Tuesday, October 31, 2023
The Vigil of All Saints Day
All Hallows Eve
(click here to listen to or read today’s scriptures)
Unsolved mysteries
At Costco yesterday we saw checkers with spiders in their hair and strange orange glasses on their eyes. At Trader Joes my checker Luke was dressed in a trenchcoat and hat, sporting a tie and looking for all the world (to me, anyway) like a Jewish detective. Not trying very hard to be unnoticed.
This evening we’ll show ourselves (dressed up or not) at Jasper and Miles’ house while they are trick-or-treating as monster policemen. (I’m sure I don’t understand what that means.) In between the hilarious and the horrifying I hope to sit quiet and pray, sit still and meditate on the power of God’s love in the births and deaths that surround us every day, and as they have forever.
Brothers and sisters, I consider that the sufferings of this present time are as nothing compared with the glory to be revealed for us.
During Sunday School our new friend Brian told me about his father’s death. We were praying for Judy’s family, because Judy died on Friday of ALS. I prayed for my dad, who also died of ALS in 2002 (or would have, if a stroke had not mercifully taken him a little sooner). Brian’s wife touched his shoulder when Judy’s name came up. I asked him about that afterward.
“My dad died of ALS too. He was 58.”
I commiserated and shared about my dad.
“And I’m 55.” Brian’s eyes got a little wider. “I know it’s not hereditary, but I get the shakes once in a while. I even went to have it checked out. I don’t have ALS. But I am still afraid.”
“Four more years,” I said, smiling sympathetically. I know how that kind of fear can fill you up, even if it’s partly hypochrondria, even if it makes little sense, even if others pooh-pooh it. Doesn’t matter.
I asked him if he could jump over the river of fear onto the rock of safety, knowing that the worst suffering always eventually becomes the biggest blessing, just as Jesus told us over and over. The last will be first.
He frowned.
“Not yet,” he said. “But my dad did make that jump! He was peaceful the night before he died.”
My mom told me that night, “Go home, Brian. Take your one year old daughter and go home to sleep.”
“I can’t, Mom. Dad is going to die tonight.”
“Go home, my son. Go home.” So I did. Put my daughter in her bed. Got in bed myself. Laid down on the pillow.”
Brian and his wife did not lay still for long.
“My dad’s brother, who has a beautiful (and I mean beautiful) baritone voice, began to sing How Great Thou Art. Like he was in the room with us. I started to cry. About half an hour later my sister called.
“Dad just passed away,” she said.
“We wept together. We drove back out to Dripping Springs and spent the rest of the night with mom.
In hope we have been saved. But hope that sees for itself is not hope. For who hopes for what one sees? But when we hope for what we do not see, we wait with endurance.
“Three days later my uncle, who had flown in from California, sang at Dad’s funeral. How Great Thou Art. Of course!
“I never said a word before he sang, about how I heard him singing to my dad as he died. Now, in this reprise, as we all cried out to God, he was blessing all of us. Dad especially. No longer trapped in his broken body, I could feel my dad pouring God’s love out on his family and his friends.
“Oh, yes, Dad made the jump to God’s rock.”
But Brian is still waiting till he’s 59 to take his next deep breath.
God is waiting with him, don’t you think?
Creation awaits with eager expectation the revelation of the children of God, to share in their glorious freedom.
 (Romans 8, Psalm 126, Matthew 11, Luke 13)
(posted at www.davesandel.net)
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