May 15, 2024
Dear Johnathan and Jack,
“Please don’t apologize.” That was my request to the high school student who had just presented his senior thesis. I was on the panel for his defense a few weeks ago on that Tuesday evening in late spring, and I was offering my feedback after he read his paper. He had begun with a disclaimer about the topic of his project being abstract, theoretical, and philosophical, almost as though he was embarrassed by it. Evidently, he deviated from typical topics by choosing to explore the three theological virtues: faith, hope, and love. Those three words were particularly poignant for me that night as this was the first and only real outing away from the house while Mom was in hospice.
The day before this event, Mom and I had a long conversation with her hospice nurse who was sharing with us her experience in different palliative care situations. She wanted us to know how much peace she felt in our home, and how she could see the hope on Mom’s face and hear it in her voice—what she recognized as the difference that faith in Christ makes to someone on their deathbed. She told us stories of watching people struggle in their final moments, their horrified demeanor indicating an encounter with something dreadful. It is in contrast to these patients that she was appreciating the glow of grace and truth emanating from Kathy’s hospital bed in our room. Mom was going through her own unpleasant challenges, even requiring the nurse and I to work together over several hours to help Mom try to—let’s just say, get things moving. There was pain, discomfort, and nausea in a most humiliating situation for a nice young lady to be in. Yet, through it all, we prayed, cracked jokes, listened to uplifting music, and shared life-going-on family stories. Even when breaking down, in the valley of the shadow of death, she did not fear, her spirit did not grow faint, and her attitude did not become foul. Our God was with us, and we knew this miserable state, even if it proved to be the final stage of earthly existence, would not be the final version of eternal life. Such hope.
The nurse may also have been noticing the afterglow from the previous day, when we hosted our impromptu Sunday afternoon folk worship festival. Family, friends, and neighbors gathered around, filling the yard and our house to sing along and share blessings over Kathy. We pretended our bedroom upstairs had a balcony, and listened through the open windows as the music of reflection and praise blew in on the breeze. This was actually an encore session, inspired by the more intimate house show we had just a few days earlier. That Thursday evening, a smaller group of family and friends filed in to form a horseshoe around Mom’s bed, lining the bedroom wall and spilling out into the hallway. Psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs saturated our house, lifting high our great God’s name even while she sank lower in her bed. She couldn’t move easily, but her hand instinctively raised off the bed at her side, as though gently reaching for the surface, elevated by the buoyancy of the Spirit in that place. Such love.
That night, as on many others, I read from Every Moment Holy, Volume II: Death, Grief, and Hope. This book has helped us worshipfully navigate the route called Dying, or at times provided the tour guide voiceover narration along each bend in the road. What makes this manual’s prayers so powerful is that the faith they articulate has dirt under its fingernails, calluses on its hands, scabs on its knees, and scars on its back. These are not two-dimensional Bible verse excerpts trying to paper over pain with sentimental platitudes. These are strong levers, hewn from the old growth evergreens of Scripture, and carved into poetic prayers with the care of a master craftsman. They pry open the chambers of the heart that didn’t know what to say, they dislodge boulders of big thoughts that were blocking big feelings from flowing, and they lift the burdens of unbelief out of the pit and onto level ground. Such sacrifices of praise can support anyone willing to take the next step to follow Jesus, even through the way of suffering, trusting that He will never leave us or forsake us, and that every crying-out-to-God tear in this life is irrigating a heavenly harvest in the next. Such faith.
So, I told our high school senior friend that the theological virtues may have seemed abstract or theoretical to him, but over the last few days, I had been in a room at the bedside of a dying saint, and watched as the only thing that mattered in those moments could be described as faith, hope, and love. They were the most real thing. Their practical impact manifested as grace, peace, and joy. Mysterious, intangible, but perceivable and palpable. No one in that room could deny it. When all else is stripped away, when our bodies fall apart, when the stuff of earth decays, there will be nothing else that counts. Faith in Jesus, hope in God, and love through His Spirit––these three remain.
The power of that point came up again last night, the Tuesday after Mom died. We met with the group of teenagers for the book study in our upstairs den, just like we have most Tuesdays for the last several months. Although some might have thought it would be awkwardly uncomfortable to still meet under the current circumstances, I considered it providentially appropriate that the topic of discussion, as our semester-long schedule would have it fall into place, was on the chapter about suffering. Does God care when we hurt? Why do bad things happen? Why is there evil in the world? Why would God allow suffering?
We started this series at the beginning of the spring when Mom was right there in our midst participating, and we kept meeting even when Mom was too weak to come out of her room to join us. Now, less than a week after she died, we gathered again, determined to finish our series in time for summer, but more so, determined to apply these otherwise hypothetical questions to our very real personal lives. What better time to grapple with the character of God than when the ink is still wet on my wife’s and your mother’s death certificate? If ever these concepts mattered, it should be now.
We weren’t playing around by studying these Ten Questions about Christianity. I intended for us to be genuinely interested in exploring the nature of the forces behind the universe, for this is the most real thing. Something or nothing? Personal agency or emergent energy? Wisdom, benevolence, and authority, or ambivalent, capricious, and limited? We did this study because it counts, it should make a difference. It’s a matter of life and death. When those two things—life and death—get brought uncomfortably close together, then what you’ve ordered your life around and structured your world according to, becomes immediately concrete and immensely practical. Without faith, it is impossible to please God in a world competing for each moment. Without hope, it is impossible to survive the grief of a world trapped in cycles of suffering. Without love, we are nothing, just molecules bumping into each other in a world of clutter and noise. Faith, hope, and love are the most real things.
Where there is faith
you can see the invisible–
light beyond the darkness
Grace incredible
Where there is hope
you can hear the inaudible–
music beyond the silence
Peace unimaginable
Where there is love
you can speak the ineffable–
logos beyond the void
Joy indelible
Keep it real.
Love, Dad.