly away.  Wasps like hummingbird feeders too and apparently like to sting the hummingbirds, or at least the hummingbirds think they do.  When no wasps are at the feeder, the birds land and drink away.  At this very moment, a hummingbird has come for its morning refreshment and refreshed itself.  Why did it stay?  Because there was no wasp there, it had no fear at the feeder!  The hummingbirds have a rule – wasp at the feeder – fly away – wasp not at the feeder – stay and enjoy the gift of the feeder.

Why can’t people be as wise as the hummingbirds?  Some not only don’t fly , in our case, don’t run from an obvious danger.  They fall for Satan’s overtures and often do not see the spider until they’re caught firmly in the web.  Shakespeare said in his great play, The Merchant of Venice, “There is no vice so simple but assumes some mark of virtue on its outward parts”.  If you have read my other works you know that I am a poet and like to use my poems to illustrate a point.  I would like to take that opportunity again in this essay and include a poem I wrote some time ago which I think is germane to today’s topic.

POKER MAN

Why do you condemn this, that’s in?

Why do you maintain it’s a sin?

Why do you stand so hard

Against a little game of cards?

You can’t prove it’s wrong to me

For I’ve closed my eyes and cannot see

That something is amiss

And I can’t hear the serpent’s hiss.

The little English sparrow is a great success story.  The insignificant little bird is actually not a sparrow, but a member of the weaver family of birds.  Brought to America, probably as a stowaway on early ships, it took hold in the New World and became one of the most dominant birds we see. Jesus also spoke of sparrows, the sparrows of Jerusalem.  He remarked in Matthew 10 that two of them sold for just a penny.  Then He makes the astounding observation that not one of them falls to the ground apart from the Father.  The implication is that not only does He know when the tiniest of His creation dies, He is there.  Jesus is making the obvious thing obvious.  If God loves His little sparrows like that, then how much more does He love His children? When we are in trouble, God comes to our rescue.  The psalmist in Psalms 102 considers himself as a sparrow alone upon a housetop facing great danger.  That’s a pretty good picture of a helpless and hapless individual. But in verse 17 he says the Almighty would regard the prayer of the destitute. No one is ever alone who has his Father.