Hebrews 13:5-6 God has said, “I will never fail you. I will never abandon you.” So we can say with confidence, “The Lord is my helper, so I will have no fear. What can mere people do to me?”
1 John 4:16-18 We know how much God loves us, and we have put our trust in his love. … Such love has no fear, because perfect love expels all fear.”
Some people had trouble posting responses to the question in my last blog (no idea why—I hope it fixes itself) and wrote me by email. I asked Elaine whether I could quote part of what she wrote:
“Fearing God eliminates our other fears. As John says, his perfect love removes them. And Romans 8 is so beautiful in affirming that nothing can separate us from his love. So both of these things give me peace no matter what crazy and terrible things are going on.”
I’ve been thinking about this, and how it works in my life practically. Last week, I said to a friend, “I lived in fear for thirty years—the thirty years of Karis’s life. Her wellbeing turned on a dime. I walked in high alert. She could be well in the morning and fighting for her life in the ICU by afternoon. All plans were held loosely …”
Evaluate with me the statement that I “lived in fear for thirty years.” On the face of the Scriptures quoted above and Elaine’s affirmation, it seems I was telling my friend I didn’t trust God or his love. Some of the most profound hurts that I suffered were from people telling me (who didn’t live the Karis reality 24/7 or understand more than surface facts about what it entailed) that I was in sin because I was afraid.
Is it true that in my fear I didn’t trust God? I don’t think so. Is it possible there is a difference between fear in response to specific frightening circumstances, and fear as an existential state that bars us from the comfort God can give us? It was exactly because I trusted God that I could express my fears to him. I knew that HE would not stand apart and judge me or criticize my “spirituality.” He instead walked with me through the dark valleys.
Fear is, after all, an emotion that warns us of trouble or threat. It helps us recognize when all is not well; when action needs to be taken. Healthy, appropriate fear can save us from taking life-threatening risks. We teach our children not to run into the street without looking both ways, because cars can kill them. It’s appropriate to fear what wind and waves can do to us (yes, there are family stories behind this example, that involve exhaustion and jellyfish stings and … ). We call someone “foolhardy” when they choose to swim despite red high hazard signs on the beach (thinking of you, David Kornfield). Having no fear can literally kill us.
Another thought: Often fear is linked to our sense of impotence, our lack of control over circumstances or other people’s choices. Sometimes this leads to blaming God for things that happen to us or to people we care about. What does it mean to me in my everyday life that God is in control of the universe? Doesn’t he see me? If he loves me, and has all power, why doesn’t he act to remove my suffering or the suffering of others? This age-old question is called “theodicy.” Suffering forces us into asking these questions.
As you can tell, I’m not offering any pat answers here. I want to engage you in thinking more deeply about your own suffering, your own fears. And whether peace, biblical all-encompassing shalom, is a reality in your life, and if so, what pathway you walked to discover and experience the “perfect love that expels all fear.” Join the conversation!
Hebrews 9:28 Christ will come again, not to deal with our sins, but to bring salvation to all who are eagerly waiting for him.
Revelation 1:7 Look! He comes with the clouds of heaven, and everyone will see him.
On days like today, with occasional sun breaking through clouds, I often say to Debbie, “It could be today!”
Shutterstock: Trofimenko Nickolai
A person’s last words carry weight. How much more if he is the author and completer of human history? Of my story. Of your story. Of our story as the church of Jesus Christ. His last recorded words in the Gospels are: “Be sure of this: I am with you always, even to the end of the age” (Matthew 28:20).
There will come an end to the world as we know it. Advent recognizes this fact and gives us time to prepare our hearts for our Lord’s return. It’s a time of tension between:
1. His arrival as a baby and his imminent arrival as the King of Kings.
2. What we have already experienced of Christ and what is yet to be revealed.
3. The maturity we have already attained and what we still lack.
The world is lost in the commercial focus of Christmas. We must get “lost” in anticipation of the imminent arrival of our King of Kings.
We live in the space between what Jesus has already done and what He will do. He has already performed miracles in our lives, our marriages, our families and our churches. AT THE SAME TIME, we deeply need Him to become real and present to us again today.
We honor these four weeks of Advent, celebrating Christ’s Incarnation as a tiny, totally dependent infant and his arrival in each of our hearts. At the same time, let us cry out, asking that he arrive for each of us in a new way, to transform what is still missing within us during this in-between time. Let us live fully in the revival and anointing he has already given us, even while we stretch forward to the greater revival and anointing that we so desperately need.
Lord, break in me everything that needs to be broken.
Heal in me everything that needs to be healed.
Fill in me everything that needs to be filled.
Anoint in me everything that needs to be anointed.
“The celebration of Advent is possible only to those who are troubled in soul, who know themselves to be poor and imperfect, and who look forward to something greater to come.” Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Hebrews 12:1-2 Since we are surrounded by such a huge crowd of witnesses to the life of faith, let us strip off every weight that slows us down, especially the sin that so easily trips us up. And let us run with endurance the race God has set before us. We do this by keeping our eyes on Jesus, the champion who initiates and perfects our faith …
Luke 21:34 Be on guard so that your hearts are not weighed downwith … the worries of this life, and that day [Christ’s return] catch you unexpectedly (NRSVA).
On Monday evenings, I meet on Zoom with women from Argentina, Chile, and Venezuela who are leaders in their churches and denominations. This week we are memorizing Hebrews 12:1-2 (in Spanish, of course). I realized yesterday how fitting this passage is for Advent, this interesting time in the year when we anticipate Christ’s return in glory while preparing to celebrate his first coming as an infant.
This year in particular my heart has been weighed down with many concerns. (Yours too?) I asked a prayer team for intercession yesterday about how to handle high stress and at the same time focus on the hope Advent offers us. As our pastor Peter reminded us, Advent hope is rooted in the fact that we know Jesus is good. We know him, his tenderness and compassion, his faithfulness and gentleness—this One who will return one day as a mighty warrior, defeating all evil, to reign in justice. We’ll be able to look into his eyes and know that he is the one who has been our friend and companion all our lives.
My main takeaway from the wonderful prayer offered on my behalf is that I am to live from a center of peace, daily entrusting to Jesus my burdens and worries, both those over which I have a measure of control and those I can’t control at all.
Let go and look up. Accept the support of those whom God has placed around me, and cheer each of them on in their own God-designed races.
Hope. All will be well.
Since he himself has gone through suffering and testing, he is able to help us when we are being tested. … So let us come boldly to the throne of our gracious God. There we will receive his mercy, and we will find grace to help us when we need it most (Hebrews 2:18, 4:16).
I invite you to savor again the wonderful music (5 hours!!) on my Advent ABC playlist:
Matthew 5:16 Let your good deeds shine out for all to see, so that everyone will praise your heavenly Father.
Hebrews 13:21 May the God of peace equip you with all you need for doing his will. May he produce in you, through the power of Jesus Christ, every good thing that is pleasing to him.
Last year, our church sent to be cleaned several of the stained-glass windows of our historic building. The difference is stunning, to the point that I’m sometimes distracted from the service by the play of colored light on the huge painting of Jesus’ ascension above the altar. I find this enriching, because I know what those windows convey of the Gospel story.
Cleaning of one of the smaller Ascension windows: photo Marilyn Chislaghi
I know too the passion and prayer of the church to not only receive light through its beautiful windows, but to reflect light into its cosmopolitan neighborhood of Oakland, which attracts people from around the world through its universities and medical center (including us from our beloved Brazil!).
Hence my appreciation of George Herbert’s poem “The Window,” which I’m connecting to chapter 3, “God Most Good,” in the book In His Image I’ve been referencing. Jen Wilkins says “Be good. Others will see it. You’ll be a light causing others to glorify the Father of lights.” Here’s the poem:
The Windows
Lord, how can man preach thy eternal word?
He is a brittle crazy glass;
Yet in thy temple thou dost him afford
This glorious and transcendent place,
To be a window, through thy grace.
But when thou dost anneal in glass thy story,
Making thy life to shine within
The holy preachers, then the light and glory
More reverend grows, and more doth win;
Which else shows waterish, bleak, and thin.
Doctrine and life, colors and light, in one
When they combine and mingle, bring
A strong regard and awe; but speech alone
Doth vanish like a flaring thing,
And in the ear, not conscience, ring.
George Herbert, 1593-1633
How clean is the beautiful window of my redeemed life?
Hebrews 2:17 Therefore, it was necessary for him [Jesus] to be made in every respect like us, his brothers and sisters, so that he could be our merciful and faithful High Priest before God.
John 1:14 So the Word became human and made his home among us. He was full of unfailing love and faithfulness.
In Chapter 7 of her book In His Image, Jen Wilkin identifies the written word of God, the Bible, as “our great Ebenezer, a memorial stone to the faithfulness of God. … Between its covers a glorious truth is repeated for our great benefit: God is worthy of our trust” (pages 100-101).
What does she mean by calling the Bible a “great Ebenezer”? 1 Samuel 7:12 says, “Samuel then took a large stone and placed it between the towns of Mizpah and Jeshanah. He named it Ebenezer (which means “the stone of help”), for he said, “Up to this point the Lord has helped us!” Samuel did this to memorialize a time when God intervened with a mighty thunderstorm to save his people from an invading army.
The Bible is full of wonderful “But God” stories of God’s faithfulness, to encourage us in our own hard times. Jen continues, “When we spend time in the Bible, our lives begin to bear witness to its faithful message. We ourselves become stones of remembrance for those around us, giving faithful testimony that God is worthy of our trust, no matter what (page 101).
Yesterday, Dave showed me this picture of fifty pastors and leaders in Venezuela who had just been gifted with the Biblia de Estudio para el Discipulado (Discipleship Bible).
The picture triggered a memory of God’s faithfulness to Dave. For six years after Karis and I came to Pittsburgh for intestinal transplant, Dave and I lived on two different continents, always expecting Karis to get well enough for me to go home to Brazil. Finally, Dave realized Karis wasn’t going to get better, so he needed to move to Pittsburgh.
This felt to Dave like a punch in the gut. He was 100% engaged in ministry in Brazil. What would he do in Pittsburgh? Yet in agony of spirit, he took the necessary steps over the next year to obey what he knew God was asking him to do: give up Brazil and join Karis and me here.
But God had a plan. The week before he left São Paulo, Dave received a call from the Brazilian Bible Society asking him to write a Discipleship Bible in Portuguese.
Had Dave stayed in Brazil, he would never have found the time to write. In Pittsburgh, though, this work became his great joy, an eight-year project into which he could pour all that God had planted in him about being and making disciples of Jesus: 450 small group studies, notes for disciples of Jesus on every page, highlighting practical applications, introductions to each book noting what it had to offer disciplers, and a comprehensive index and cross-reference system.
The Discipleship Bible was published in 2018 in Brazil, and last year in Spanish, in multiple printings already.
Dave was faithful to what he understood God was telling him to do, though the cost to him was great. God was faithful in giving Dave a project he could work on in the “foreign land” of Pittsburgh. All so people across Latin America and Brazil who want to walk closely with Jesus, open themselves to transformation by his Word, and help others do this also, could have access to the years of experience and all the passion and wisdom about disciplemaking God had poured into Dave across his lifetime.
What tough thing is God asking of you? Can you trust his faithfulness, even though you can’t yet see it?
All the Lord does is just and good, and all his commandments are trustworthy. They are forever true, to be obeyed faithfully and with integrity.
But God had other plans: He knew what lay under the desert land
Ephesians 3:17 Christ will make his home in your hearts as you trust in him. Your roots will grow down into God’s love and keep you strong.
Hebrews 10:24 Let us think of ways to motivate one another to acts of love and good works.
I (Debbie) was fascinated by the story my Wheaton College classmate Sue Long told in their last newsletter and am excited to share it with you. It coordinates with the “God Most Loving” chapter in Jen Wilkin’s book, In His Image, which calls us to agape love like God’s: holy, infinite, and costly. “For agape, there is no such category as “unlovable” (page 41).
Here’s Sue:
SIM (at that time Sudan Interior Mission; now SIM International) entered Niger in 1924. Terry and I and my brother Jack will return to Niger in December to celebrate this centennial. SIM’s initial work concentrated on trekking and nomadic outreach. After a decade, SIM asked the French government in Niger for property to establish a surgical hospital among the poorest of the poor in the vast rural areas of the Sahara Sahel. Finally, following 15 years of vigorous discussion, the French ceded to SIM what looked like a wasteland on which to build. It seemed a mockery: “You can try, but you won’t succeed.” But God had other plans!
In July 1950, after a year of French study in Paris, Sue’s parents, Dr. Burt and Ruth Long, landed on a desolate stretch of runway, having leapfrogged across the mighty Sahara Desert to this isolated destination. With two young sons in tow, they reached their new home in a small village scalding in the heat of brilliant sunshine. They would add four more children to the family over the next years.
The village was called Galmi, located far from anywhere, with scrubby bushes, hard, stony ground, lonely thorn (acacia) trees upon which camels chewed, no electricity, and limited water. And HOT. Burt and Ruth had agreed to open the hospital in Galmi as a channel for the gospel and a beacon of hope in a seemingly godforsaken place. Thousands of people lived in scattered villages of the Sahel with no access to medical help and no knowledge of a Savior who offers forgiveness of sins and eternal salvation.
Others had come before them. Two houses and a few other buildings, built with rocks, mud, cement, and tin-pan roofs stood ready to receive the first permanent mission workers. Way down the path from the houses stood the completely empty T-shaped hospital, with cement floors and metal shutters over screened windows.
Galmi became an oasis in the desert after a lake of water was discovered under the property in 1980. God knew the value of the French gift!
You can read the rest of the story in A Family Living under the Sahara Sun, by Sue’s mother Ruth Long, available on Amazon.
Debbie: I’ve just ordered the book. Imagine those thirty years of faithful love and service by the Long family before the underground lake was discovered. Sue says her roots grew down deep into Galmi’s hard soil. Even there, she discovered God’s wonderful love, which propelled her and her husband Terry into a lifetime of service in Nigeria.
Does the soil of your heart feel hard? Your roots growing into his love will make you strong.
Hebrews 4:16 So let us come boldly to the throne of our gracious God. There we will receive his mercy, and we will find grace to help us when we need it most.
Colossians 4:6 Let your conversation be gracious and attractive.
Between travel and illness, I haven’t managed to post for the last couple of weeks. If you’ve been tracking, though, you know I’ve been studying the book of Hebrews. I’m also reading Jen Wilken’s In His Image: Ten Ways God Calls Us to Reflect His Character. I intend to use Jen’s categories over the next few weeks, probably in the order she presents them.
Yesterday, though, I was impressed so much by Kamala Harris’s concession speech that I decided to skip ahead to Jen’s chapter 6: God Most Gracious. I’m not good at it yet, but I want to become a gracious person. I’m always on the lookout for role models in “real life,” people who can show me what being gracious looks like. So, Kamala’s speech and attitude and manner caught my attention.
No matter who you voted for, I think you can profit from taking twelve minutes to watch this:
I’ve done so three times already and will probably watch it again.
Graciousness requires humility. It requires caring more about others than about oneself. As Jen says, what people tend to want is not to be treated fairly, but to be treated preferentially. Our love of preferential treatment displays itself in a thousand ways, wanting the best for ourselves. But,
“Christians should have a reputation for playing favorites with everyone except ourselves. As those who have received abundant grace, we do good in abundance. … We should be known as the people who respond to ‘I hate you’ with ‘I love you,’ and as the people who respond to ‘I love you’ with ‘I love you more’” (pages 94-95).
Do everything without grumbling or arguing, so that you may become blameless and pure, children of God without fault in a warped and crooked generation. Then you will shine among them like stars in the sky as you hold firmly to the word of life (Philippians 2:14-16).
Hebrews 13:21 I fervently ask God to create in you the desire to please Him by doing all kinds of good, accomplishing through your daily activities the things which only Jesus, God’s Appointed One, can equip you for. Such things are especially pleasant in His eyes, for the glory He receives through them endures through all eternity. May it be so in you! (“Consider How the Son Shines!” translation of Hebrews by Ray Elliott)
Last Sunday, October 20th, would have been my dad’s 100th birthday. Thinking about him, I wrote, with contributions from my siblings, a brief synopsis of his adventurous and remarkable life.
Raymond Leroy Elliott, October 20, 1924-November 12, 2008
Birth through age 10, 1924-1934: Born in Independence, Kansas, the second of four boys (Richard, Raymond, Roland, Roger), my father and his family experienced two bitter losses during his first decade of life. First was the death by accident of their baby sister. Second was the loss of their house, foreclosed by their bank for lack of $3.70 to pay their mortgage one month. This sounds unbelievable now. In those years of the Great Depression, the family never fully recovered from the loss of their home.
In his teens, 1934-1944: Dad was a quiet boy, deeply involved in pursuing several interests and hobbies. He couldn’t decide whether he wanted to become a printer or a professional musician or a photographer. In high school, he fell in love with my mom, two years younger. One of her earliest memories of Dad was seeing him stretched out on the floor of his living room eating a huge bowl of popcorn, so immersed in the book he was reading he was oblivious to the high-energy chaos generated by his three brothers and their friends. Dad was 17 when Japan attacked Pearl Harbor. The army refused his service because he had clear vision in only one eye. He decided the best way he could serve people would be as a pastor and began a course of study at Phillips University in Enid, Oklahoma. Mom followed him there after graduating early from high school.
In his 20s, 1944-54: Dad married Helen Ruth Belcher June 10, 1945; he was 20 and she was 18. They took on an interim pastor role for the summer in a small church in the Oklahoma panhandle. To their surprise, that summer they together came to understand the Gospel for the first time (an amazing story). They returned to Enid, OK, where Dad worked and Mom birthed her first baby, Linda, as they prayed for direction. During that year they learned about and moved to Wheaton, Illinois to attend Wheaton College. Both graduated, Dad completed an M.A. in theology, and gained another daughter, Marsha. He and Mom became interested in Bible translation, initially in China, and when those doors closed, in Guatemala.
Back in Independence, a son, Stephen, was born and Dad’s father died. Dad and Mom joined Wycliffe Bible Translators and completed linguistic training. After “jungle camp” in Mexico—training in living in rustic conditions—they moved to Nebaj, a Mayan Ixil village nestled in the Cuchumatanes mountains of Guatemala, where no other white foreigner lived at that time. I was born a year later, in the middle of a CIA-sponsored revolution against the government of Guatemala, two months before Dad turned 30.
In his 30s, 1954-64: Many stories have been told of how Dad and Mom overcame cultural barriers and fear, won acceptance by the Ixil people, and learned their language, which had never been written down. Dad creatively made a tiny two-bedroom home livable, devised an Ixil alphabet, began figuring out Ixil grammar and syntax, ventured into early translation efforts, and fathered two more daughters, Janice and Sharon. Mom offered emergency medical care in a village which had none. Dad transmitted his love of classical and marching band music and singing to his children through LP recordings. One by one, we children left home to study at a boarding school about four hours away on rough roads. Parents were allowed to visit once each semester and had their children at home only for summer vacation and Christmas.
On a furlough in 1961 in Independence, my younger brother, Daniel was born, and Linda moved to Colorado for high school. Back in Guatemala, our youngest sister, Karen, completed the family. Because Dad and his two sons were born in the same hospital in Independence, and all six daughters elsewhere, we joked that if only Mom and Dad had stayed in Independence, perhaps they would have had more sons and fewer daughters.
Dad with his family in Independence, KS 1961 (I’m in the yellow dress.)
Just missing Karen …
By God’s grace and with careful nursing, almost thirteen-year-old Marsha survived a severe case of nephritis, but her recovery was slow. Linda took a semester off from college to help the family through this time, since Karen was a toddler and Danny a preschooler. Dad moved the family to a house across the street from our boarding school for a few months so Marsha could continue studying and graduate from eighth grade with her class.
Guatemala, May 1965
Danny’s 3 year old birthday: Karen 1; Linda in the US for high school. Dad taking the photo.
In his 40s-60s, 1964-94: Dad was asked to become the director of Wycliffe’s Guatemala branch, which required living in Guatemala City more than in Nebaj for a few years and hindered his own Ixil translation work. Dad cultivated his hobby of photography and designed his own needlepoint creations as a way to get through long meetings.
A second furlough, 1965-66, took us to Wheaton, so Dad could complete an M.A. in linguistics at the University of Chicago. Marsha and Steve stayed on in Wheaton for high school. One by one as we in turn graduated from boarding school in Guatemala, the rest of us transitioned to various cities in the U.S. Dad continued Ixil translation work while Mom focused on designing literacy materials and teaching people to read and then train others. Mom invested in building a school in another Ixil village, Salquil, which continues teaching children today. Some years, both of them taught in Wycliffe’s Summer Institute of Linguistics. A brutal civil war (1960-1996) deeply affected the Ixil region of Guatemala in the 1980s, forcing Mom and Dad to spend time in Guatemala City while contributing to relief efforts for the suffering Ixil people.
In his 70s-early 80s, 1994-2008: Dad had a very hard time acknowledging Mom’s early-onset Alzheimer’s. A family intervention when we were together in California for a grandson’s wedding in 1999 forced Dad to accept that he could not safely take Mom back to Guatemala. After some time living with Dan and his family in Wheaton, Dad and Mom moved to a retirement center, Go Ye Village, in Tahlequah, Oklahoma. Finding the silver lining, Dad said, “Helen laughs at my jokes no matter how many times I repeat them.” Dad cared for Mom until his neglect of a leg wound resulted in gangrene (Dad was diabetic). He did not lose his leg, but while he was in the hospital, Mom was moved into a memory care unit and did not live at home again.
Tahlequah, OK 2004 Dad, Mom, and their eight children on his 80th birthday
With a new lease on his own life after convalescing, Dad began traveling to visit his children and twenty-five grandchildren and participated in a large family reunion in Iowa, where he entertained the kids with his creative whittling. Every day, he called his granddaughter Karis, in and out of hospitals, to encourage her.
In August of 2008, the translation of the New Testament into Ixil was finally published. All eight of Dad’s children, most of his sons- and daughters-in-law and seventeen of his grandchildren joined him in Guatemala for this wonderful celebration. Dad did not feel well while in Guatemala, but attributed this to the travel, joyful stress, and different food of the reunion. On his 83rd birthday two months later, he was diagnosed with metastatic cancer. His eight children and our daughter Karis gathered around him for his last weeks of life, while Dad protested that he had too much to do to take time out for being sick.
Just three weeks after his diagnosis, in the early hours of November 12, with Steve at his bedside, Dad died. Karen had gone home to attend to needs there, escorting Karis back to the hospital in Pittsburgh on her way. The other seven of us sat around his bed for hours talking about our father’s life. We felt he had been snatched away from us too soon. None of us were prepared to lose him. We were just beginning to restore our relationships with him after his years of devotion to Mom, who was too advanced in Alzheimer’s to understand what had happened.
As family and friends, including Karen and her family, gathered for Dad’s funeral a few days later, among many other attributes, we remarked on his sense of humor and love of puns, his resilience, his inventiveness, his thoughtfulness and kindness, and his delight in singing in a barbershop quartet at Go Ye Village.
We are grateful for all Dad gave to us and to the Ixil people through his remarkable life and faithful obedience, and his deep love of Scripture.
1 Peter 1:23 (Titus 3:5) Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.
Romans 6:18-19 It is impossible for God to lie. Therefore, we who have fled to him for refuge can have great confidence as we hold to the hope that lies before us. This hope is a strong and trustworthy anchor for our souls.
So, I’m curious: Have you tried the “new song” idea from my last blog—applying praise to whatever is going on in your life today? I would love to know! I sang a “new song” as I found reasons to praise God as our family absorbs the reality and implications of our six-year-old grandson’s Celiac Disease diagnosis.
I’m quite excited about this understanding of “new song,” in part because it takes me back to a vow I made to the Lord while Karis and I were jetting to Pittsburgh from South Bend in the middle of the night in response to the first intestinal transplant call she was ready to consider.
I vowed to find something to praise God for every day of this upcoming adventure. I had no idea at the time how life- and hope-giving that practice would be. Keeping that vow forced me back to the Lord time after time when otherwise I could have floundered in the excruciating disappointments and reversals we experienced. Hope became for me–for us–a lifeline, an anchor, a safety rail, a source of strength for not giving up as Karis faced death day after day after day. I am deeply grateful to the Holy Spirit for prompting me to make that vow.
There are so many wonderful references to hope in the New Testament that I had trouble choosing, even from the book of Hebrews. The Greek words translated as hope are elpis (noun) and elpizo (verb), from the root elpo. They mean to anticipate (usually with pleasure), to trust, and to expect with confidence (and the corresponding nouns).
Peter emphasizes the fact that our hope is rooted in the resurrection of Jesus, whose victory over his own death extends to us in ours. That’s why we don’t grieve when a loved one dies or in thinking about our own mortality with the same despair as those without the hope of new life after death (1 Thessalonians 4:13).
In thinking about this, I remember Karis’s brilliant smile after she wrote in big scrawly letters with her left hand, “I love ____” each one of us. At the end she wrote, “Call the doctor. I can’t breathe,” just as a team burst into her ICU room to induce her last coma to give time for the antiviral to work (it didn’t, but this gave our family time to gather and to prepare ourselves as well as we could for her death). I believe Karis knew she was going Home, which we learned later through her journals she had been pleading with God to allow her to do.
This isn’t Jesus’s tomb, but it is a preserved tomb and round stone from the first century, like his might have been. Thanks to Marilyn Chislaghi for permission to use her photo taken in Israel.
Living hope: an empty tomb. A brilliant smile. An anchor for our souls through terrible times.
But Jesus’ light can’t be extinguished by darkness
John 1:1-18 In the beginning the Word already existed. … The Word gave life to everything that was created, and his life brought light to everyone. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness can never extinguish it. … So the Word became human and made his home among us. He was full of unfailing love and faithfulness. And we have seen his glory, the glory of the Father’s one and only Son. … Jesus Christ has revealed God to us.
I’ve missed you! And I’ve enjoyed focusing on other things, like vacation. And the details of publishing Facing the Faeries 1906.
I’m returning to this blog halfway through the season of Epiphany, which ends with the beginning of Lent on February 14. The readings for this season have included the Gospel of John, with his emphasis on Christ as the Light of the world.
Epiphany began on January 6, the day selected by early church fathers to remember the magi visiting baby Jesus in Bethlehem and bringing him gifts. The magi were not Jewish, hence the connection with Jesus bringing light to theworld, not just to the people God chose to be his earthly family and lineage. The wise men illustrate for us the fulfillment of God’s promise to Abraham that through him and his descendants, all the earth would be blessed (Genesis 22:18).
Returning to twice weekly postings on this blog, I have four opportunities to think about John’s view of Jesus as the Light of the world before we enter Lent. It seems John can hardly wait to get into this theme. As one of Jesus’ disciples, walking with him for at least three years, John was well positioned to tell us what he personally saw and experienced of what he calls Jesus’ glory, the divine light of unfailing love and faithfulness shining through him.
John was no pushover. Jesus called him and his brother James “Sons of Thunder” (Mark 3:17). They wanted to call fire from heaven to burn up a Samaritan village that didn’t accept Jesus (Luke 9:52-54). Yet in John’s writings (he’s the most prolific New Testament writer after Paul), his emphasis is on love. His life was transformed by the light of Jesus shining into his personal darkness, gentling him and dramatically changing his perspective on the “others” in his world.
For us, you and me, grappling daily with the darkness, violence, and brokenness of the world, John’s introduction to his Gospel is tremendously encouraging. “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness can never extinguish it.” Think about that. Isn’t it good news, solid rock on which to place our feet, a promise we can count on no matter how dark things get? We don’t see it yet, but the ending of the story will be glorious!
Tucked inside my fortune cookie!Isn’t that cool?
Thinking about this promise, I feel my anxiety for the world dissipate like air leaking from a balloon. My thoughts turn to my small role in shining his light into the darkness around me, beginning in my own heart. What a relief to know I’m just a minor character in this huge story God is writing. He has the whole thing figured out! Hallelujah!
Debra Kornfield 