Remembering Dad

How does one celebrate a life? Will eloquent, stirring homilies do the trick? Will slide shows, floral arrangements, special music, or donations to our loved one’s favorite charities fill up the space that was once occupied by him? Our best efforts to commemorate and encapsulate the life of the person we loved collapses in on us like an accordion. Our own feeble words and meager acts are poor stand-ins. Words fail—how can they possibly support the warp and weft of a life so robust and full—a life as beloved and irreplaceable as our Father’s? How can they possibly imprison his laughter, ensnare his mannerisms, stow his vast intellect, compress his passion, or contain the love that we all felt in his presence? The task is beyond me—I am but a faltering pilgrim, driven deeper and deeper into exile with every good-bye. My father-in-law and I shared a common refuge—we both turned to books for solace and instruction, succor and light. But books make poor lanterns; they cannot illuminate the road when it is swallowed by darkness; they cannot take your hand and lead you out, or give you back what you have lost along the way.

This sorrow weighs on us; it sings in the footnotes of our lives, threatening to fill up the page—pushing the story to the margins.

This feels like a tragedy. We didn’t have enough time. We weren’t ready; there were still so many things we wanted to tell him, so many questions left slumbering at the ends of our sentences. It’s not fair.

Who will tell him how proud we are of him now? We were the most amazing, gifted, intelligent, accomplished children ever to grace this undeserving planet. We were geniuses and artists, accomplished writers, singers and craftsmen; and his grandchildren were all prodigies—even the one eating out of the dog’s bowl and the one who keeps banging his head against a wall.

 

We were the chief source of his pride and joy, the beneficiaries of an ongoing tribute, that I will at least say for myself, we did very little to warrant. He was occasionally disappointed in himself; like most of us he struggled with feelings of insecurity and failure, but he was never disappointed in us. We could do no wrong, and he never missed an opportunity to tell us. Did we return the compliment? Does he know that his laughter, his childlike wonder at the most commonplace things, his genuine interest in even the most mundane details of our days, his defensive and caring posture, his profound insight and insatiable hunger to know God and to love people were also some of our greatest treasures?

 

Does he know that his life mattered—that God used him to bring light and joy to so many people?

 

I do not know the answer to this question, but I have a sneaking suspicion, that it does not matter. I am off topic, I am knee-deep in shadows; down in the depths, holding my sorrow like a smooth stone that I cannot bear (part with) to send skipping out over the waves. Our father does not share our regrets, our fears, our longing. He is not concerned about his legacy, or his impact, or anything related to himself any longer. He is embarking on a new adventure, a glorious calling, the one for which he was fitted since the dawn of time.

One thing the two of us shared in common was a love for C.S. Lewis books. He loved the idea of sitting across from him in a plushy armchair: He with his coffee, and Lewis with his tea, and, in Lewis’ words “talking nonsense, poetry, theology, and metaphysics over beer, tea, and pipes.” (he never smoked, he just found the idea a romantic one when connected with Lewis). So the idea that he is now experiencing the last act of the “Chronicles of Narnia” series in which the kids realize that the span of their lives–all they experienced, dreamt, loved, and lost was merely the beginning of the real story, is incredibly heartening. Lewis writes

“All their life in this world and all their adventures in Narnia had only been the cover and the title page: now at last they were beginning Chapter One of the Great Story which no one on earth has read: which goes on forever: in which every chapter is better than the one before it.”                                      ” The Last Battle”

These words from an author he loved and celebrated are not too different from his own—we stumbled upon a file of Dad’s sermons this week, and I was struck by these words from a talk he gave on suffering:

“Why doesn’t the prospect of heaven serve to motivate Christians more than it seems to? I believe the answer is we have no way of really coming to terms with how wonderful Heaven will be. Yes, we have imagery—streets of gold, crystal sea—but that imagery does not appeal to us as much as it did to the culture in which it was written…Rather, Heaven will be a place where the Christian will experience in the fullest dimension, all of the deepest longings that the human heart has ever had” in the presence of God, the One who created our hearts to find their perfect joy in Him…If you stop and consider that for a moment, that’s something to look forward to!”

One of the last conversations I had with my Father in law was about this very thing. He was somewhat confounded by the extravagant love of God. He said something to the effect of: “If we really believed what we said we believed, about how much God loves us, about all that he has in store for us—wretched and unfaithful as we are—our hearts would be so full and our joy so riotous, we would outshine the sun.” His face was beaming as he talked about God’s love for him. It was as though he spent his whole life making plain the mysteries and the profound truths of the gospel for others, (which he did as a pastor for years) but the secret itself had just been revealed to him. The secret that being Christ’s disciple is not a matter of sacrificial living, good deeds, and making yourself more worthy of his gift. The great secret of being Christ’s disciple is in fact not found in doing anything for him, but rather in being a perfect delight to Him. It comes from this simple but easily overlooked truth:

I am his and He is mine.

The Psalmists sings,

“Whom have I in heaven but you?

And there is nothing on earth that I desire besides you.”

                                                                   (psalm 73:25)

As the hymn writer, George Wade Robinson, echoes:

Heav’n and earth may fade and flee,

firstborn light in gloom decline;

But while God and I shall be,

I am His, and He is mine.

“Loved with Everlasting love”

 This profound reality reminded me of a moment from a play I was in in High School. In Act III of our town, the character Emily, who has come back from the dead to revisit Grover’s Corners, looks around wildly and cries out to the Stage Manager,

“Do any human beings ever realize life while they live it?—every, every minute??”

Very few of us live our lives in a state of perpetual wonder. The love of God is just another of those things we take for granted—of course God loves me, the Bible tells me so. Steve had a bit of Emily’s intensity that day as we dug deeper into the mysteries of what it meant to be God’s child and his disciple. He had concluded that God did not have a precise plan for our lives. Our lives are about so much more than aiming and hitting the various targets:

Become a Christian – check

Get baptized – check

Memorize a bible verse a week – check

Introduce someone to Christ – check

Start a bible study, go on a mission trip, go to seminary, enter into full time ministry. Check, check, check. So that at the end of the day you are left with a series of checked boxes and one burning question: did I do enough Lord?

The goal, the mark, the thing we are straining toward, is little more than an episode along the way—these things were never meant to define or appraise us. We were made for so much more than climbing ladders or checking boxes.

God is not working toward my spectacular finish; rather He is drawing me toward His. What he desires for us is that we see Him

—calming the raging storm; we see Him–giving sight to the blind man; we see him–walking on the sea toward us with his hand outstretched.

He is not calling us to turn toward the shore and launch a “walk on water” ministry, or a “living water” outreach. He is calling us quite simply to keep our eyes on Him. When our eyes are on Him, the wildest tantrums staged by nature and man break in submissive waves around the helm of our ship; the billows of sorrow and the winds of regret, cannot overtake us, because He walks upon them and makes them his humble ministers. The storms of our lives may roar and seethe, but a deeper voice calms the waves.

How awesome would it be if, just as Steve was gripped by the love of God, we too –”may have power, together with all the saints, to comprehend the length and width and height and depth of the love of Christ and to know the love that surpasses all knowledge.”  Ephesians 3:18-19

What a gift for Steve if by his death, he may spur on in our hearts the love that he sought his whole life. If he could impress upon us that it is not a matter of our goodness or intellect, our compelling talents or potential, but our poverty. It is not what we bring to God that makes us lovely and useful to Him. What makes us an inestimable treasure to God is what He gives to us—and what does He give to us? He gives us His Son. Paul did not say in his letter to the Galatians that God set him “apart before (he) was born” to show what an eloquent orator and exceptional evangelist He could make of him. He says God

“set me apart…and called me by his grace…to reveal his Son in me.” (Gal 1:15-16)

The marvel of the redemptive reality of Christ is not that we become better people as we follow in His footsteps, but rather that the “worst and vilest among us can never get to the bottom of his love. The power of the gospel is not found in people who are so holy they have no need of a Savior. It is found in a God who “demonstrates his love for us in this: while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” (Romans 5:8)

I don’t know much about walking with God, but I know it is possible—because I have seen it. My father in law Steve was wise and accomplished in the world of academia; he was fluent in Greek and Hebrew; he was a gifted teacher and counselor but his talents and his accomplishments are not what set him apart. His achievements are not what we remember or celebrate—

It’s his laugh, his stories, his compassionate love, his modest, unassuming wisdom, and his friendship that we treasure.

 

 

 

 

 

 

And it is the fact that he walked with God that inspires us and encourages us now in our faltering journeys. Steve walked with God, though he was in irreconcilable sinner; He walked with God, though sometimes he stumbled, and at times even crawled; He walked with him and he talked with Him until our beloved father, brother, and friend, had the pleasure of hearing God call him “My own.”

“For I am certain that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor principalities, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

Rom 8:38-39

In Loving memory of Stephen Homer Johnson     April 6, 1946 – February 14, 2017

Say to my soul, “Rise up, my love, my fair one

and come away.” Then give me grace to rise

and follow Thee from this misty lowland where

I have wandered so long.”

A.W. Tozer