Facing the Death-Dew

He lay, shrivelled and gaunt, under the sheets. It was hard to see him like that, this man who, all through my growing-up years, could do anything. He could carry a 50-lb backpack and lead a group of two dozen high school students up and down the hills of the Highland Hiking Trail in Algonquin. He could swing a canoe onto his shoulders and portage it with ease the two kilometres in to Gordon Lake from Rock Lake. He could carry a pack of shingles onto the roof and install them all with ease. And now, he lay, shrivelled and gaunt, withered away by the cancer he had battled for the last four-and-a-half years, and it was hard to see him like that.

He was conscious, but just barely, confused and petulant. It was hard to see him like that, this man who, all through my growing-up years, knew everything. He knew about the stars in the sky as we stared up at the pinpricks of light spread across the vast canvas of a northern Ontario summer sky. He'd use a flashlight to trace out Cassaeopea, the Big Dipper, the Little Dipper, and the various other constellations. He knew about the trees, the flowers, the animals. He knew which berries and mushrooms were good to eat and which ones would poison us. He knew about cars and computers and electrical circuits. He even knew how the milk got into the milk bags. We didn't believe him when he told us, but a letter to Neilson confirmed that he was right about that, too. And now, he lay, confused and petulant, his mind stretched and broken by the cancer that he had battled for the last four-and-a-half years, and it was hard to see him like that.

It was hard to see him like that. He lay there in that hospital bed, and I thought, My goodness, he looks so terrible. He looks more dead than alive. I stayed, I visited, I talked to him when he opened his eyes. I told him I loved him, kissed him goodnight and left him sleeping peacefully.

Just hours later, the phone rang.

The phone ringing in the dark of night is never a good thing, is it?

He was gone.

I drove through dark streets, shivering so hard I had to clench my teeth to keep them from rattling. You read about stuff like that in stories. I never knew it was a real thing. I rode the same elevator up, walked down the same hallway, into the same room, past the same guy in the other bed I'd passed on my way home, just hours earlier.

And I realised instantly that when I had left, he hadn't looked more dead than alive. As frail and as sick as he had been, he had looked very much alive.

And now he was dead.

The gossamer thread had snapped, and everything was different.

"I'll love thee in life, I will love thee in death,

And praise thee as long as thou lendest me breath.

And sing, when the death-dew lies cold on my brow,

If ever I loved thee, my Jesus, 'tis now."

It is in the face of death that I realise how much my faith matters. If Jesus is not Lord in the face of death, he is not Lord at all. It is in looking down on that dear face, so alive just hours before, now slack-jawed and grey in death, that Jesus matters most. It is mostly easy to love Jesus in life, in mansions of glory and endless delight. It is somewhat doable to love him in trial, when there is still hope for renewal, when life still clings. But it is most necessary to love him in death, when there is nothing left but a dusty shell and the maw of the hole in the ground. Paul says it this way: "If in Christ we have hope in this life only, we are of all people most to be pitied" (1 Corinthians 15:19).

It is when I face death that my faith matters most.

Because when I see the death-dew cold on the brow, I catch a glimpse of the full horror of the enemy. I see him in all his undisguised hideousness, his unabashed bent for destruction. No more masquerading as an angel of light, he is revealed plainly in all his grotesque horror. Never again will I think him a joke, a red-tights-wearing, pitchfork-toting, shoulder-perching cartoon. He is a beast, a monster, a vile and repulsive demon.

We hide from that horror. We cover it up. We try not to talk about it. But when you have seen it once, you never forget. Death is the last enemy, the evil one's last laugh, and if Jesus is not Lord in the face of that desperate evil, he is not Lord at all.

But he IS Lord. And in the face of death, I know it. With as much certainty as I know the horror of death, I know the power of Jesus. "But in fact." But. Death is the devil's last laugh, BUT. "But in fact, Christ has been raised from the dead" (1 Corinthians 15:20). But in fact, death may be the devil's last laugh, but it is not God's last word. And God gets the final word. But in fact, Christ has been raised from the dead, and death is an enemy being destroyed.

Take that, filthy nightmare.

It is in the face of death that my faith matters most. It is in the face of death that I see most clearly the battle lines between the vileness of the evil one and the greatness of my Jesus. I love thee in life, I will love thee in death.

Because Christ has been raised from the dead, the "firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep" (1 Corinthians 15:20). Just the first. We all will follow. All those last-laughs of the evil one will be God's final word. "All shall be made alive" (v. 22). The gossamer thread will be restored, never again to be broken. Risen, redeemed, restored.

Because Christ has been raised from the dead. Lord, in the face of death. Lord, even then. Lord, especially then. Lord now.

If ever I loved thee, my Jesus, 'tis now.

Tell Me a Story

For the last seven years, I have driven to the barn pretty much every Saturday morning between 9:00-10:00 in the morning, and for the last seven years, as often as I could, I listened to as much as I could of Stuart McLean's The Vinyl Cafe. I am late to The Vinyl Cafe; apparently, it has been running for two decades. I have grinned and laughed and thought and even shed tears with Dave and Morley and the gang. I have lingered in the car to ensure I heard the end of the stories, and when I heard the words, "I'm Stuart McLean; so long for now," I would turn off the ignition, sigh, wipe tears, laugh again, and get out of the car.

This past Saturday, I missed Stuart. I was just a bit too late leaving the house, and all I heard was the final song of his story-and-song show. That made me especially sad because this last Saturday was Stuart McLean's last show. He's leaving The Vinyl Cafe in order to fight cancer - melanoma. The airwaves next Saturday will be lonely without that slightly raspy voice that always sounds like it's smiling. I will miss his stories.

I have often marvelled at the genius that is Stuart McLean. He tells simple stories - stories about ordinary folk, absurd folk - in a simple way. He read his manuscripts straight up, no extemporaneous speaking, no stand-up comedy, just a well-written story read well, and people flocked to listen. I wonder sometimes if we have a bit of a snobbish attitude toward stories. We adults listen to propositions, lectures, sermons, speeches, and TED Talks, but stories? Stories are for children. And yet . . . here was a guy who read stories in halls around the country, and people bought tickets to hear him, and they tuned in to listen to him on the air. Nothing high-tech. No computer-generated imagery, no special effects, no 3-D, immersive, large-screen glitz. Just a voice. A quiet, wry, raspy voice. And we listened and laughed and cried and thought and laughed and cried some more. Dave and Morley became friends. We cried when their dog died. We laughed when Dave got himself into his endless scrapes; he was so much like all of us. We were glad when the two of them, even when it was really tough to do so, made choices for love and loyalty and kindness and decency and courage and neighbourliness. Just a story, but it made our lives richer.

That's the beauty of story. It disarms the hearer. It draws him in and gets him invested and then it turns and prods and convicts.

God knew that. I think that's why so much of Scripture is written as a story. "In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth," and we immediately recognise the opening lines of a story. Oh sure, there are laws and psalms and letters and sermons, but underlying all of them is a story. Think of how many psalms are embedded in story, just as an example. Because while we are taught by law and psalm and letter and sermon, we connect most deeply, I think, with story.

Jesus knew that. I think that's why he told so many parables. Oh sure, he gave instructions and teachings, but so many times he answered with a story. The story has a way of getting in behind defenses and presuppositions and forces us to look at things through new eyes. Instructions and teachings are important, but they engage the head. Sometimes it is the heart that must be turned, and the heart is most easily turned, I think, by story.

But we are a society that has lost our story. There was a time, not so many years ago, that most people shared a story. The fancy word is "metanarrative". Most people knew and believed the biblical master-story, at least at some level. That is no longer the case. We no longer know the story. And, I think even as a church, we have lost our sense of story. We have relegated the story to Sunday school, considering the story to be the "milk" from which we must grow up so that we can eat the "meat" of theology (or something), forgetting that story is also theology. We no longer trust story.

But the really awful kicker is that we no longer trust proposition, either. Information and mis-information is so easily obtained. "Fake news" has become a thing. Pictures lie all the time. We live in a "post-truth" society that is suspicious of all proposition, lecture, sermon, speech, and TED Talk. We don't know what or who to trust anymore.

I wonder if the two are connected. Perhaps when we cast off story as something childish and silly, something from which we grow up, our theology loses its moorings and is cast adrift into "post-truth". I wonder if, in our quest for solid proposition and sound theology, we have forgotten the power of the good story well told. Of course, the solid proposition and sound theology are important, but so is the story.

Stuart McLean knew the power of story. For 20 years he wrote and read stories for and to adults. People didn't come to his shows to hear propositions about Dave and Morley. They came to hear stories.

Perhaps we should take a page out of his book. Perhaps we should return to the story. Perhaps we should tell more stories. Perhaps we need to remember that the story is theology, too.

"Tell me the old, old story of unseen things above,

Of Jesus and His glory, of Jesus and His love."

Hitting Refresh

This entry is one just for Special K, who is one of the richest blessings in my life, and whom I adore. She is tall and beautiful and smart and talented, but mostly, I love how she loves Jesus. She is kind and wise and reflects his heart.

She came to me yesterday and said, "I love your blog, Aunt Mari."

"You love my blog??"

"Yeah, I love your blog."

I said, "I haven't written anything in quite a long time."

I thought, You read my blog? Why would a kid read my blog? But then I realised, she's not a kid. Somewhere over the years, she has grown up into a woman. And she reads my blog. Crazy.

How does it happen, this passing of the years? When did my Special K change from a little girl to this tall, willowy, beautiful young woman who looks down on me and yet still looks up to me? When did all of my rich blessings turn from toddlers to teens to adults with significant others? Oh, there are still toddlers in the mix, but still. Most of them have become adults who tower over me.

When talking about work with someone some time ago, this person said to me something along the lines of, "Well, you have just this one thing," referring to my job and the fact that I don't have a husband and kids. I smiled inwardly at that, reflecting on my life, and I have thought of it often since. No husband and kids. Just a job. And nieces and nephews and brothers and sisters-in-law and a mom and a housemate and friends and more friends and a horse and a dog and hobbies and ministries which all often get short-shrift, because I am busy with "just that one thing". And the seasons come and go and the years slide by and Special K has grown from a girl to a woman who reads my blog.

I love my job. My job is more than a job; it is also a ministry. I love my students. They are also a blessing. And due to the fact that I have bills to pay and no one to help pay for them but me, I spend a fair bit of time at that one thing. But oh, my life is so much richer than that. And when I am surrounded by those brothers and sisters-in-love and nieces and nephews who crowd in for a selfie with Aunt Mari, who play Skittles games with me (eating Skittles and trying to pull out matching colours without looking), when I look at tables groaning under the burden of good food, when I hear a roar of laughter from a room full of people who laugh just like me, when I look ahead to a week where "just that one thing" is off my schedule and my schedule fills up with visits with friends and family and pets who have waited patiently for me to be finished with that one thing so that I have more time for them, and I hear my Special K tell me she reads my blog, I think, Just that one thing? I have so many things. So many unbelievable gifts and blessings from a Father who has given me abundantly more than I could have ever asked for or imagined.

And I need to remember that. I need to remember that I do not have "just that one thing", or that one thing could swallow up the years and consume my time and heart until all I have left is "just that one thing". Lord, teach me to number my days aright, that I may gain a heart of wisdom.

"I haven't written anything in quite a long time."

"I know," she said. "I keep checking. I keep hitting refresh."

So this one is for Special K. I love you more than you will ever know, my dear. You are a gift straight from God to me.

Ok, luv. Go ahead and hit refresh.

I will do the same.