Happy 25th and an Announcement

Today is the 25th anniversary of Anna’s birth. A very strange thing to say about a little 9-year-old girl. I have written elsewhere about the movement of Easter around the dates between Anna’s birthday and the day that she died on May 7. This year is interesting with her birthday coinciding with Good Friday. Anna, like all young and not-so-young believers, struggled with the idea of Good Friday. She had trouble understanding what was so good about the day that Jesus died. Here is a picture from Anna’s Bible and the note she made when reading about this day in John 19.

But like more mature believers, she also came to understand that this day was truly Good Friday, because it was on this day that Jesus won the final victory over sin for the sake of mankind. It was on this day that mankind could be reconciled to God.

We have a special announcement to make today. It is not yet official, but Timberley and I are establishing the Anna Christine Borger International Student Scholarship at Southeastern Seminary. This will be an endowed scholarship that will aid international students at Southeastern Seminary. We are expecting the fund to be officially established later this spring and will be awarded first in the fall semester and then every semester after that.

Once the fund is established, everyone will have the opportunity to help with this work. The scholarship fund will be a permanently endowed fund, meaning that your donations will help students not only this year, but every year into the future. We will give the details later once they are made available.

I can think of four different people that would want to contribute to this fund. I have debated what order to put these in, so if you think I got it wrong, please know that I probably considered your order as well. Or just take this list as a random order. But here goes:

1. People that want to remember Anna. There a number of occasions during the year when family and friends may want to give a gift as a way to honor Anna’s memory. Her birthday is on March 29. The day of her passing is May 7. You know about Christmas (it falls on December 25 this year). If at any point you wish to honor Anna’s memory, please consider contacting Southeastern Seminary to make a donation for this scholarship fund.
2. People that love international students. International students are a unique group. They have so many obstacles to overcome when moving overseas for their education. They are learning a new culture. Often they are learning a new language. Sometimes they have new weather to deal with. (I’m thinking now of my two Pakistani students who moved to Wake Forest in January. Oh my!) But a big obstacle for them is financial. Not only do they have the normal problems related to work and school, but they also have governmental restrictions to their ability to work while they are in the country. This fund will be a tremendous aid to these students.
3. People that love Southeastern Seminary. I have been teaching at SEBTS for fifteen years now. I love this school. We have a great faculty. We have a great campus. We have a great group of students. We have a great president with a vision for reaching the nations for Christ. If you know our school, then you know that this fund will help the mission of Southeastern to train students to serve the church and the world in the advancement of the kingdom of God.
4. People that love the gospel of Jesus Christ. Coming out of the third point are those people who love the Lord and who love to see students trained to become pastors and missionaries. These international students will very often be returning to their home countries after graduation. Sometimes they are sent elsewhere with the International Mission Board. But however they serve, our international students are very often our students who are most passionate about sharing their faith with the lost world around them. They love the Lord.

As we have things finalized later this spring, please consider contributing to this fund.

Timberley and I hope you will have a Happy and Blessed Easter and celebration of Jesus’s resurrection and our future resurrection from the dead.

God Will Set All Things Right: A Reflection on 2 Thessalonians 1

Today is fifteen years since May 7, 2008. Some days it seems an eternity. Other days it seems like it just happened.

Yesterday I was at an event with some friends, among whom was an elderly couple who lost their grown son about five years ago on May 4 in an auto accident. I was talking to the wife and she said, “It just doesn’t get any easier, does it.” I nodded quietly. Something interrupted us and we didn’t continue the conversation, but I wanted to say to her that while those early years were very difficult, the stabbing grief that one feels at that time gives way to a numbing ache later on. I don’t know that I would say that it “gets easier,” but the feelings of sadness change and don’t feel so violent.

I am reading 2 Thessalonians this morning before we go to church. Paul tells the church in Thessalonika that “We ought to thank God always for you, brothers and sisters, and rightly so, since your faith is flourishing and the love each one of you has for one another is increasing.” He goes on to say that they are persevering in their faith despite suffering brought about by unbelievers around them. Their perseverance becomes the object of Paul’s boasting. “Therefore, we ourselves boast about you among God’s churches–about your perseverance and faith in all the persecutions and afflictions that you are enduring.”

Why would Paul boast about the suffering of the church? He goes on, “It is clear evidence of God’s righteous judgment that you will be counted worthy of God’s kingdom, for which you also are suffering, since it is just for God to repay with affliction those who afflict you and to give relief for you who are afflicted, along with us.”

Now to be clear, I believe that Paul was speaking to them of problems being brought on the church by civil and social pressures. The persecution of the church by the Roman government was infamous. And Paul was telling them that God would set these afflictions right by repaying their afflicters. But for us, I do not think it is inappropriate to think more broadly of what Paul might have meant by “those who afflict you.” Paul himself would say elsewhere that our struggles are not against flesh and blood but against principalities and powers. He recognized that there are afflictions brought on us in a spiritual dimension. Again, in other places Paul would speak of the bondage we are under to sin. He would speak of our slavery to sin. Sin pays wages and those wages are death. Paul knew very well that among those who afflict us, we must count sin, sickness and death in their company. And God will repay those afflicters as well as the persecutors within the Roman government.

But when will that happen? When will the victory be had over death? In one sense that victory already took place when Jesus was killed, buried and then rose from the dead. With his resurrection, death was defeated. And yet . . . we still go through sickness, death, auto accidents, bicycle accidents. We still feel the painful pangs of grief at the loss of loved ones. We might ask, “How is this a victory?”

Returning to Paul’s letter to the Thessalonians, Paul says, “This [God’s repayment of affliction on those who afflict us] will take place at the revelation of the Lord Jesus from heaven with his powerful angels, when he takes vengeance with flaming fire on those who don’t know God and on those who don’t obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus.” The pains we feel now will be set right, but not yet. They will be set right at the return of Christ.

The beautiful and difficult thing to see in what Paul says is that we do not need to be the agents of the vengeance. In fact, Paul would say this more strongly, that we should not be the agents of the vengeance. God is the worker of vengeance. He will do this on our behalf. We do not need to wield the sword. God will do that.

And so Paul prays for the church as they await this return and the setting right of all things, “In view of this, we always pray for you that our God will make you worthy of his calling, and by his power fulfill your every desire to do good and your work produced by faith, so that the name of our Lord Jesus will be glorified by you, and you by him, according to the grace of our God and the Lord Jesus Christ.”

I pray the same for us today, that we would be faithful to do every good work that God has created for us to do, as we patiently await his return and his working of vengeance over sin, death, and the pangs of grief.

Happy 24th Birthday to a 9-Year-Old!

Today is Anna’s 24th birthday. I was going to say it is difficult to imagine her this age, but it is really impossible to do so. And I’m not sure it is helpful to try to do so.

Timberley has a group of young ladies that come to our home once a week for prayer and Bible study. Many of them are close to the age Anna would be if she were still with us. But none of them is Anna. The problem is not that it is difficult to imagine her this age. The problem is that in my mind she is fixed at nine years old. She will never be older.

As time moves on, things change. My face is older now. My hair–the part I still have–is getting gray. Timberley and I complain about pains in our bodies that were never there in the past. When we see Samuel, we see a tall, handsome young man. We see him married to Grace and living on his own. But Anna is forever fixed as a nine-year-old girl.

It is funny that I have to work at remembering Sam at past ages. He is in the present with me now. But I cannot imagine Anna at any other age than nine. Sam is still part of the passing of time. Anna has become a fixed point. I have not thought of the difference until now.

What else in life is like that? What are the things that are current with us–that move and change over time? And what are those things that are fixed and permanent?

I suppose that the difference between my inability to imagine Anna as something other than a nine-year-old and the difficulty of remembering Sam as a child is due to the overwhelming strength of the present. Our moment-by-moment reality is what is most present in our minds at any given time. This seems so obvious that I almost feel silly saying it. But the ramifications of that truth are important. When we remember the past, we need time and the freedom of mind to reflect on things no longer present. We cannot think about the past when we are in the middle of a hurried event. We need an easy chair and a quiet house. The present is so much in our mind, that we have to work to get it out of our mind.

I think that this truth is what is behind Paul’s comment in 1 Corinthians 13 that three things remain: faith, hope and love. He goes on to say that the greatest of these three is love. What does Paul mean by that? My best guess is that Paul is here talking of three temporal realities. Paul refers to faith when he is thinking of things in the past. We believe (have faith) that certain events took place in the past. Paul says elsewhere that we must believe that God raised Jesus from the dead in order to be saved (Romans 10:9). The fact that God raised Jesus from the dead is not something we can see. So we must believe that it took place.

On the other hand, for Paul, hope is what we think about the future. We have a sure hope in what God will do for us in the future. It is interesting, and significant, that for Paul the faith we have that particular events took place in the past, and the hope we have that particular events will take place in the future, are both just as certain.

But both faith and hope are eclipsed by love. Love rounds out this picture of time. If faith is what we have in past events, and hope is what we have in future events, love is what we do in the present. And this overwhelming power of the present that I spoke of above is why for Paul, the greatest of the three is love. We can reflect on things that we believe. We can live according to the things hoped for in the future, but what is before us at each moment is to live in love. For Jesus, his greatest commandment was to love one another. He said that by this, others will know we are his disciples, by the way that we love one another. And it is this present reality that is most important for us as we live out our lives.

On Anna’s birthday each year, I am tempted to imagine her in what would be her present age. I suppose I cannot escape this exercise in futility. But I have to come to grips with the fact that Anna is part of the past. She should remain fixed in my mind as a nine-year-old girl. That is a right and good thing. But while the past surely shapes the way we live in the present, it should not become the object of our thinking such that it eclipses the present. Everything must remain in the place assigned it.

In the same way, I should not spend too much energy thinking about Samuel as he was in the past. I have a present tense relationship with him that is significant. If I take too much of my mental space to think about how he was at this time or that time in the past, I will miss out on the really important thing, which is to love him in the present.

So on this birthday of Anna, I will say, “Happy 24th Birthday, you nine-year-old girl! We love you and miss you. But because we have faith in the past work of Christ, and because we have a sure hope in the glory God has for us in the future, we know that you are well, and we know that we will see you again.”

“PS: Say his Grandma Deloris for me. And say hi to Jesus.”

“Love, Dad”

Remembering the Past, Celebrating the Future

Our family and close friends remember May 7 as a significant day for us. This is the day in 2008 that we lost our daughter, Anna. I will not retell the story here, but if you are reading about this for the first time, there is plenty of reading material from past blog posts here to find out the story.

Every year on this day, I post something here. Shortly after her death, I would share about how we were handling the loss. I would write about the changes in mourning with the passing of time. Sometimes, I would take the opportunity to share something about Anna that was funny or interesting. There is so much about her that fit into both of those categories.

This year, however, my mind is elsewhere on this day. It is not away from Anna, of course. It is difficult not to be aware of that loss every day of the year, let alone on these special days. What I mean is that with the news of the world, remembering Anna’s life takes on a different tinge this year.

With the leak of the Supreme Court materials concerning the likely overturning of Roe v. Wade, I have been seeing and reading many stories from women who have had miscarriages or lost young babies. I am reminded of our own story in losing our third child in a miscarriage. The sorrow at that time was very real. As real as the sorrow we felt at Anna’s death, but just not as deeply penetrating or life changing.

I did not think that I would ever see Roe v. Wade overturned. Despite all of the activism from the pro-life community over the years, I just did not think that this sweeping of a change would ever happen. I feel the same way, I think, that my mother did when Barack Obama was elected president in 2008. She did not vote for him. She would not have supported his views and actions as president. But after the election, I remember talking to my mother and hearing her say how happy she was that he had been elected. “I never thought I would see a black president in my lifetime. I’m glad that it finally happened.”

In addition to the news from the Supreme Court, we have the ongoing daily news of war in Ukraine. This story has taken a personal turn for us after Timberley traveled to Poland to help in a refugee center there. As I am writing this she is preparing for another trip to Moldova for the same purpose. On her trip to Poland, she met many families coming out of Ukraine, all of them having tragic stories of loss and uncertainty. She became close with several of the families and continues to be in contact with them now, following their news as they move to various parts of the globe to begin their new lives.

With the news from Ukraine, and with Timberley’s personal involvement with the Ukrainian people, we are brought face to face with questions of life and death. Questions of war and peace. Kindness and brutality.

All of these things serve to bring a different light to an old subject–remembering Anna’s life and death. Of course, I could imagine Anna’s responses to the events of the day. But I don’t see the purpose in that right now. What is important is that on this day when a singular event is before us in our memories, this singular moment that created a before-and-after mark in our lives, we have reason to hope for the future. The war in Ukraine will cease someday. All wars will. There will be an opportunity for peace. There will be a time for rebuilding, for replanting. And if we are not sure about the truth of that, we can look to the unimaginable news that the nearly 50 years of complete freedom to kill unborn children in the United States will be coming to an end.

So today, I want to remember Anna’s life, her humor, wisdom, and wit, by thinking hopefully about the future of Ukraine and for all nations at war, and by celebrating the news that the terror of abortion-on-demand in America will be coming to an end.

A Strange Birthday This Year

It is Anna’s birthday today. Let’s see . . . 1999 to 2022. She would be 23 today? Oh my.

Of course, Anna is never 23. She is always nine years old now.

This year is an unusual one for us. I am writing this by myself at home. Sam and Grace have moved to Nashville. Timberley is in Poland this week working with the Ukrainian refugee situation. We talked this morning and talked a little about Anna’s birthday. But the birthday is not as it usually is. We have certain traditions for this day. Anna loved going to Olive Garden when we visited my mom and dad in California. So on her birthday, we usually go out to an Italian restaurant for dinner. But this year Timberley is eating Polish food. I am eating a leftover stir-fry from a few nights ago.

As the years go on, mourning continues to change. There was a time in past when Timberley might have scheduled her trip differently so she would be home for Anna’s birthday. I think that the fact that this opportunity could arise for Timberley to help in Poland, and that we could both make the decision for her to go, knowing that it is Anna’s birthday, but knowing that the trip is more important, is a sign that we are in a more normal place than we were in the past.

Time for a story. I may have shared this in the past, but it has come back again for me. Last July I went to a gathering of dobro players in Wilkesboro, NC. On the last evening of the gathering there is a sort of open-mic concert for the dobroists to play. I knew going in that I was going to play a certain song. I had been working on it for the year leading up to the gathering. The song was “In the Garden.” Why “In the Garden”? It was never my favorite hymn. In fact, at one time in my life, I would have been a little embarrassed to be playing “In the Garden. ” So what changed, that made me want to play this in public?

One day, not long before Anna’s accident and death, she was walking around the house singing “In the Garden.” I was working in my office and called out to her, asking her to stop singing that song.

“Why?” she asked, “I like that song.”

“Well, it’s not a very good hymn. I can’t go into details right now, but just pick something else. How about “Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing.”

“But I like “In the Garden,” she insisted.

“Anna, sing another song. Okay?”

She walked away singing “Come Thou Fount.” And I was happy.

Fast forward now to a time shortly after Anna’s death. We were cleaning out some things and found some of her journals. Anna was a gifted and funny writer. We were enjoying finding little stories she had been writing. I opened up one of her journals and read the entry on the first page.

She made a list titled, “Reasons I like Jesus better than my dad.” I don’t recall how many items were on the list. I only remember number one. “#1: Jesus doesn’t get mad when I sing In the Garden.”

Ouch. What an idiot I was. Why would I ask her to stop singing? Or to sing a different song?

But then a more important truth hit: of course Jesus was not mad when she sang In the Garden. Why get all wound up over a song that I thought was inappropriate? Yes, there is wisdom we need to exercise when we choose music for the church. But when a person is praising God and we judge the way they are doing it, are moving past what God’s concern might be? Might we get all wound up over something that God is actually pleased with?

So now when I find myself getting judgmental about something, I ask myself, “Is Jesus as mad about this as I am? Does Jesus want this person to stop singing this particular song? It has helped me relax a bit.

And it also helped me learn a nice song to play on my dobro.

Thanks for the lesson, Anna.

And Happy Birthday!

Dad

Reminders of Loss; Reminders of Hope

May 7 is always a solemn day for us as we are reminded of the loss of Anna. The whole season is complicated, of course, by the nearness of Easter, the beginning of spring, the anniversary of the loss of my mother (May 2), and then Mother’s Day, which is always the next Sunday after the 7th.

In the past, Timberley and I have arranged to be away from home on Mother’s Day and have skipped out on the festivities at church. This year is different. We are at a new church, Faith Baptist Church in Youngsville, NC. We have new responsibilities there. We have other travel planned not too long after Mother’s Day. But for whatever reason, we will be in church this coming Sunday. I think it will be the first Mother’s Day in a long while.

A common theme that I have written on over the years is the bringing together of suffering and hope. I was reminded of this last night when I met with a group of men from our church. We were sharing stories about knowing God’s will in the midst of difficult decisions at various points in our lives. One of the young men–he’s maybe not so young, but he is younger than I–shared about a time in his life, a three or four year period, where he and his wife really questioned whether they had made the right decision about something. They feared that they had moved far out of God’s plan for them. But through that difficult time, an opportunity emerged that would not have been there had they remained where they were earlier. It was clear to them that this new opportunity was the moving of God in their lives. In the midst of difficulties or suffering, our view of God’s work can be obscured, but it is there nonetheless.

With our loss of Anna, that bringing together of suffering and hope is so much more real, so much more vital. There is a tangible loss, a gap in our lives. Yet the hope in the resurrection is so much more tangible as a result.

We continue to miss Anna each day. On this day more so than others. Yet I suppose that we continue to have hope in the resurrection every day. And on this day, more so than others.

Anna resurget.

Maranatha.

A New Companion for Tea on Anna’s Birthday

We often speculate about what is happening with Anna now that she is with the Lord. Often times, it concerns Anna meeting someone new in heaven. She died almost exactly one year to the day before my mother passed, so we thought much at that time about their reunion together with the Lord.

A few days ago I read the news that Beverly Cleary died. She was 104 years old. If you don’t know who Beverly Cleary is, it is because you don’t have children. Every parent knows the creator of Henry Huggins and the two sisters, Beezus and Ramona. Cleary was a librarian who was disappointed with the state of juvenile literature and so began writing books of her own, that have become award-winning classic literature in that genre.

Anna loved her books. These were among those early “chapter books” that Anna read. And boy did she read. I often tell the story of her bedtime ritual. She read so long at night when she went to bed that we had to make a lights-out time. Also, since she didn’t know exactly what she wanted to read, she would bring stacks of books to bed with her. So we instituted the “five-book” rule. She had to pick five books to read that night and could only read those.

So she would choose, for instance, five of the Ramona books and climb into bed. And this is where it gets fascinating. Anna did not simply pick up one book and start reading. That would be far too simple. No, she would choose one book and read the first chapter of it. Then she would set it aside and go on to the next and read the first chapter of it. And then on to the next book, until she had finished the first chapter of each book. Then she would go to the first book and read chapter two, and so on through all five books. So she would finish five books at night reading all of them at the same time.

She was a fast reader.

We were on an airplane once. I was sitting in an aisle seat next to an older woman, while Timberley and the kids had three seats in the middle section next to me. I noticed the woman opened her bag and took out a children’s book and began reading. I thought that was odd, so I asked her about her books. She was a reading teacher in Chicago and she enjoyed reading juvenile literature. I told her that my two children really enjoyed reading, and she offered one of her books for Anna to read on the plane. I handed it to Timberley and on down the line until it reached Anna. She was quite excited to see a new book.

About 30 minutes later, I don’t remember exactly, Timberley tapped me on the arm, handed me the book back and said that Anna wants to know if there is another. I relayed the message to my new friend. She said, “Oh, didn’t she like this one?”

“I think so, but she’s done and wants to read another book,” I explained.

“What do you mean? She didn’t finish the whole book. Did she read the first chapter?”

“Let me check.” I turned to get Anna’s attention. “Anna, did you finish the book?”

“Yes,” she answered. “I liked it. Is there another?”

I turned back to the woman next to me. She just had a blank stare. “She finished the whole book? But it’s only been 30 minutes (or whatever the time was).” She paused and then looked at me very seriously. “This is very unusual.”

*****

I imagine that meeting Beverly Cleary might be a little like meeting this woman on the plane. She would have four or five books in her bag, just in case she had some time. And she would be fascinated and thrilled by this little girl that would speed read through five of her books at once.

I also imagine that Anna would invite her to join the table for tea. She would introduce her to my mother. She might find a funny hat and a scarf in case Ms. Cleary didn’t have her own. Then she would clap her hands together and call out in her feigned British accent for Maid Nesty to bring them tea.

“Oh dear. Where is Maid Nesty?” But Timberley is not there yet. She will have to get her own tea in the meantime.

Anna, I hope your birthday is a good one and that in this eternity with the Lord, you will also have an eternity talking to others and enjoying one another. I hope you enjoy getting to know Ms. Cleary.

We do continue to miss you.

Boasting in Suffering

Enjoying a snack at Pak Bejo’s Soto Stand

On Sunday morning, as many others were doing around the country, our Sunday School was having a Zoom conference. The members gathered in front of their computers and we each stared at the Hollywood Squares version of our classroom. We have had a good time meeting this way, but we do miss the physical presence we have been avoiding during this period of the Coronavirus.

We have been reading through Romans together and this past Sunday we were in Romans 6. In trying to express the importance of the passage beginning here and extending through chapter 8, I mentioned that when I was in college I was encouraged to memorize Romans 6-8. It was the first large block of text that I had committed to memory and it began a process that then led to the book of Philippians and then James.

Later in the week, Timberley told me she was encouraged by my testimony of scripture memory and decided to revisit her own scripture memorization. She decided to work on Romans 5-8.

She ran into a snag, however, when she read 5:3 in the 1984 NIV: “Not only so [that is, not only do we rejoice in the hope of the glory of God], but we also rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance.” That was fine. Until she read the revised NIV from a few years ago in which it says, “but we also boast in our sufferings.” She asked me which was correct. This question led to a good study on the Greek word translated both as “rejoicing” and as “boasting.” Is this a positive or a negative term? Is this “boasting” a kind of prideful exhibition?

As it turns out, the term is rather neutral, and it has to pick up the positive or negative meaning from the larger context. In the context of Romans 5:3 it is clearly intended to be positive. Which leads to the next question. What does it mean to “rejoice” or to “boast” in our sufferings? What sufferings are these?

Today is the 12th year since Anna died. It is usually a quiet day for us. It is a sad day. It is a reflective day. Since the Sunday following May 7th is always, I believe, Mother’s Day. That weekend is one in which Timberley and I, and Sam when he was still with us, would go away for the weekend and take a retreat from the Mother’s Day celebrations and flower-giving in our church.

One year we went to the Outer Banks. It was a beautiful weekend. Another year we went camping at Mount Mitchell. It was an interesting weekend. But we always spend time away. What to do this year?

The Coronavirus this year took away the need to escape the gaiety of church life since none of us are meeting anyway. But Timberley took care of that decision with certainty yesterday. We are in the process of cleaning and painting our garage. Yesterday morning I went to a neighbor’s house to help her with a small task there. When I returned home I found Timberley sitting in a chair in obvious pain, with a towel wrapped around her foot and leg.

“I sprained my ankle going out to the garage,” she said, holding back tears. For Timberley, of course, the tears are mere emotion grabbers. This is a woman that gave birth twice with no pain medicine. An 8 out of 10 on a pain scale for a normal person makes her twitch. So her tears were there to let me know that this was serious.

To make a long story short, she was wrong. She did not sprain her ankle. She broke her foot. She will now be spending the next six weeks in a boot with crutches.

So our May 7th this year was spent visiting doctors and getting x-rays. It certainly kept our attention busy for the day.

Timberley asked me last night, or this morning, if the suffering in her leg was related to the suffering of Romans 5:3? “Of course it is,” I answered. But how? The suffering of her leg, along with the suffering of the virus sickness, the suffering of the economic depression we are in, the suffering people’s mental stability during the quarantine period, the suffering of fractured relationships due to physical separation, the suffering of fractured relationships because of rising political and other tensions, the suffering of a little girl falling from a cliff 12 years ago, the suffering of a grieving mother and father and big brother in the ensuing years, all of this suffering “counts,” as Timberley likes to say. (“But who’s ‘counting’?” I always reply.)

All of this suffering, according to Paul develops perseverance. He goes on to say that perseverance develops character, and character develops hope. And hope–the muscular kind of biblical hope–does not disappoint. Christians are sure of the things to come. We do not walk around wondering. We do not merely guess at things. We have hope. Real hope. And according to Paul, that kind of hope begins when we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that we are participating in some small or large way in a broken world that Christ came to fix. We are experiencing in some small or large way the sufferings of Christ as he died in our place. We are experiencing in some small or large way the sufferings common to all mankind that bind us together before our God.

So on this May 7th, do not begrudge the difficulties you are experiencing. Do not think that God has cast you aside. Do not think that God does not care about your sufferings. He cares. He loves you so much that he sent his son to suffer and die in your place in order to pave a way out of this world of suffering and into a glorious inheritance that will never fade away, and in which there will be no more tears of sorrow.

Come, Lord Jesus.

Hello, Baby Anna!

Timberley and I bought our first digital camera shortly before we moved to Indonesia in 2003. Anna was nearing her 4th birthday. Sam had just turned 6. For those of you who have crossed the great divide from the analog to digital world, you know that in reminiscing, it is very easy to think that life began with digital pictures.

One year old Anna with what would become her favorite pastime–books.

But of course, there was an analog life before everything became cloud-based. Yesterday Timberley opened one of the boxes that has traveled around the world with us several times, but has seldom if ever been opened. In it, we found envelopes and albums full of photographs. We spent the next several hours looking at our life before Indonesia. We had baby pictures of Sam, baby pictures of Anna, a wonderful album given to us by the good people at San Bruno Chinese Church, another album filled with Timberley’s memories of her time in the Middle East. We had a great afternoon full of laughter.

Anna staring at her favorite big brother, Sam.

Today is Anna’s 21st birthday. Timberley and I were thinking this morning about a 21 year old Anna. She would be close to finishing her dual college degrees of marine biology and art, so she could draw pictures of fish. She would likely be engaged to a young man with a certain name since she seemed to have a soft spot for boys with that name. (I’m keeping the name private in case one of those young men is reading this now.)

Sam and Anna on a California beach.

But in the end, whatever good thing we could think of for Anna’s hypothetical future paled in comparison to what God had planned for her. She could have been drawing pictures of fish, but now she is enjoying the creator of the fish. She could have been engaged to some young man, but now she is preparing for a far greater wedding feast. In fact, all of our best plans for Anna do not compare to the unsurpassed goodness of God’s riches stored up for her.

Anna at Ridgecrest during our appointment ceremony.

And so it is for us. During times like these, with the Coronavirus taking its toll around the world, we can begin reflecting on things that are important to us. We can consider the importance of family, our home life, the other relationships that are important to us. And it is right that we should be thinking of such things. But the best life that we can imagine is really just a pale shadow of the incomparable riches God has stored up for those who believe and trust in his son, Jesus. May we all do our best during this time to remember those things that will most give our lives meaning while we are here. And then may we realize the greater good that we cannot imagine that is waiting for us.

Happy 21st birthday, Anna! You are still missed and loved.

Sharing Tears and Laughter

This anniversary of Anna’s death has been stranger than others. It is reminiscent of our time ten years ago, when my mother passed away on May 2, almost exactly one year after Anna.

This year, we received word Sunday morning that the son of a dear friend of ours had been killed in an accident the day before. We gathered with friends from our church and our friends’ neighbors and sat with the grieving couple. We listened to stories. We cried with them. We sat quietly for long times. We laughed hysterically at times.

For Timberley and me the afternoon was a bit surreal. Our own memories of a house full of friends and neighbors 11 years ago filled our thoughts. Memories that are so, so bittersweet. The bitterness is still tangible–the steely taste that overpowers all other tastes. Yet the sweetness of the kindness of our friends is just as palpable today as it was those years ago.

When we entered our friends’ home early Sunday morning, we embraced and sobbed long, heaving cries together. They cried because they had lost their only son. We cried because we understood. Then my friend looked at me and said, “I never knew before what you had been through. I am so very, very sorry that you went through this.” I tried to deflect his attention to our grief. But I understood all too well what he was feeling.

After Anna died and following the memorial service we held in California, I left the sanctuary of the church and was met by a solemn man standing with hands in his pockets. Sunglasses hid his tears. This was a friend I had known since childhood. Years earlier I had given his son drum lessons. That son was killed tragically in a home accident. I have always remembered, in the aftermath of that accident, sitting with my friend and hearing him say, “It seems like every one has abandoned us. No one will talk to us about our son. No one brings him up anymore and they stay away from us now.” When he told me that, I remember thinking to myself, “We just don’t understand. Everyone is afraid.” So, years later, when I was leaving the sanctuary and saw my friend in deep anguish, I gave him a hug and we cried together. I understood now and I knew that he understood. If I had been wise enough I would have said what my new friend said to me, “Now I know what you went through. I am so sorry.”

It is important to feel sympathy at the right time. We need to be able to recognize that another is experiencing grief and to act accordingly. Empathy is a deeper feeling in which we not only recognize the emotion in the other, but we take part in it ourselves. Empathy, I imagine, that wells up out of the same spring that feeds the sorrow in the other is the strongest form of empathy. That is when the tears and sobs, but also the laughter, become the strongest.