Good News (Wednesday April 28th, 2011)
I think all of you who read my column by now realize, that by nature, I am generally a happy and optimistic sort of person. However, the past two weeks have been quite difficult for me. My beloved Grandmother, Frances Jones, passed away at the age of 90. She had a minor case of dementia, which had progressed further, but she still knew the events of her life and all of her family. When my mother and father divorced when I was very young, I grew up in two places: my mom’s house, and my Grandmommies (which is what I called her).
In a family that did not attend church on a regular basis, I learned from Grandmommie what it was to be gracious and kind, and to think of others before myself. I was no doubt also spoiled rotten, as virtually anything I desired she bought for me. But she also taught me a lesson there – don’t ask for things that will make people say no as well. Ten thousand cups of coffee, trips to Arkansas and Clothes Line Fairs mingle with stacks of comic books and G.I. Joes in my memory of her home during the summers. I might give up any chance to read any classic literature ever again should it mean the ability to perfectly recall those summer days once more.
So what does this nostalgic look back mean for you, my reader? For as much as I remember these things and treasure them in my heart, no doubt you do as well, if you are of a certain age. There comes a day, frightening and terrifying to young minds, when someone truly important is lost to you by death. For me it was a number of family friends up until my father’s mother died. Then my father, now my grandmother. Loss for human beings is hard. True we have the hope of seeing them again in heaven, if they are believers in Christ. This is good news granted, but the next part I do not mean as a slight to anyone. For someone who has lost another, sometimes that doesn’t help as much as you think. Loss is real – and we keenly feel that those we love are not with us and among us, and our selfish selves want so badly for them to be here.
I hope that we members of the clergy do not take a “Pollyanna” attitude towards these things. I certainly try not to, as there are no mitigating factors. We can discuss all day that it was better this way or that, but at the end the loss is still there. There is a fear that I have, which I will share with you in the intimacy of this column, one that gnaws at me when the lights are out and it’s a touch too cold. At the innermost part of my mind, I fear that those I love who surround me are like lights – bright and shining, filling my heart and mind with love and warmth – but that one by one, they are going out, and that in some ways some of the brightest have already gone. I am only 32 years old, but there sometimes seems to be no way to shake that feeling that the darkness at the edge of your heart is creeping steadily inward, and that it moves and creeps when your back is turned, or when you smile at your child.
My only consolation in this fear is that, if in my doubt and worry, this situation is true, that as the light will fade from my eyes one last time, and as I look my last upon this world and the faces of those who love me, that the darkness will be brief, and that the next sight after that is a glorious blaze of light and warmth such as I have never beheld, and that standing there is the one person who made my life able to be lived – Jesus Christ, my savior. It is also selfish, and I am unsure of how these things work in the next life, but I would surely want a few moments at least alone with him, to tell him how things went even though he already knows. I want to hear that I’ve been a good and faithful servant, but most of all I want one of those hugs like I got yesterday – long and lasting, between two people whose hearts have both known loss and sorrow. I know that things grew a little darker for Grandmommie in the last two weeks, but I know that hug is happening somewhere far off, where it’s never cold, and there is no parting again. Until I am there myself, my world will be a little smaller as the tear drops fall.
- J. Cole Weston is Lead Pastor at Okmulgee First Church of the Nazarene at 711 N. Okmulgee. You can contact him via email at okmulgeenazarene@gmail.com or 918-213-0359. Services are held Sunday at 10:30, with Sunday School at 9:30.
