Mom

“When your children shall ask their fathers in time to come, saying, What mean these stones? Then ye shall let your children know, saying, Israel came over this Jordan on dry land.” - Joshua 4:21-22

I have heard them and so have you. They are those stock-in-trade, generic, one-size-fits-all, funeral sermons that abound in clichés and clichéd scripture passages that tired pastors pull out of file cabinets. There is little or nothing said of the deceased, but instead, flowery phrases fill up the time and space as the clergyman attempts to perfume the air with feel-good nothingness. In many cases, such perfunctory phraseology is the only alternative because there is nothing much to say about some non-descript lives that have floundered halfway between here and nowhere, registering not even a blip on God’s kingdom view screen. Pity the poor pastor who has to stand and officiate over such a one when to tell the truth would be in plain bad taste or uncomfortable to say the least. But many times, pastors fumble to find concrete terms with which to describe the lives of even good people because there is no hard evidence to tap into. Nothing frustrates a biographer more than to attempt to tell the story of someone who leaves no written record.

I had feared that in the rush to generate a funeral message for my mother that the pastor, who had not known her long, would pull out one of his stock sermons and give it his best generic shot. To try and head it off, I placed in his hands a journal that my mother had written in her latter days. It was really just a daily planner, and her entries were without form and scattered throughout the book in no particular order. Most of her entries were comprised of quotes from other people from books and sermons and wherever. But she had copied them laboriously by hand in her faltering style, and they instantly betrayed her heart and deeply held values. There were quotes from Max Lucado and C.S. Lewis, Charles Swindoll and Billy Graham, plus others not acknowledged. They covered topics such as the role of the Holy Spirit, how to study the Bible, and the amazing story of the change wrought in the HMS Bounty survivors of Pitcairn Island through the discovery of a Bible.

I was pleasantly surprised the evening of the funeral to discover that the pastor had found the journal entries compelling reading. He basically used little but these various entries to paint a picture of my mother’s life for they revealed the things she held most dearly. There were not that many pages of writing in this simple book, but it offered ample evidence with which to obtain a verdict and a conviction. Her’s was a life centered on the things of God. Little else needed saying. In death, we look for the essence of a person’s life, what interested them, what drove them, what made them who they were. I was amazed how little it took to accurately, I thought, reveal the simple and all-consuming direction of her life. For those who looked at her to admire certain character qualities and traits, here was explanation enough for everything found admirable within.

It need not be long, it need not be eloquent, it need not be profound, and it need not even be original. I left there that night wanting to tell everyone to be sure to leave something behind that will reveal to all who pause and wonder just who you are and why you lived the life you did. Leave tracks, so that others may follow. It may be margin notes in a Bible, a simple journal, a life story, or heartfelt poetry. Whatever the means, make it clear and make it loud if you want folks to know that God’s love compelled you to follow Him and that He did, indeed, change your life.

“If I find in myself desires which nothing in this world can satisfy, the only logical explanation is that I was made for another world.” -C.S. Lewis (found in mom’s journal)

Mercy! Mercy! Mercy!

“It is of the Lord's mercies that we are not consumed, because his compassions fail not.They are new every morning” - Lamentations 3:22-23

(The following is a reflection penned the night my mother died after I found out how a nurse’s aide had stayed by her bedside in the final hour or so of her life. This unsung stranger talked calm words and read the Scripture to my mom who could neither hear nor respond except in some unknown way. And so I paused to think of how our lives are marked by mercy from beginning to end, how we are defined and molded by mercy, and how it flows from a thousand unacknowledged sources to fill the hours of our days. May we marvel at its mighty and majestic work and be the willing agents of its spread.)

Mercy! Mercy! Mercy!
How vital to each individual human soul,
God’s rain to quench the drought,
That stretches back to Adam’s folly,
Falling patchwork style,
Upon garden hearts that look to unseen skies,
And wait precariously on mystic clouds,
Grown dark with promises of grace,
While mercy drops kick up the dust of our loose-lived lives,
With the portent of showers and floods to come.

Mercy! Mercy! Mercy!
How vital to each human heart,
From birth’s first cry for human touch,
To childhood needs too plentiful to count,
Where mother’s love and father’s care,
Sustain the fine thin line between,
The fruitful life or blasted barrenness,
And even in the grown-up land,
Grace must do its daily work,
Pulling sap to dizzying heights,
To keep the hillsides green and winter in its place.

Mercy! Mercy! Mercy!
How vital to each human end,
When houses, lands lie fallen by the way,
And life is narrowed to a single bed,
One closet with a week’s apparel,
And one small board stuck with colored pins,
That hold some frames of a life gone by;
Grace descends three times a day,
Where crusts of bread become as prized,
As bags of gold or grandpa’s watch,
And a dear one’s voice is gift enough,To keep alive the will to live, if only one more day

Mercy! Mercy! Mercy!
How vital to all human-kind,
Where total strangers mingle in,
And leave their mark in gentle ways,
They stop by bedsides, filling gaps,
In final vigils, or with simple acts,
They guide the floating bark as it departs;
One wipes a brow, one changes sheets,
One for pay, another just because,
Grace compels which no logic can explain,
To speak soft words, to read the Book of Books,
And thereby spend, the final hour in dark of night, alone,To keep an appointment set 93 years before.