Remembering David

Remembering David by Gavin Duerson, May 17, 2023

This past week our simple church lost someone special.  David was our next-door neighbor and a faithful pillar in our simple church family.  Loving and being loved by Dave has been one of the biggest blessings of hosting simple church on our street.  Simple/house church creates family and as we grieve the loss of Dave, I realize how true this is.

I was honored to facilitate Dave’s “Celebration of Life Service” this past Saturday.  It was a true joy to hear others tell stories about Dave.  His hilarious personality, love for others, and desire to always help people were common themes.  The stories of the jokes and laughs Dave and I shared could fill up pages.  We experienced Dave’s love in so many wonderful ways.  He already is so greatly missed.

I wanted to share a part of the message I passed on to friends and family.  I’m grateful for being able to see God work in Dave’s life through the interactions and relationships that developed in our simple church.

Today, this is called a “Celebration of Life Service.”  But it doesn’t feel like a celebration, does it?  If Dave were here with us wearing some goofy shirt or costume and we were having a party, good food, and good Dave stories, it would seem much more like a celebration.  But that cannot happen.  Last Sunday at our house church meeting this passage was brought up.

“It is better to go to a house of mourning than to go to a house of feasting, for death is the destiny of everyone; the living should take this to heart.” (Ecclesiastes 7:2)

The Scriptures teach that there is something really healthy and good about seasons of life like this – as painful as they may be.  As I got to know David after Debbie (Dave’s wife) passed, he would often say that as painful as losing Carrie (Dave’s daughter) was, losing Debbie was worse because he was now alone.  He no longer had a partner to help him deal with his grief.  His honesty was a real gift to others because it gave those who knew him a window into God’s work in Dave’s life.  In our church, Dave didn’t try to just move on or forget about his losses or pretend to be okay.  I saw him lean into his grief and “take it to heart,” as this Scripture mentions.

We have and will continue to speak a lot of Dave and all the amazing things about him – and rightly so.  But he wasn’t a perfect person.  He had faults as we all do.  When he started meeting with our church family, he would often say things like, “I just don’t know if God can forgive me.”  He voiced doubt about his standing with God.  But two weeks ago, when Dave was on his way to a follow-up appointment with a doctor, I had a conversation with Dave that I’d like to share.

Dave told me they were going to run some tests and that everything would be fine, but that if it wasn’t fine and for some reason he didn’t make it, he wanted me to tell everyone that he knew that Jesus Christ lived in his heart, that he was going to Heaven, and that he was 0% afraid of death.  I told him that I didn’t anticipate having to have those conversations any time soon and that I expected him to have many more years ahead of him and to that he said, “Well, it’s true.  I’m not afraid of dying and I’m ready.  I have had an amazing life.”  

How does someone move from wondering if God can forgive them to making such a bold and confident statement like that?  How might we arrive at a similar place through our grief?

First and foremost, it begins by leaning into our pain and grief – running to God and not from Him.  That’s what Dave did.  I think he would encourage everyone here today to do likewise as they deal with their grief today and in the days to come.

Secondly, it does involve getting to know what Jesus is really like.  My wife shared that Dave reminded her of Jesus.  In the Bible, in the book of 1 John, the author, reflecting on Jesus, states that the Christians loved Jesus because He (Jesus) first loved them.  My wife mentioned that we wouldn’t have picked David to become what has amounted to an adopted member of our family.  We wouldn’t have done that, but we grew to love Dave because from the moment we moved across the street, he loved us first.  He showered us with his love as he has many of you here today.

Over the past seven years, we have spent a great amount of time together with Dave discussing and experiencing the amazing and unconditional love of God.  During this time, our family welcomed Wylie, who was not expected to live beyond a few days, and Dave really loved her.  He would always call her “Ms. Wylie.”  Not only has Ms. Wylie played a big role in us all understanding God’s love better, but also the multiple conversations around the person of Jesus we often shared did, too.

It is so easy for us to fall into this religious trap that says we try hard to love God and if we do it good enough God will love us back.  While this is what a lot of people believe Christianity is about, it’s the opposite of what Jesus is about.  It is as backwards as thinking that if my daughter Wylie loves me good enough then I will love her in return.  This lie is so easy to creep into our minds.  When we get to know Jesus, we realize that He came to flip this whole idea of God’s love being based on our performance on its head.  He came to show us all that He loved us first and his love is perfect and powerful enough to take care of all our mistakes.  When we encounter His love, then we can truly love God.  We love because He first loved us!

I want to conclude by sharing this passage in its context with you all because I think it beautifully explains the truths that David was able to absorb and ultimately led him to a place where he was able to express the things he expressed to me on his way to the doctor appointment a few days ago.

1 John 4:4-19 [NIV]
⁷ Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. ⁸ Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. ⁹ This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. ¹⁰ This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. ¹¹ Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. ¹² No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us.

¹³ This is how we know that we live in him and he in us: He has given us of his Spirit. ¹⁴ And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent his Son to be the Savior of the world. ¹⁵ If anyone acknowledges that Jesus is the Son of God, God lives in them and they in God. ¹⁶ And so we know and rely on the love God has for us.

God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them. ¹⁷ This is how love is made complete among us so that we will have confidence on the day of judgment: In this world we are like Jesus. ¹⁸ There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love. 

¹⁹ We love because he first loved us.
_______________________________

David loved his family.  Cars.  Music.  Food.  Making people laugh.  He loved greatly, and in the end, Dave was confident about his transition to the next life because He learned most of all that God is love, and that he was loved by God despite his mistakes.  He embraced what Jesus did for him when He absorbed all his sin when He died on the cross.  I’m confident that if Dave could speak to us today from where he sits, he would long for us to lean into our grief and get to know the real Jesus as well.

Gavin Duerson, Simple Church Alliance

Remember Lot’s Wife – A Warning for Christ’s Disciples

“Remember Lot’s wife!” Luke 17:32
(https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=luke+17%3A22-37%29&version=ESV)

For those of you who hold to religious beliefs, this blog is specifically for Christ-followers who do not depend on religion, but on the relationship that we can have with The Uncreated One, the One True God, who has revealed Himself in Jesus, through whom we anticipate eternal life.

Luke 17 is an interesting place for Jesus to give this warning.  Note, it is not to those who do not know the Scriptures (granting that those hearing this word of caution only had the Old Testament), but to those who were scholars of the Hebrew revelations of YHWH, The God Who Is.  Furthermore, this ALERT is given to his followers in the middle of His explanation of what it will be like in the Last Days. 
“Remember Lot’s wife!”

In Genesis 19 the story is told of how God’s angels were sent to the Twin Sin Cities of Sodom and Gomorrah.  Forced homosexuality was common; in fact, Lot offered his two daughters to try to appease a mob (not a very virtuous dad!), but this only enraged the mob more.  Such was the lifestyle and violence of these cities that people could do whatever they wanted as long as they had the power to do so.  Worship of pagan gods often involved sexual perversions and human sacrifice, especially of children.  Anything that was pleasurable was allowed; if it feels good, just do it.  They lived in a fertile valley with comforts and ease with little to disturb their “peace,” such as it was if you were among the powerful. 
“Remember Lot’s wife!”

Anyone could have escaped with Lot if they had been willing, but Lot could not even persuade his future sons-in-law to run from the coming calamity. 

Finally, the angels literally dragged Lot and his wife and daughters out of the city with the warning, “Escape for your life.  Do not look back or stop anywhere in the valley.  Escape to the hills, lest you be swept away.”  As Lot fled the metropolis, The God Who Is sent fiery hail onto Sodom and Gomorrah, (possibly a serious meteor shower and/or an earthquake along the East African Geological Rift that would have released petroleum and gases) so terrible that the cities and the populace were suddenly and totally destroyed . . . but as they ran from the destruction, Lot’s wife looked back . . . and became a pillar of salt! 
“Remember Lot’s wife!”

Why would Lot’s wife have looked back?  Think about it.  Their family had a nice house, lots of meat, fruit and vegetables, deep wells with plenty of water, a comfortable climate, luxurious clothes and rich temples; her husband was a big shot in the city gate and she had siblings, uncles, aunts and cousins in town.  What did it matter if they had to tolerate some abortions, some child sacrifices, occasional murders, a little thievery, lying judges, adulterous neighbors and temple prostitution?  It was a good life and now they were moving to a “little city,” without all those comforts.  Zoar was not an attractive tourist destination!  So she looked back with longing for the things of the old life.  “Remember Lot’s wife!”

In Luke 17 Jesus begins by telling His disciples of the deceptions that will come, but warns that His coming will be like lightning flashing: instantaneous and clearly evident.  He then reminds His disciples of the good life Lot and his family had found in Sodom; “just as it was in the days of Lot — they were eating and drinking, buying and selling, planting and building.”  Then He sounds an ALARM!  “Remember Lot’s wife!”

God’s call to us at the end of time or at our deaths is not in and of itself salvific, just as the angels’ care for Lot and his family was not enough to save them if they still longed for the old life!

“Clearly that call is not going to produce a miraculous last-minute change in us out of all relation to our previous walk with the Lord.  No, in that moment we shall discover our heart’s real treasure.  If it is the Lord Himself, then there will be no backward look.  A backward glance decides everything.  It is so easy to become more attached to the gifts of God than to the Giver – and even, I should add to the work of God than to God Himself!”  Watchman Nee, The Normal Christian Life

What might tempt you to look back at that last minute, when you are about to take your last breath on earth or at that moment when Jesus parts the clouds and returns to catch away those who love Him?  What is your heart’s real treasure!?

Would you look back and wish for another day or two in your house?  Perhaps your desire would be for one more time in a position of power or recognition for your accomplishments.  Maybe your last thought will be about that one who offended you in some way; maybe you could get even if you had just a moment more on earth.  Would you want to stay just a little longer here in order to finish a task, watch another movie, relax in an easy chair or on a beach, eat another meal, see a son or daughter graduate, go on one more trip, work little more on your “bucket list?”
“Remember Lot’s wife!”

“Prosperity knits a man to the World.  He feels that he is ‘finding his place in it’, while really it is finding its place in him.  His increasing reputation, his widening circle of acquaintances, his sense of importance, the growing pressure of absorbing and agreeable work, build up in him a sense of being really at home on earth.”  C.S. Lewis

My hope for all of you who have received this in your email or on your WordPress Reader, and for the many of you who will read this when I email you, is that you will look forward to meeting Jesus face to face and “love His appearing.” (2 Timothy 4:8)

“Whoever seeks to preserve his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life will keep it.  I tell you, in that night there will be two in one bed.  One will be taken and the other left.” (Luke 17:33-34)
“Remember Lot’s wife!”

An open letter to a friend in need of prayer.

Dear L,
I always read the church’s prayer bulletin with concern, and Anita and I offer intercessory prayers for those needs listed in our fellowship.  We became especially focused on the prayer request for YOU, indicating you had been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer.  From my time working for the Cancer Information Society, I understand this cancer is insidious and usually not diagnosed until it has spread.

We know that Jesus can heal; nothing is impossible for The God Who Is.  There are many examples and verses of Scripture that affirm that “by His stripes we are healed.” (Isaiah 53:5 KJV)  I am a walking miracle, having gone through six strokes, the last of which was 99% blockage of the basal stem artery which supplies 99% of the blood to the brain!  Yet, He used the doctors to perform His miraculous healing and here I type and work and behave most of the time as if I am “normal” (which prompts my brother to ask, “Who told you you were normal!” 😄).

So this will be our prayer for you, that you will experience a divine touch such as the woman with a discharge of blood experienced when she simply touched the fringe of Jesus’ garment in Luke 8.  Beyond the doctors’ skills and knowledge, our knowledge of The Holy infuses our prayers with faith that He will bring Himself glory in healing you.  Selfishly, we would like to enjoy more Lunch Bunches with you and share at Gatherings or in meals at our home or yours.  Your appearance has always been to be in good health except for some small complaints of back pain, which I suspect led to this diagnosis, so we will trust Jesus that this illness is for His glory to be revealed in your healing. (See John 9:1-3.)

Of course, any healing this side of Heaven in only temporary.  Even Lazarus, raised from the dead after three days, died again at some time, and is enjoying the Presence of the LORD with Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, David, Ester, Ruth and so many others, until we join in that celebration of the Marriage Supper of the Lamb.

And of course, our lives are to be lived and ended for His glory alone. (Romans 14:8)

The joy for those of us who follow Jesus is the removal of human’s greatest fear, the fear of death.  “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospel’s will save it. For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul?”   And knowing you as our sister, that you have placed your faith in Jesus, assures us that as C.S. Lewis said with a big grin to Sheldon Vanauken in A Severe Mercy, “Christians NEVER say goodbye!”  This was before Sheldon’s wife died at the age of 40.  But Lewis knew that even when apparent death to this world separates us for a season, we are never truly terminal!  We will live forever with our Lord and with each other and all those who have put their trust in Jesus. 

In  A Severe Mercy, Sheldon Vanauken reveals a letter from C.S. Lewis that gave his book its title. “One way or another [the love between you and your wife] had to die… There are various ways in which it could have died though both parties went on living.  You have been treated with a severe mercy.”  So we see that God is merciful even when we sometimes do not understand His mercy at first.  But this is our faith, that whatever comes to us in this life is for His glory and how we can reveal Him, His holiness and His love to others.

So our prayer for you at this time will be that the severe mercy of your illness will reveal something of God’s glory, holiness and love.  First, by your healing so that you can have some more time here to bless and share life with us and enjoy preparing for our final departure, whether that comes through Christ’s return or by our “crossing the Jordan into His Promised Land.”

When my Dad died from complications from Parkinson’s at 73 years old, the Holy Spirit gave me a song of which this is the chorus, from my Dad’s point of veiw.  Going by Psalm 90:10, he felt that anything past 70 was a “year of grace” from our Lord. (I’m working out some arrangements to put the song on YouTube, but it is slow finding people to do it.)

“These are the Years of Grace that the Lord has given to me,
And though I long to see His face, there may be reasons that I cannot see
To keep me here in this time and place to learn to serve Him more faithfully.
Though outside we appear to be dying, inside the light of Jesus is shining.
He put such treasures in this earthen vase in these years of grace.”

So be blessed in His Presence as you shine the light of His holiness and love to all the folks with whom you interact while in the hospital.  And we will see you again, soon.  We will NEVER say goodbye. 😉
❤️&🙏, c.a. and anita

Pray for Turkey and Syria – Guest Blog from All Israel News, Nicole Jansezian – Earthquake on the Border

UPDATED 1:31 Local Time: Third earthquake rocks Turkey-Syria border during rescue efforts – thousands feared dead

A third earthquake also reported after most powerful recorded quake since 1939 felt all the way to Israel and Egypt.
Nicole Jansezian | February 6, 2023

People search through rubble following an earthquake in Adana, Turkey February 6, 2023. Ihlas News Agency

Thousands were feared dead after powerful earthquakes rocked southern Turkey and northern Syria on Monday.  The first was devastating, but a second – nearly as strong – came during rescue efforts and was followed just an hour later by a third which registered 5.8 on the Richter scale.

As of 1 p.m. Israel time, the death toll stood at more than 1,300 – a figure which is expected to rise dramatically as rescue workers dig through the rubble.

The first quake – measured at 7.8-magnitude on the Richter scale – struck just after 4 a.m., when residents were most likely sleeping.  Footage showed buildings flattened into a pile of rubble.  At least 500 buildings are believed to have been destroyed.  This is considered the most powerful earthquake to hit Turkey in at least 25 years.  According to the United States Geological Survey, in 1939 an earthquake of the same magnitude killed 30,000 people.

The area of the quake spread 14 miles (23 kilometers) and was felt throughout Turkey, and as far as Israel and Egypt.  Search and rescue workers were dispatched to the scene.  Despite the wintry conditions, residents were advised to stay outdoors in both Turkey and Syria, as tremors and aftershocks rocked the region. “I convey my best wishes to all our citizens who were affected by the earthquake that occurred in Kahramanmaraş and was felt in many parts of our country. All our relevant units are on alert under the coordination of AFAD,” Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan wrote on social media.

On the Syrian side of the border, the quake impacted the region where some 4 million displaced people have been affected by the Syrian civil war.  The opposition’s Syrian Civil Defense volunteer organization said entire buildings collapsed.  Emergency rooms were full of injured persons, according to Amjad Rass, president of the Syrian American Medical Society.  Hundreds of buildings have collapsed, according to reports. 

An Israeli rescue team is expected to be dispatched to the region, according to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.  “At the request of the Turkish government, I have instructed all authorities to make immediate preparations to provide medical, and search and rescue assistance,” he said.  “The foreign and defense ministers have already been in contact with their counterparts and we will – in the coming hours – agree on the dispatching of a delegation as soon as possible.”

Nicole Jansezian is the news editor for both ALL ISRAEL NEWS and ALL ARAB NEWS and senior correspondent for ALL ISRAEL NEWS

More updates are expected at All Israel News and at All Arab News.

This Day in History – The Death of C.S. Lewis

This Day in History: The Death of C. S. Lewis
November 22, 2022 by: Harry Lee Poe in Crossway.org
His Heart Attack
On Sunday, July 14, 1963, Lewis was not well enough to go to church when Walter Hooper arrived at the Kilns. Without his brother Warnie anymore as a reliable helper with his correspondence, and feeling his own steady decline, Lewis asked Hooper if he would consider serving as his private secretary. After discussing it, Hooper agreed to resign his post at the University of Kentucky at the end of the fall semester and return to help Lewis. In the meantime, he would help Lewis through the summer.¹ The next day, on Monday, July 15, at five in the afternoon, Lewis arrived at the Acland Nursing Home, where he promptly had a heart attack and went into a coma.²

With Warnie away, Lewis must have given Kay and Austin Farrer as his emergency contacts, for the Acland notified them of Lewis’s condition. They contacted Douglas Gresham and Walter Hooper. On Tuesday afternoon, July 16, Lewis received extreme unction from Rev. Michael Watts of the Church of St Mary Magdalen. Then he woke up and asked for a cup of tea.³

For two days, Lewis appeared to be doing better, but then he slipped into what he called his “black period.” For a week he suffered from nightmares, hallucinations, and a general disorientation interspersed with lucid moments.⁴ Several of his oldest and dearest friends visited him in the Acland, including Tolkien, Alastair Fowler, Douglas and David Gresham, James Dundas-Grant, John Walsh, Maureen Moore Blake, and George Sayer. When Dundas-Grant visited Lewis, he suggested that Lewis write a book on prayer, to which Lewis replied with a twinkle in his eye, “I might.”⁵ Dundas-Grant did not know that Lewis had just finished writing Letters to Malcolm, which suggests how far the remaining Inklings had departed from being a writing club aware of what each other was writing.

Beginning on July 17, Hooper undertook the handling of Lewis’s correspondence. He picked up the mail every day at the Kilns and took it to the Acland, where Lewis, when his mind was clear, dictated his letters to Hooper. At Lewis’s behest, Hooper wrote letters to Lewis’s friends who had not yet learned of his hospitalization, including Roger Lancelyn Green. Lewis asked Hooper to write Green a letter and explain that Hooper was a collector of “Lewisiana” like Green and to work out with Green if they were “competitors or collaborators.”⁶ Time would prove that they were the best of collaborators as coauthors of the first true biography of Lewis, C. S. Lewis: A Biography (1974).

Lewis probably recognized his condition better than most. He knew he would die sooner or later. Not wishing to create a burden for Cambridge University and Magdalene College, his academic home for nine years, he sent a letter resigning his chair, probably as soon as he returned home.⁷ On August 12 and 13, Lewis wrote to Jock Burnet, the bursar of Magdalene College, to make arrangements for Hooper to pack his things and remove them from the college. He apologized for the trouble he was causing, but he explained that his “situation [was] rather desperate.”⁸ The college needed to reclaim its furniture and sell Lewis’s. He also asked that the painting of his grandfather Hamilton be sent to St Mark’s Church, Dundela, Belfast, where he had served as rector. It still hangs in the Parish Hall today.

Toward the end of August, Tolkien wanted to see Lewis again. Tolkien’s eldest son, Father John Tolkien, took Tolkien to see Lewis at the Kilns. Father John recalled: “We drove over to the Kilns for what turned out to be a very excellent time together for about an hour. I remember the conversation was very much about the Morte d’Arthur and whether trees died.”⁹

Ready for Death
Walter Hooper was back in the United States when Lewis wrote to him on September 3 to let him know that all was well at the Kilns. Though Warnie was still in Ireland behaving badly, the gardener and handyman, Fred Paxford, slept in the house in case Lewis had trouble during the night.¹⁰ After much wringing of hands and worry about his looming poverty, Lewis offered Hooper five pounds a week when he would return the first week of January 1964 to resume his work as Lewis’s secretary, now that Warnie had proved such an unreliable disappointment.¹¹ To others, Jack regularly referred to himself as an “extinct volcano.”¹² When asked how he managed his retirement, he came up with another line he rather liked. He said he would never have to read A. L. Rowse on Shakespeare’s sonnets, but he could reread the Iliad instead.¹³ On a deeper level, he had something to say to many about how close he came to death. The nurses all thought he had come to the Acland one last time to die. He said to many of his correspondents that it was a pity he had come to the very gates of Heaven so easily not to be allowed to enter. Now he would have to go through it all over again.¹⁴ Warnie finally returned home in early October.¹⁵ His return meant some relief from what Lewis regarded as the worst part of his invalid existence. The newspapers had reported Lewis’s illness and retirement, so he was flooded with letters of condolence, to which he felt obligated to reply.¹⁶ In spite of everything, he remained cheerful and grateful. He especially valued his friends who came to see him.¹⁷

Just as Jack had gone through anticipatory grief over Joy’s coming death, Warnie had gone through the same thing in his own way over Jack’s inevitable death. Yet he had pulled himself together and returned to the Kilns. His company would have meant so much to Jack. Of those last days together, Warnie wrote:

Joy had left us, and once again—as in the earliest days—we could turn for comfort only to each other. The wheel had come full circle: once again we were together in the little end room at home, shutting out from our talk the ever-present knowledge that the holidays were ending, that a new term fraught with unknown possibilities awaited us both. Jack faced the prospect bravely and calmly. “I have done all I wanted to do, and I’m ready to go,” he said to me one evening.¹⁸

The End
Warnie was always famous for preparing the tea on Thursday nights when the Inklings had gathered so long ago. He also brought the late-night tea to Jack and any guest he might have as they talked away. Even with Mrs. Miller in the house, Warnie brought Jack his tea in the afternoons that last autumn. He described the last time in the memoir he wrote that became a foundational piece of biography Roger Lancelyn Green and Walter Hooper would build upon, along with Surprised by Joy, when they wrote their biography of Lewis. Warnie said:

Friday, the 22nd of November 1963, began much as other days: there was breakfast, then letters and the crossword puzzle. After lunch he fell asleep in his chair: I suggested that he would be more comfortable in bed, and he went there. At four I took in his tea and found him drowsy but comfortable. Our few words then were the last: at five-thirty I heard a crash and ran in, to find him lying unconscious at the foot of his bed. He ceased to breathe some three or four minutes later.¹⁹

He was a week shy of his sixty-fifth birthday.

The death of C. S. Lewis came on the same day John F. Kennedy was shot in Dallas, and all the news media were focused on that event, which gripped not only the United States but people around the world. Word of Lewis’s death had not gotten out. Douglas called Walter Hooper in the United States, and Hooper notified those he knew of who should be told.²⁰ David Gresham had gone to New York to study at Mesivta Rabbi Chaim Berlin Talmudical college when he finished his studies in London, so he could not attend the funeral.²¹ Warnie was too intoxicated and overwhelmed by grief to attend. The funeral took place on November 26 at Holy Trinity Church, the parish church where Jack and Warnie had attended since moving to the Kilns. Only a small group attended. Ronald Head, the vicar of Holy Trinity, led the service, and Austin Farrer read the lesson, so we may assume that Kay was with him.²² The small party of mourners included Owen Barfield, Cecil Harwood, Ronald Tolkien, Colin Hardie, Robert “Humphrey” Havard, James Dundas-Grant, John Lawlor, Peter Bayley, Peter Bide, Molly and Len Miller, Fred Paxford, Maureen (Lady Dunbar) and Leonard Blake, and Douglas Gresham.²³

A large gravestone covers the length and breadth of the grave of C. S. Lewis. When Flora Hamilton Lewis died in 1908, the quotation for the day on her Shakespearean calendar came from King Lear:
Men must endure
Their going hence, even as their coming hither;
Ripeness is all.²⁴

A large gravestone covers the length and breadth of the grave of C. S. Lewis.

On Lewis’s gravestone, Warnie had the epitaph engraved:

Harry Lee Poe (PhD, The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary) serves as the Charles Colson Professor of Faith and Culture at Union University, where he has taught a course on C. S. Lewis for over twenty years. He is the author of twenty books, including The Inklings of Oxford and C. S. Lewis Remembered, as well as numerous articles on Lewis and the Inklings. Poe hosts the annual Inklings Weekend in Montreat, North Carolina, and is a regular speaker on Lewis at universities and other venues worldwide.

The Only “Proof” of the Resurrection

For those who do not remember “Watergate,” this is the name of an office building complex, The Watergate Office Buildings and Hotel in Washington, D.C., where the Democratic National Convention housed its headquarters in 1972.  A break-in, most likely authorized by then President Nixon, set the stage for most of the distrust of government currently rampant, resulted in the only resignation of a sitting president of the US and brings me to “The Only ‘Proof’ of the Resurrection” of Jesus.  The metonym Watergate came to encompass any associated activities surrounding the scandal.  The use of the suffix “-gate” after an identifying term has since become synonymous with political or public scandal, including Irangate, travelgate, Reagangate and slapgate just to name a few.

One of Nixon’s “henchmen,” Charles Colson, sometimes called “Nixon’s hatchet man,” was one of the “Watergate Seven,” chief architects of the crimes associated to Watergate and its subsequent cover-up.  He was also one of 48 convictions that served prison time as a consequence and accepted Jesus as his Lord and Savior while in prison, penning Born Again from this experience.

Mr. Colson, as he began to minister to others in the US prison system, said regarding his conversion, “I know the Resurrection is a fact, and Watergate proved it to me.  How?  Because 12 men testified they had seen Jesus raised from the dead; then they proclaimed that truth for 40 years, never once denying it.  Every one was beaten, tortured, stoned or put in prison.  They would not have endured that if it weren’t true.  Watergate embroiled 12 of the most powerful men in the world – and we couldn’t keep a lie for three weeks.  You’re telling me 12 apostles could keep a lie for 40 years?  Absolutely impossible.”  Born Again by Charles Colson.

Following is a brief overview of how each of the twelve original apostles died as well as other martyrs of the first century.  May this remind us that our sufferings in the US (so far) are minor to compare to the intense persecution and cold cruelty faced by the apostles and disciples during their time for the sake Jesus.  Our troubles are also significantly less than many Christ-followers in other nations where simply owning or reading a Bible can result in arrest and death.  Many Chinese Christ-followers do not expect to live 70-80 years, anticipating that perhaps they will be able to lead some of their prison guards to the Lord after they are arrested and before they die for their faith!

“Whoever loves his life loses it, and whoever hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life. If anyone serves me, he must follow me; and where I am, there will my servant be also. If anyone serves me, the Father will honor him.” (John 12:25-26)
“If they persecuted me, they will also persecute you.” (John 15:20)

Why do we feel sleepy in prayer, but stay awake through a three-hour movie?  Why are we so bored when we read the Bible, but find it easy to read novels?  Why is it so easy to ignore a Tweet about God, yet forward the latest Kardashian news?  Why is it so easy to praise a celebrity, but so difficult to engage with our Creator?

Next week, I will discuss why Jesus left earth and did not stay to show off His crucifixion wounds to curiosity-seekers to prove His Resurrection.

_____________________________
Besides the original twelve, this list includes Matthias (elected to replace Judas, the Betrayer), Stephen, the first to die for his faith in Jesus, the apostle Paul (“as one born out of due time”-1 Corinthians 15:8), Mark, the author of The Gospel of Mark, Luke, the author of The Gospel of Luke and The Acts of the Apostles, and James, the brother of Jesus.  These are recorded in Foxes’ Book of Martyrs (except for Judas Iscariot, recorded in Matthew 25 and Acts 1).

1. Judas Iscariot (who betrayed Jesus):  He hanged himself in suicide over the guilt of having betrayed “innocent blood.”
2. Peter: Under Nero’s persecution, he was crucified upside-down (~A.D. 64-68).  He requested the inverted crucifixion because he felt unworthy to die in the same way that Jesus Christ had died.
3. Andrew the brother of Peter: He was crucified on an X-shaped cross in Patras, Greece, hence the name “St. Andrew’s Cross.”  After being whipped severely by seven soldiers they tied his body to the cross with cords rather than nails, to prolong his agony.  His followers reported that when he was led toward the cross, Andrew saluted it with these words, “I have long desired and expected this happy hour. The cross has been consecrated by the body of Christ hanging on it.”  He continued to preach to his tormentors for two days until he expired.
4. James the son of Zebedee: As a strong leader of the church, James was beheaded at Jerusalem in A.D. 44 by Herod Agrippa (see Acts 12:2).  The Roman officer who guarded James was amazed at James’ calm as he defended his faith at his trial.  Later, as the officer walked beside James to the place of execution, he declared his new faith to the judge and knelt beside James and was also beheaded as a Christian.
5. John the son of Zebedee: Facing martyrdom, he was boiled in huge basin of boiling oil during a wave of persecution in Rome.  However, he was miraculously delivered from death.  John was then sentenced to the mines on the prison Isle of Patmos.  The apostle John was later freed and returned to serve as the pastor of Edessa in modern Turkey.  He died as an old man (~A.D. 100-105), the only apostle to die peacefully.
6. Phillip: In Hieropolis, Turkey, he was scourged, imprisoned and eventually crucified in A.D. 54.
7. Bartholomew: Also known as Nathaniel, he was a missionary to Asia (modern Turkey). Bartholomew was martyred for his preaching in Armenia where he was flayed to death with knives.
8. Matthew: He suffered martyrdom in Ethiopia for preaching about Jesus. He was killed by a sword in A.D. 60.
9. Thomas: He was stabbed with a spear in India during one of his missionary trips to establish another church in the subcontinent (~A.D. 70).
10. James the son of Alphaeus: He was crucified in Lower Egypt and then sawed in pieces in A.D. 62.
11. Simon the Zealot: He was crucified in Britain in A.D. 74 for preaching “foreign gods.”
12. Judas, also called Thaddeus: He was killed with arrows when he refused to deny his faith in Christ.
13. Matthias: The apostle chosen to replace the traitor Judas Iscariot was stoned and then beheaded.
14. Stephen, a deacon of Acts 6: The first martyr was stoned to death, recorded in Acts 7:54-60.
15. Paul: He was tortured and then beheaded by Emperor Nero at Rome in A.D. 67.  Paul endured a lengthy imprisonment, which allowed him to write many of his letters to the churches he had formed throughout the Roman Empire.  These epistles, which taught many of the foundational doctrines of Christianity, form a large portion of the New Testament.
16. Mark, the author of The Gospel of Mark, was dragged by horses through the streets of Alexandria, Egypt, until he was dead.
17. Luke: He was hanged in Greece as a result of his tremendous preaching to the lost.
18. James the brother of Jesus: As the respected leader of the church in Jerusalem, he was thrown over a hundred feet down from the southeast pinnacle of the Temple when he refused to deny his faith in Christ.  When they discovered that he survived the fall, his enemies stoned and beat James to death with a fuller’s club, crushing his skull until his brains spilled out.

“There have been times of late when I have had to hold on to one text with all my might: ‘It is required in stewards that a man may be found faithful.’ Praise God, it does not say ‘successful’.”  Amy Wilson-Carmichael, Things as they Are (1 Corinthians 4:2)

Fences or Guardrails

Who Will Take My Place? – The John Chau Story

June 29 is the Day of the Christian Martyr.  More than 4000 Christ-followers are killed every year (11 every day), not because they cause trouble, but simply because they claim Jesus as their Lord.  We who live in luxury and comfort need to be aware that the freedom we now have to share the gospel could disappear overnight.  Are we ready? … But that is a question for another blog.
John Chau was part of my blog on December 03, 2018.  Here is the “the rest of the story” as told by the editors of The Voice of the Martyrs.  For the sake of my shorter blogs, this is an abbreviated account.  The full original article is available HERE.  And well worth reading!

Who Will Take My Place? – The John Chau Story

A LIFE OF PREPARATION
John spent almost a decade preparing to take the gospel to the Sentinelese, one of the last uncontacted people groups. His journey began in 2008, the year he turned 17, when he became what he described as “an apprentice to Jesus.”

After taking his first missions trip the following year, he began to pray about spending his life serving as a missionary. “I know that God used that time to mark my life,” he later said. In his prayers, John asked God where He wanted him to go, echoing Isaiah’s affirmation – “Here am I! Send me.” (Isaiah 6:8)

Soon after making that prayerful commitment, John found information online about the Sentinelese people, who live on an isolated island and have never heard the gospel. He sensed that God was calling him to go to North Sentinel Island to share God’s love with them.

“Once I said yes to Jesus,” he said in a video for a church that sponsored his work, “I was committed. I was all in.”

Every decision John made for the next nine years was in preparation for going to North Sentinel Island, living among the Sentinelese and sharing the gospel with them. “He had conditioned his body, his mind, his spirit,” said a former representative from the student missions office at Oral Roberts University (ORU), the school John attended in Tulsa, Oklahoma. “He was one of the most prepared men I’ve ever met.”

Since little is known about the Sentinelese language, he took a linguistics course through a branch of Wycliffe Bible Translators hoping it would help him communicate with the islanders. In addition, he undertook medical training and became certified as a wilderness EMT (emergency medical technician) so he could provide the Sentinelese with basic health care, knowing their immune systems would be vulnerable to imported Western viruses, and he underwent laser eye surgery so he wouldn’t have to worry about keeping his contacts clean.

John was so focused on preparing to serve on the island – an arial view of North Sentinel hung on his dorm-room wall – that he needed a reminder to keep serving in the here and now. An outreach leader at ORU challenged John not to wait, but to start immediately serving and reaching out in the name of Jesus. And John took the challenge to heart.

Because of his love for soccer, John became involved with a ministry that ran a soccer program for immigrants from Myanmar. He was not the most high-profile leader, standing in the spotlight or preaching a sermon, but his love for people and his bedrock faith began to shine through.  “Coach Chau” became a friend, mentor and coach, taking every opportunity to point young men to Christ.

When John reached out to the ministry, All Nations, which had overseen one of his college mission trips, a member of the executive leadership, Pam Arland, took notice that John’s email was the second mention of the Sentinelese people she had seen in a week. And prior to that, she had never even heard of them. Was God at work to reach this unreached island, she wondered.

Pam invited a coworker to sit in on a call with John and help determine whether he was the right person for such a dangerous mission trip.  “John is actually one of the most well prepared and intentional missionaries I have ever met,” said Mary Ho, executive leader of All Nations in a VOM radio interview (VOMRadio.net/JohnChau). “He would call us and say, ‘How do I prepare myself to know more about cultural anthropology?’ We would say, ‘OK, here are 10 [or] 20 books on the subject.’ He would say, ‘Oh, I have read half of them.’ Literally two weeks later he would be like, ‘I have finished reading them. What’s next?’”

A SOLO MISSION
In 2015, John took the first of four scouting trips to the Andaman Islands, a union territory of India located so far east in the Bay of Bengal that it’s much closer to Bangkok than Bangalore.  As he flew out of Port Blair, capital of the Andaman and the Nicobar Islands, John gazed out at the blue ocean below and saw an island come into view that he recognized immediately: It was the same island he had stared at on his dorm-room wall all through college.

“A sense of clarity and peace came upon me,” John said later, “A sense of knowing that I’m going to be going there one day. I took that as confirmation. I’ve only had that sense of clarity and deep sense of knowing a few other times in my life, and each time I can say it was definitely God that was speaking to me.”

John had a natural inclination toward planning, and it was now in full flower. He planned what to take with him, sorting and re-sorting his gear, then deciding how much would fit in the cases he planned to cache on the island before he met the islanders. He wrote plans for the first day, for his early goals and even a contingency plan in case things didn’t go well.

Plan A was to make contact with the islanders and live among them for as long as it took to learn the language and culture. Then he would tell them about the love and sacrifice of Jesus Christ. John knew it would take years and maybe decades. His meticulous planning also included a Plan B, the possibility that tribes would not welcome him and might even kill him, just as they had two fishermen who drifted ashore on North Sentinel in 2006.

John was at peace either way. He had committed his life to seeing the Sentinelese people worship Jesus Christ as their Savior. Either he would live on the island as a guest and a light for Christ, or he would give his life on the island and enter eternity. Like Paul, he knew that “to live is Christ and to die is gain.” (Philippians 1:21)

“ADVENTURE BRO”
In case the world did hear John’s name, he had done his best to protect Christian friends in the islands and make sure any publicity would not hinder further efforts to reach the Sentinelese with the gospel. His Instagram feed is filled with adventure images from far off places. He blogged about traveling the world, climbing, kayaking and diving with great white sharks. If John’s name became known, anyone searching the images and blogspots would simply think he was an “adventure bro” who stepped too far off the beaten path and paid with his life.

After John’s death, a friend posted some thoughts that John had shared before the trip. “Death is inevitable,” John had said. “I can die in a car crash, [from] snakebite, [from] cancers. There are many ways we can die. I’m going to the islands this November and I don’t know what is going to happen, but I’m ready. I’m ready to lay my down life down for the gospel.”

In August 2018, the Indian government removed the requirement – in place since 1963 – that foreigners visiting 29 of the Andaman and Nicobar islands first apply for and receive a Restricted Area Permit. Media reports listed islands that no longer required a permit to visit – including North Sentinel Island. The change was designed to promote tourism, but also eliminated one obstacle to John’s mission.

FINAL PREP AND FIRST CONTACT
As the time approached for John’s trip to the island, Mary Ho received a four word e-mail from another member of the All Nations executive team: “Mary, are you sure?” Her response was equally to the point, from Romans 10:14: “How are they to hear without someone preaching?”

On the afternoon of November 14, before boarding a fishing boat and heading toward the island, John wrote this prayer in his journal: “Thank you, Father, for using me, for shaping me and molding me to be your ambassador. … Holy Spirit, please open the hearts of the tribe to receive me and by receiving me, to receive You. May Your kingdom, Your rule and reign come now to North Sentinel Island. My life is in Your hands, O father, so into Your hands I commit my spirit.”

The next morning he kayaked along the shore, hoping to show his good intentions by delivering fish and other gifts to the Islanders. “My name is John,” he called out. “I love you and Jesus loves you.”

The first islanders to appear carried their bows with unstrung arrows. Later, when they strung arrows in their bows, John paddled out of range and back to the boat. He approached again that afternoon, delivering more gifts and getting close to an islander before a young Sentinelese launched an arrow that lodged firmly in the waterproof Bible he was carrying.

The tip of the arrow stopped on a page that ended with the first two verses of Isaiah 65: “I was ready to be sought by those who did not ask for me; I was ready to be found by those who did not seek me. I said, ‘Here I am, here I am’ to a nation that was not called by My name. I spread out My hands all the day to a rebellious people, who walk in a way that is not good, following their own devices.”

On that second contact attempt, John got out of the kayak, hoping to appear less threatening. But when the islanders, one with a bamboo knife, got between him and the kayak, he had to leave it behind – with his US passport inside – and swam back to the boat. After that eventful day, he poured out his heart in the pages of his journal, which the fishermen later delivered to Christian friends.

Later that evening, John added another entry.

According to his notes, John planned for the fishermen to drop him ashore the next morning. John hoped he would seem less threatening without the boat waiting offshore. And he also hoped to protect the fisherman: “If it goes badly on foot, the fisherman won’t have to bear witness to my death,” he wrote. John closed most of his journal entries as well as letters to friends and family with the Latin phrase Solo Deo Gloria (Glory to God alone).

ON THE BEACH
On November 16, 2018, John went ashore on North Sentinel Island for the last time. When the fisherman returned the next day, according to the police report, they saw “a dead person being buried at the shore which from the silhouette of the body, clothing and circumstances appear to be the body of John Allen Chau.”

Following his death, a storm of vitriol was unleashed on John, his family, All Nations and, at times, anyone who would dare to think of sharing the gospel with another human being. The fisherman who took John to the island were arrested, as were other Christians who had spoken with John in the Andaman islands. Their trial began in November 2021.

The story of John the “adventure bro” quickly turned to John the misguided missionary, the colonizer, the thoughtless disease spreader. The mocking memes on social media and criticism in a variety of media came in waves. Some comedians even used the story of John’s murder in their acts.

More concerning was the criticism from Christians who attacked John’s [mis]perceived lack of preparation and insensitivity to the culture. Some even questioned whether the Great Commission might be outdated in 2018; perhaps they posed, it does not apply to tribes that have no contact with the outside world.

NOT THE END OF THE STORY
“I believe the measure of success in the Kingdom of God is obedience,” John said a few months before his death. “I want my life to reflect obedience to Christ and to live in obedience to him. I think that Jesus is worth it. He’s worth everything.”

John followed in the footsteps of faithful Christians throughout history, beginning with the martyrdom of all but one of the original 12 apostles. In the 1800s, only one in four missionaries survived his first term in the Congo (see From Jerusalem to Irian Jaya by Ruth Tucker). In 1866, Robert Thomas died on a riverbank outside Pyongyang while trying to take the gospel to Korea. Five men were speared to death in 1956 while trying to share the love of Christ with the “Auca” (now called the Huaorani) tribesmen. A willingness to “die trying” has always been a requirement for taking the gospel to places it’s never been heard.

The end of John’s life on earth should not be viewed as the end of the whole story; we know how that story ends. In one of John’s last journal entries, he wrote “The eternal lives of this tribe are at hand. And I can’t wait to see them around the throne of God worshiping in their own language as Revelation 7:9–10 states. Every tribe, every people, every language, worshiping King Jesus together.” John longed for the day when he would introduce his Sentinelese brothers and sisters to other members of the body of Christ.

Perhaps in eternity, we will see John standing among the Sentinelese gathered around the throne, crying out in a loud voice with them, “Salvation belongs to our God!” Those who knew John well on earth will expect a toothy grin on his face, a twinkle in his eye and a thumb raised in his trademark “It’s all good” gesture.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hNksqCzMKkk&t=206s

https://www.persecution.com/martyr/?_source_code=WEBI19E2

https://www.persecution.com/free-magazine/

Swimmers in the Sky

Angels from the Throne in Glory
Come to earth to tell a story
Of One who came to testify
We can live even when we die.

The realms of Heaven and earth collide
Leaving us with no place to hide.
All is clear to Him on the Throne,
He sees both worlds; they are both His own.

But with love He looks on what He has formed
And bids us each to be reborn;
To accept His life coming from On High
And join the swimmers in the sky.

(Thanx to Ariela for challenging me to write a poem on the Swimmers in the Sky.)

Before the Resurrection

“As many were astonished at you, his appearance was so marred, beyond human semblance, and his form beyond that of the children of mankind.”  Isaiah 52:14

Resurrection Sunday came, but not before THIS happened.  Is it any wonder that as a man, Jesus was so strained in the Garden of Gethsemene, that “being in agony He prayed more earnestly; His sweat became like great drops of blood falling down to the ground.” (Luke 22:43-44)  Hematidrosis is a rare medical condition in which one oozes or “sweats” blood from the skin even thought there is no cut or injury.  Though usually not fatal of itself, it has most often occurred in people as they died or in prisoners facing execution.  He knew what was about to happen.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=125baeLbGvU

Not just the physical torture He was about to endure, but He knew the spiritual battle that we will never see – the acceptance of sin for which He was not guilty, sin that was none of His doing; all the pride, greed, lust, wrath, gluttony, envy, and sloth that you and I have committed; all the hatred, lies, murder, abuse and wickedness that men and women have perpetrated since the beginning of the earth until its end!  He was looking forward to bearing ALL that in a matter of hours.

And should we expect God will deliver us from all troubles?  Yet, “God did not keep bad things from happening to God Himself and there is no darkness into which He has not descended.  He knows the texture and taste of everything [we] most fear.”  (Tish Harrison Warren, Prayer in the Night)

Western Christians have become so soft and comfortable that the idea of suffering for Christ seems completely foreign.  Anticipating Sunday’s Resurrection, we glide through the pleasant days before with nothing to mark us but a little ash on our foreheads. 

So many “prosperity gospel” preachers have pounded out verses like Jeremiah 29:11, “For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope,” that we have come to believe any time we have a problem, we can just go to Jesus and He will fix it in a matter of minutes.  They ignore the context of Jeremiah’s encouragement that was in a letter to EXILES!  “To the surviving elders of the exiles, and to the priests, the prophets, and all the people, whom Nebuchadnezzar had taken into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon.”  Note, to the surviving elders!  Many had died; many more were taken into captivity in chains or herded like cattle between soldiers on horses.

Yes, it is a nice plan, but the prophet warned it would be 70 years❗, an average person’s lifetime, before God would start working out His plans for their welfare.  And so Jeremiah warned, “Do not let your prophets and your diviners who are among you deceive you, and do not listen to the dreams that they dream, for it is a lie that they are prophesying to you in My name; I did not send them, declares the LORD.”

Friend, if you want an easy life; if you want to avoid controversy; if you want to skate along with the culture, do not become a follower of Jesus!  If you are looking for prosperity and the “wonderful plan for your life” that some gospel peddlers offer, just take up their pitch and rest easy.  Go with the flow when government orders you to do something; obey every rule and do not make trouble.   Remember that the Nazis loved to quote the Bible in Romans 13:1, “Let every person be subject to the governing authorities.”   But they avoided Peter’s assertion in Acts 5:29, “We must obey God rather than men.”  And after beating the apostles, they let them go.

Stay with me here: the apostles did not go back to their little prayer group or life-affirming friends and say, “Oh, it was so terrible!  Those guys were so mean to us.  Please pray that Jesus will protect us from them and we will never encounter that again!”  On the contrary, “they left the presence of the council, rejoicing that they were counted worthy to suffer dishonor for the Name.”  Then they kept on boldly teaching in the religious government’s headquarters (their Temple) and from house to house.

Are you willing to suffer loss for the sake of following our Lord?  Are you willing to be ostracized as a narrow-minded, anti-science freak?  Are you willing to “Count it all joy,… when you meet trials of various kinds?” (James 1:2) Have you read the Bible, the words of Jesus in Luke 9:23, “If anyone would come after Me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow Me.”  This “cross” is not some illness or natural difficulty you may encounter.  “There is something frustrating that occurs on earth, namely, that there are righteous people to whom things happen as if they were doing wicked deeds; and, again, there are wicked people to whom things happen as if they were doing righteous deeds.” (Ecclesiastes 8:14 CJB)

The cross to which Jesus calls us is a choice to obey Him against what your family will call “common sense.”  Your friends will wag their heads and say, “Well, they went off the deep end!”  Even some religious advisers will warn you not to get too radical.  But for many of us, to follow Jesus will mean just that – a radical commitment to a God who was willing to suffer to redeem us.

Oh, and there is a reward, but we may not see it in this life!  Do not be so hasty for Sunday morning that you miss what happens before the Resurrection.  Are you willing to believe in a God who is willing to die for you?  Are you willing to die for a God who will save you?