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For Ian, on his graduation

July 7, 2009

When I first met you, you were an infant on a blanket in the basement of the lodge at Kimball Camp. Your mother was taking notes at a workshop I was leading for home school families and your dad was upstairs on the payphone, working a deal.

So many things have changed since then. For one thing, cell phones actually work at Kimball Camp now. Your mom uses email. Your dad takes you down town to play music on the sidewalk.

But one thing has not changed. You were loved then, and you are loved now, by parents, siblings and friends who prayed for you and cared for you.

Ian Atilla

Ian Atilla

]At that workshop I was talking about having goals for our children and the metaphor I used was of a bowstring, which we pull tight as we aim our arrows at a target. Our children are a heritage from the Lord, the Psalmist tells us. Blessed is the man whose quiver is full of them.

If we are going to have a quiver full of arrows we will have to be intentional about what we do with them, I said. And your parents were thoughtful and intentional, and that is part of what we celebrate today.

For your mom and dad you were not just a baby, you were a blessing¬— a gift to be nurtured, an arrow to be aimed. And I suspect what they wanted at the time was a son who was sensitive and honest, thoughtful and obedient, committed to serving others and obeying God. They wanted a gentleman, and they got what they wanted. You are not just a polite young man. You are gracious and hospitable in remarkable ways for one so young, and a blessing to many.

This is the result of purposeful parenting, the kind of parenting that sent you on mission trips and drove you to rehearsals, that modeled compassion and obedience and that challenged your attitudes and behaviors, always aiming at the mark of the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.

But they got more than they wanted or imagined. No one looking at that baby on that blanket knew you could become the model of a modern major general, or the lion of Narnia, or the master of Thornfield Manor. No one expected the quiet intensity or the brooding caution that defines you as a young man, an artist who seeks the will of God with passion and serves an audience with care.

These opportunities were not accidents, but appointments. That’s because God has a mark of his own and is aiming you toward it. He has a purpose for you beyond our imagination or understanding. It may not be acting or performance of any kind. You may not know what his target is until after you hit it.

But whatever his purpose is it will require the discipline you have learned and the sensitivity you have displayed. And as you reach it you will touch the hearts of others and point them toward a great God and a greater good.

So as we celebrate your achievements and anticipate your future, allow me to offer two admonitions, not so much about what steps to take but how to take them.

First, I encourage you to be more of what you are. Cultivate the graces of a godly man that have already been planted.

Psalm 112 says

Light dawns in the darkness for the upright;
he is gracious, merciful, and righteous.
It is well with the man who deals generously and lends;
who conducts his affairs with justice.

You have become gracious, merciful and righteous. Let this define you and guide you. Be hospitable, generous and just. Make others feel welcome, as your father has taught you. Give your time and energy to those in need, as your mother has shown.

Do these things over and over and over, until the light dawns in the darkness and people around you see the glory of God in the conscientious and consistent life of a true gentleman.

We have enough celebrities and narcissists. What we need are gentlemen, men who fear God and delight in His law.

We need men like Timothy, of whom Paul says, “I am reminded of your sincere faith, a faith that dwelt first [in your case in your mother and father] and now, I am sure, dwells in you as well. For this reason I remind you to fan into flame the gift of God, which is in you through the laying on of my hands, for God gave us a spirit not of fear but of power and love and self-control.

Which leads to my second admonition: Be braver than you have been, because God has not given you a spirit of fear.

I expect you remember learning how to come off Crystal Mountain on your bike without riding the brakes. You will have to learn to take your hands off the brakes more often, and not just for the thrill my son Pilgrim was encouraging.

I think you were able to do this that day because you were able to trust Pilgrim and try something new, which is just a shadow of what God now requires. Some days God will require you to take your hands off the brake and the steering wheel, trusting wholly in his marksmanship, if I may mix the metaphors a bit.

Going back to Psalm 112 we find the righteous man will not be moved.

He is not afraid of bad news;
his heart is firm, trusting in the Lord.
His heart is steady; he will not be afraid,

Obedience is one thing, and is not all that difficult. But obedience rooted in faith is something else entirely. This is the kind of obedience where we take our hands off the brakes, obeying God when we don’t know the outcome. Faith is the evidence of things not seen.

All of us are comforted by our routines and feel safe when we are in control. But God is not as interested in our comfort as we might like. In the next few years he will push you and challenge you and make you very uncomfortable, because he wants you to trust Him and not be afraid.

There is another side of being a godly man. We are not just gentlemen but warriors. Verse 8 says the righteous man looks in triumph on his adversaries and verse 9 talks about caring for the poor.

This call to triumph, as a warrior and a champion, is not for the timid. Godly men must battle injustice, with hearts that are firm, and steady, rooted in our willingness to trust God. They can not be afraid.

I can’t tell you what this battle will look like for you, and neither can your parents. If we could, you wouldn’t have to trust God at all. But I can tell you this. You will have to be braver than you have been while you become more of what you are.

Your parents are stepping aside and God is pulling back the bowstring, aiming you at some target of his own. You are more precious to Him than you are to your parents, as hard as that is to imagine. He is wiser and stronger by far. There will be more tension in the string because he wants to send you farther and straighter than we can see.

The arrow has no strength or purpose of its own, but relies solely on the skill of the archer who will give you a spirit not of fear but of power and love and self-control.

So become more of what you are. Become braver than you have been. Fly straight, go far and trust God.

And the Lord will rescue you from every evil deed and bring you safely into his heavenly kingdom. To him be the glory forever and ever. Amen.

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more mystery

May 24, 2009

wedding
Photo by Jennifer Buehrer.

I had the privilege of officiating at my son Michael’s wedding last week. Here is what I said.
_____

Karina, we knew you before you knew Michael, and we loved you even then. You would have been remarkable, even if you did not like grits or laugh at my jokes. From the start we knew you as a gracious, diligent woman, a credit to godly parents who taught you to work hard and obey God.

And Michael, you came into our life speaking in full sentences at 18 months, articulate and sensitive beyond your years—Michael Joel Metts, the prophet of the day of the Lord, we called you.

So first of all, I’d like to say how honored I am that you asked me to perform this ceremony. In fact, you have both honored your parents in every way, so that you arrive at this moment with our full blessing and to our great joy.

Together you now embark on a grand adventure, one through which such honor will mean more and more, as you honor each other in ways you have yet to understand and for reasons you can not yet comprehend.

You will learn about each other’s strengths, and you will accept each other’s weakness. Each day you will be conformed more and more to the image of God’s own Son. You will not be conformed at the same rate and in the same ways, however, so you must be patient with each other and gracious to each other.

But you cannot expect to get through the hard times by trying harder. You cannot overcome the challenges merely through the grace you give each other and receive from each other, despite your many gifts. Michael you can see things see things the way they are and you can see them as they should be. And Karina, you are generous and good, a delight to behold.

But of the many gifts you have received, including churches to nurture you and families to love you, this marriage will be the greatest of all, save that of Christ himself.

For marriage, like every blessing, is a great gift. Like every good and perfect gift, it comes down from the Father of lights in whom is no variableness or shadow of turning. Your marriage can no more succeed through your effort than you can save yourself or change yourself outside of the free and abundant grace of God.

That’s because in every aspect of your lives together, God is glorified, both in your strengths and in your weaknesses. You must find your contentment in Him, your purpose in him, your strength in him and your joy in him. To try and find these in each other is idolatry.

Marriage is after all just a picture of greater truths. A mystery we are told. God’s faithfulness to His people, Christ’s sacrifice for his church—these are the things we understand and appreciate as we learn to love and serve each other in marriage.

Thus every single success brings God glory. The strength, the courage, the wisdom we exercise in marriage comes from Him, just as does the faith to believe Him and the will to obey Him. And when we fail, we learn the things we need to learn- humility, patience and grace. This too is his gift and this too his glory.

You have been taught to rest in the sovereignty of God and to glory in the grace of God. But these are truths you will forget a dozen times before the week is up. And when you forget, the solution is not to try harder, but to seek mercy and ask for forgiveness.

You will learn to do this with each other as you learn to do it with God. Or you will learn to do it with God as your learn to do it with each other. The order doesn’t matter, you will learn to do it one way or the other. For this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you.

This is how we are sanctified through marriage, just as we are sanctified in Christ. We get over ourselves, we surrender our pride, we lay down our life, we rest in his grace. And when we do all these things, we finally understand that we did none of them. That Christ did them in us.

In this then our praise is perfected, our joy is complete, our worship is accepted and our God is glorified.

Michael, this woman is God’s gift to you. You must lay down your life for her, as Christ loved the church. Every sacrifice is an act of worship. As you learn to love her, God is glorified in you and before all.

Karina, this man is God’s gift to you. You must honor him, as Sarah did Abraham, whose daughter you are. Every obedience is an act of worship. As you learn to respect him, God is glorified in you and before all.

Now blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places,…. In him we have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to the purpose of him who works all things according to the counsel of his will, so that we who were the first to hope in Christ might be to the praise of his glory. Ephesians 1

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the mystery of marriage

April 18, 2009

We have a night of blessing for young men in our church when they get married, and we had everyone over last night to spend some time with my son Michael, who is getting married in a month.

It’s a great time of fellowship, with a healthy blend of jokes, advice and prayer. One part of this event is a blessing by the father for his son, and here is what I had to say:

————————————-

When you were 18 months old, I taught you to say you were a poet and a philosopher. And I was pretty close.

Certainly you are articulate beyond your years, and always have been. People treated you like an adult when you were a child because you sounded so grown up.

Like any poet, you have a gift with words and a greatness of heart. You feel deeply and care passionately, and it shows in your relationships, your art and your faith.

You’ve managed this depth of emotion by becoming a philosopher as well, thinking carefully and arguing endlessly about words and the ideas behind them. Sometimes this allows you to process your feelings. Sometimes it allows you to escape them.

You can be completely transparent and you can be extremely guarded. You are still learning when to do which. And you will learn much more about that in the next two years with Karina than I could teach you in ten.

But you have learned much in many areas, and have been faithful as a friend, a brother, a teacher, an artist, a writer and now as a lover. There are so many things about you that bring me joy. I am grateful to call you my son.

But I am also grateful to call you by your name, Michael Joel Metts. These are not only the names of your godfather and my grandfather. They are strong, significant biblical names. Michael Joel, the prophet of the day of the Lord, a messenger of God and his work among us.

I suppose when you were small I should also have taught you say you are a prophetl, at least in the sense that every man in this room tonight who follows Christ should proclaim the truth of God.

I’m not sure how this will play out in your life. You may report this truth, or photograph this truth, or preach this truth. But you must proclaim it. We all should.

I make no apology for giving you a name, as I did your brothers, which calls you to higher purposes and ideals. My prayer for each of you is that you will aspire to be elders in the church, godly men who lead your families and others into faithfulness. Your mother and I long for this and rejoice in the faithfulness you have already shown. This is our prayer for you, and our deep desire.

But tonight we celebrate your choosing not to take this journey alone. I congratulate you on choosing Karina Lynn Mora to be your bride. She is a woman of character, beautiful on the outside and the inside. Your mother and I cherish her, and pledge to love her as our own flesh.

Scripture says he who finds a wife finds a good thing, and this woman your love is good and virtuous and strong. Together you will learn lessons I cannot teach you, lessons are only learned in marriage.

“This is a great mystery, but I speak concerning Christ and his church.” This is what Paul says in Ephesians 5 when he says we are to love our wives as Christ loved the church and gave himself for it.

We are members of his body, of his flesh, and of his bones, and it is for this cause that a man shall leave his father and mother, and shall be joined unto his wife, and they two shall be one flesh.

There are 50 men here tonight, and none of them can tell you what this means. We have all of us only scratched the surface of this mystery. No poet or philosopher or prophet has fully plumbed its depth or understood its power or known its joy.

Part of it I think is that in this mystery we get a glimpse of the joy that is set before us. I can sit on the porch in the afternoon with your mother, sipping a cup of tea, content in ever way. Moments like this show us something about what it is like to rest in God and experience his presence. Certainly it is but a touch of transcendence, but it is enough to make us desire more, and to long for our true home.

Another part of this mystery is that we learn to be like Christ as we learn to love our wives as we love our own bodies. And I can tell you this, we do love our own body. We might feed it or starve it; we might discipline it or indulge it. But we think about it all the time.

Now, I know you already think about Karina all the time. I know this because you no longer hear us when we call you, or acknowledge us when you are on your way to see her. You just walk out the door, thinking of her.

Imagine then that in every moment Christ thinks about his church in this way. We are never out of his mind or out of his heart. He longs for us and wants to be with us, and in this way he sanctifies us and purifies us and presents us holy and blameless before the throne of God.

In our best moment we can not love our wives as well as Christ has loved us on our worst days. You can not love Karina more than Christ loves you. And you must not love her more than you love him. Marriage is not just a way we understand this; it is the thing that must be understood.

All your best times will be mere shadows of the glory that will be revealed in Christ. Enjoy them, but contemplate them, and in these moments you will see the grace of God and find his mercy. Find your delight in him, and this frees you to find more delight in her.

There are many things that might blind you to the lessons God wants you to learn through your marriage to Karina, and I admonish you as your father and as an elder in Christ to avoid them. Here are three of them:

First, do not give you heart to another woman. You sometimes have too much confidence in your ability to resist sin. We all do. But the woman who might destroy your marriage is not a beautiful one, but a needy one. You are sensitive and thoughtful, and some woman in pain will want you to be sensitive to her and thoughtful about her problems. Do not give your heart to such a one.

Drink waters out of your own cistern, and running waters out of your own well.
Let your fountain be blessed: and rejoice with the wife of your youth…..
Let her be as the loving hind and pleasant roe; let her breasts satisfy you at all times; and be ravished always with her love. Proverbs 5:15-20

Second, do not spend more than you have or desire more than you need. This again is a temptation we all face, but everything you own must be cared for and everything you owe must be paid for. Caring for stuff and paying for stuff can distract you from caring for her and spending time with her. It will also distract you from serving God or spending time with his people.

You will be surprised at how little she wants and you will be amazed at how much she requires. So do not try to make her happy. You will fail in this. You must each find your contentment in Christ. You can not be for her what only Christ can be for her. But you can point her to his sufficiency, partly by what you say and mostly by what you do. Rest in Him and find joy in Him, so that she can rest in you and find joy in you.

If the text in Ephesians says anything at all to us about this mystery it is that it leads to holiness, not happiness. Cleanse, sanctify, cherish, nourish. Holy, blameless, pure. Great words, but in this longest and most direct text about Christian marriage, there is not a single word about our happiness.

What happens when you chose the thing that will make you or your wife happy over the thing that will make you or your wife holy? And what happens when you make this choice over and over again, day after day?

The mystery of marriage is diminished, and you have a relationship not unlike that of any pagan. If this becomes your goal then you are without authority and without respect and learn nothing about who God is and how he loves us.

I am not saying you should be trying to make her unhappy, nor am I saying that you will not be happy together, sometimes for days and sometimes only for moments at a time.

I’m just saying this is not the goal. Christ did not lay down his life to make us happy, even though we often find in him abundance and joy.

Among the joys I’ve found, you are one.

So before these men I honor you as one committed to understanding grace and knowing truth, as a son who has been obedient, and whose maturity and judgment are, by the grace of God, equal to the task that lies before you.

May you learn more than I ever did,
and sooner than I ever could,
how Christ loved the church.

And may your marriage reflect it,
To Karina first, and then to us.

May your children and their children,
Both in the flesh and in the spirit,
Find peace in your home
And strength in your story.

And may the glory of grace change you,
The mystery of marriage amaze you
And the truth of God sustain you,
‘till death alone do you part.

Amen.

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Serious draw-er is serious.

March 31, 2009

This is our granddaughter. She is cute. She calls me Santa.

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filling a void

November 7, 2008

…so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth;
it shall not return to me empty,
but it shall accomplish that which I purpose,
and shall succeed in the thing for which I sent it.
Isaiah 55:11

Some friends in Tennessee sent us a card today, one of many, many cards offering prayer and support in the recent loss of my mom. It’s been a little overwhelming actually. I get emails from people I never speak to, and cards from people I can’t remember.

The card today was the fifth one we have received from someone who donated Gideon Bibles in her memory. It made me smile.

About seventy year ago mom stole a Gideon New Testament from the closet in the basement of the Methodist Church in Naples, Florida. They kept them there as a gift for kids in Sunday School on their birthday, and of course she didn’t realize a Gideon would give her one any time she asked.

Her dad, who was still struggling with the loss of her mom in an automobile accident on the way home from church, had rejected faith. Mom herself was in a coma for several days, and they held up the funeral, thinking she and her mom would be buried together. Mom had a brother who was mentally handicapped as a result of the wreck, and still lives in institutional care.

332388549_68fd6b3685_m1In the middle of all this loss she stole the Bible and hid it in a palm tree on the beach. At the base of the palm frond is a small pocket, where it connects to the tree and she put the Testament in a plastic bag to protect it from the rain and hide it from her dad.

There is no way to calculate the value of that stolen Bible in her life, or in mine. One day she read about Jesus looking up and having compassion on the multitudes, and she believed then and for the rest of her life that he could have compassion on her too. She needed a friend, and Jesus was it.

Later she introduced him to my dad, a seventeen year-old drifting through town looking for his alcoholic father. And later she introduced him to me, when she was a young mother far from home and often alone.

Finding comfort in the Scripture, and in the Christ it reveals, was important to her all her life, and it has been the place I’ve turned in the days she was dying and in the days since.

But the Scripture has provided more than comfort; it transformed a family and turned us toward grace, anchoring us in our losses and our failures, pointing us toward the hope of redemption.

Paul tells us (Romans 8) that “creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God.”

“In this hope,” he says, “we were saved.”gideon-bible31

I wouldn’t know about this hope if it weren’t for that Gideon New Testament, just one of the 1.3 billion they have distributed since they started 100 years ago in 1908.

And so I smile, praying that someone somewhere will hide their Bible in a palm tree. And in their heart.

(You can give Bibles here.)

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being led, 4

October 22, 2008

Excerpt from funeral message based on Psalm 23, part 4.

And today she sits at the table he has prepared for her. What a joy and consolation.

The table David had in mind may have been the high flatlands of summer pasture, which the shepherd would scout out, pulling up poisonous weeds, looking for signs of wolves and bear. Sheep never think about all the preparation it takes to be led safely to pasture and back again, and David was probably not thinking about life after death.

But we are. When we read this, we also think of the table as our Lord’s table, and the communion of saints around the body and blood of Christ. This is a modest meal that points to the grand banquet of eternity, a feast he has indeed prepared. We come to the Lord’s table in remembrance of him, but also in anticipation of Him.

Mom is seated at His table now, and we are all glad. Much of our joy is in our assurance that she is beyond pain, in perfect peace, reunited with her husband and her mother.

But I can tell you this, none of that means very much to her right now. Her true joy is to be in the presence of Christ himself. Her face shines with the radiance of his glory, more than Moses’ did when he saw a sliver of God’s back on Sinai. She can see all of it, and that’s all she wants to talk about, or will ever want to talk about. There is no gossip in heaven. There is no recrimination. There is only the glory of God, and the grace of God, and the peace of God.

We can scarcely comprehend this, and we project on heaven the limitations of our own flawed imagination. But Scripture assures us that at this moment she is in fact just like Jesus, because she can finally and truly see him as he is.

We know so very little about this, but one eyewitness, Paul, who was caught up into heaven, said later that he was determined to know nothing among us, save Jesus Christ and Him crucified. In a single moment last Saturday mom understood more about the Shepherd and His Sacrifice than she accumulated in a life time of ministry or suffering.

Part of what she understood perfectly is that she does not sit at the table with the righteous because she was righteous, but because Christ is righteous and bore our sins in his body on the cross. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. She knew that. Now she understands it.

This fact is so amazing and humbling she may not even think about dad for a hundred years. She may not think about her pets ever.

In a single moment last Saturday mom understood how much greater her sin was than she imagined. Confronted with the glory of God, she cried, like Isaiah did, “Woe is me, for I am undone. I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts.”

And in that same instance she also understood complete forgiveness and overwhelming grace, grace that is greater than all our sins. She stood up on strong legs once again and then prostrated herself before the throne of God. It was a moment of intense, blinding, ecstatic glory.

If she ever slighted you, in that moment her love for you became as pure as Christ’s. If you ever slighted her, her forgiveness became as deep as her Lord’s. If she ever blessed you in any way, it was a mere shadow of the grace of God she now enjoys. Like Paul, she wants you to know nothing except Christ crucified and glorified.

And yet we are still here, clinging to our sin and anger and fear while a flood of grace is upon is.

This is the great depth of the still waters. We pause here and are awed. We confess our sin and cry Holy, Holy, Holy is the Lord of Hosts.

In this truth alone the oil of gladness runs down our cheeks and our cup runs over. If we get this, goodness and mercy will follow us all the days of our life, and we will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.

We will say with David, and with Mom:

The Lord is my shepherd. I shall not want.

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being led, 3

October 22, 2008

Excerpt from funeral message based on Psalm 23, part 3.

He leads us beside the still waters.

He also leads us through dark valleys. For mom this was the loss of loved ones, both physically and emotionally. Sacrifice and suffering are our lot, and we are not alone. But the truth is, we are led there.

This is a truth we often miss and seldom understand. Our shepherd is with us in these dark times, but he also led us there. He glorifies himself in our pain. We minister to others through our suffering, and because of it.

Dad once wrote a book about this, which the publisher called The Brighter Side. But I liked dad’s original title better. He called it the Blessings of Affliction. In this study of 2 Corinthians, dad says we cannot know the comfort of God if we do not suffer, nor can we comfort others. He says how we suffer is part of our heritage. And he points to 2 Corinthians 1:9 where Paul tells us “we had the sentence of death in ourselves, that we should not trust in ourselves, but in God which raiseth the dead.”

We can look at mom’s life as a widow with many diseases, with all the emotional distresses she experienced and we can know that she was led there, and sustained there, by that great Shepherd of the flock, Christ himself. In leading her there, and in leading us there, we know the comfort of God and reveal the glory of God.

And yea though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for he is with me; his rod and his staff, they comfort me.

Thanks be to God.

I wish I could tell you mom faced this last great valley without fear, but I can’t. She grieved her own death in her own way and she worried about her children and her grandchildren, all of them. But she did so with a measure of grace and courage. She asked everyone who came in the room if they knew Jesus, and the last day she spoke at all she thanked those who turned her and bathed her, acts of simple faith in a faithful shepherd who led her beside still waters and through dark valleys.

And today she sits at the table he has prepared for her. What a joy and consolation.

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being led, 2

October 22, 2008

Excerpt from funeral message based on Psalm 23, part 2.

Ours was often a transitional life.

By the time I was 16 I had lived in 13 different places, and mom was blessed that God often and finally provided some still waters. Our home on the mountain was one of those places. So was the farm at Ft. Ogden. And finally she was blessed in her later life to sit and watch the mostly tranquil waters of Lemon Bay. As Katie and I have been sitting in her backyard for the last few evenings, we’ve thought about the times mom and dad must have sat there together, resting and contemplating the grace of God.

The Lord provides these times and places, although we have to learn how to recognize them and appreciate them. At home Katie and I are learning to sit on the porch and sip a cup of tea. Each of us is led to still waters, although we often fail to drink. Attending to these times is a discipline of the heart. It is here where he restores our soul. It is here we find the strength to follow the path of righteousness for His name’s sake.

The good shepherd knows where the deep pools are. He leads us there, he meets us there and he fills us there. Jesus tells us those who hunger and thirst after righteousness will be filled, and that he himself is the everlasting water, and that he alone can quench our thirst.

Augustine put it this way: “Oh God! Thou hast made us for thyself and our souls are restless, searching, till they find their rest in thee.” When we are led beside the still waters we can drink deeply and rest. We cultivate those habits of life that bring us time and time again to the still waters, and all those habits reflect our willingness to be led by him.

He leads us beside the still waters.

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being led

October 19, 2008

Excerpt from funeral message, part 1)

You can tell a lot about people by the books they own, and even more by the books they read.

Most of my mom’s books are about the animals, birds, fish and other creatures in which she found such joy. When she came to our house ten weeks ago, she brought a book about gopher turtles and a book about sea birds. Did you know that gophers have dexterity? There are right handed ones and left handed ones. It’s one of the many things I learned from mom in the last two months. She would want you to know that.

Mom loved animals because she could pour her immense emotional energy into them, and they didn’t expect or need much in return. A dog will never betray you or belittle you. (Cats I’m not so sure about.)

But our lives with her were lives shared with her pets, and we will never forget laToy, the blind, incontinent, snoutless poodle she loved so much. My sister Toy and I often joked that our kids should be so lucky.

Mom’s pets have included dogs and cats, of course, but also lizards, ducks, donkeys, ferets, and snakes, almost all with unique names. When we lived on the mountain in Tennessee, she had a donkey named Deacon and goat with the inexplicably ordinary name of “Nanny,” which was given access to the house as well as the hood of dad’s car. Dad was a man who loved his wife without conditions.

Mom’s library also includes over a dozen books by an author named Phillip Keller, an agronomist turned nature photographer turned preacher who wrote frequently about his love of nature and his fascination with animals. One of these books, easily her favorite, is a book called A Shepherd Looks at the 23rd Psalm.

I had been wondering about her love for this particular book, and was in fact thinking about it as I was beginning to think about the sermon I would be preaching at her funeral, sitting by her bed the morning when she took her last labored breath and slipped into the arms of Jesus.

So I took the 23rd Psalm as the text for that message, not because it is familiar but because it is simple, a comfort to saints through all the ages.

Mom said Goodness and Mercy were two sheep dogs that followed David, and in fact she named two of our dogs after them. Her love for this ancient pastoral poem, and Keller’s meditations on it, had something to do with her love for animals.

But even in an age of self-will and self-indulgence, this most common and most loved Psalm is about something deeper, about the fact that we need to be led and there is contentment in following.

“The Lord is my shepherd. I shall not want.”

There is great comfort in being cared for by him, and even greater comfort in being led by him.

This leading suggests a journey, beside still waters, through dark valleys, to a table of abundance and grace. Mom always loved the journey more than the destination, although today she is pretty happy with where the journey ended. But in this life she loved to be going somewhere, and the hardest part of her last days was being in one place.

Driving down from Michigan last weekend for the funeral, I got off the Interstate south of Macon and drove down US 41, recalling the road trips of my childhood when we drove from Florida to Ohio to see my great-Aunt Rose, long before the Interstate was completed.

Mom’s favorite road trip was to Key West, as I’ve recounted elsewhere, and the weekend before she died she begged us to take her there just one more time. Going to Key West represented a mixture of the exotic and familiar experiences of her childhood.

But this restlessness she always felt says something about her journey, and mine as well as yours, and it is this restlessness that David, the Shepherd King, addresses with such intimacy in the Psalm 23. So much can be said, and has been said, about this journey and about the Shepherd who leads us through it.


In mom’s funeral message I addressed three points, which I will post here over the next week. I’ve tried to keep each section self contained, but the main reason for breaking it up is to keep the size manageable. If you would like a text file of the whole thing for some reason let me know and I will email it to you.

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giving thanks

October 16, 2008

I’m officiating at mom’s funeral Friday. Here is part of what I need to say:

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On behalf of my mom, I’d like to thank you for being here today. She was a friend to many, and many are here today to honor her. And I honor you, for your faithfulness to her, your love for her, and your care of her.

In particular, I would like to thank the good people of Calvary Baptist Church who honored her as a pastor’s wife, long after the pastor left. Your continued financial support reflects a people of character and purpose. Our family will always be in your debt.

And I’d also like to thank a multitude of caregivers, among whom are Bob, Anne, Bill, Karen, Jennifer and Tracey. And Regina and Shirley, with Hospice of Jackson. I’m not sure it takes a village to raise a child, but I know by the end it took an army to care for mom, and I thank each of you.

And in a situation where much honor is due, as the first born and only son of a southern matriarch, I’d like to say I clearly know when I’ve been outranked. And so before we honor my mother I want to honor in particular four remarkable women who touched her life.

One of these is Joyce Riley, the wife of my dad’s best friend Dick. If Dad and Dick where companions in ministry, Mom and Joyce were companions in crime. Whatever it takes to be a pastor’s wife, they did it more or less together for over 50 years. Dick prayed for my sisters and I, and our children, by name for all that time. The relationship between our families is rich and meaningful. Thank you Joyce for sharing our journey.

My Aunt Mary is also here today. She has been a stabilizing force in our home before we even had a home, and I can’t imagine all the trouble she must of kept mom out of growing up in Naples. Mary has been the model of a big sister- faithful in her care and concern, gracious in her forgiveness and patience. Whenever I think of a true Southern lady, I think of my Aunt Mary and her remarkable grace.

My wife Katie is a Yankee of course, a fact mom eventually was able to overlook. In the first three years after dad died, Katie made over a dozen trips here to care for mom, sometimes two or three weeks at a time. For the last ten weeks Katie has ministered to mom’s physical needs as faithfully as she did for her own mom. In fact, mom was the fourth elderly person we have cared for at life’s end, and Katie’s is an uncommon grace. Care giving is her vocation, a reflection of her giftedness and calling. Thank you so much, my dear friend, for your selfless care of my mom. And of me.

Actually, caring for mom since her stoke ten years ago has been a vocation in itself, and since long before Dad died my sister Toy has served mom with unfaltering devotion. This goes far beyond checking the mail, maintaining the house, feeding the animals, paying the bills– all the things we might normally expect and in which Toy and her family have been faithful. Mom was a woman of immense emotional range, caring deeply and passionately about the hurts of others, both real and imagined. When she had exhausted herself in caring for others, Toy cared for her. It was exhausting work, refilling the cup of mom’s emotional reserve time and time again. Throughout this long ordeal, Toy has called mom her hero. But for her faithfulness, Toy is a hero in her own right. And I honor her this morning.

These four women are faithful players in a cast of hundreds, including three children and their spouses, a dozen grandkids, and everyone here this morning. Each in their way and in their own time has played a part. And now the curtain has fallen, and we are about the business of striking the set.

I applaud you, for whatever role you’ve played.

It’s been a great show.

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