Heaven Archives - call me pasturescott

go home

[5 minutes, 852 words]

A friend passed away unexpectedly this week. I say unexpectedly, but, in reality, Frank had been in a long battle with cancer. Cancer may think it won, but, in the end, Frank did. Frank is free from pain, from endless treatments, from uncertainty, from death.

I only heard about his passing last night as I sat with the men of my Thursday night Bible group. The announcement from our leader caught me like a sucker punch to the gut. Try as I might through worship, I couldn’t focus. Frank had often led our worship before he got sick, and kept with it through much of his sickness. Frank was eighty-two, hard of hearing, and often lost his place in the songs, but we could easily give him grace; Frank loved Jesus more than anything. He also loved the old hymns and many of us old Baptists appreciated his playlist.

Earlier yesterday, before I knew of Frank’s promotion, I was reading from the Gospel of Matthew, chapter nine.

“But so that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins” — then he told the paralytic, “Get up, take your stretcher, and go home.”
So he got up and went home.
Matthew 9:6-7

“Get up, Frank. Go home.”

So he did.

My friend had been looking grayer and he’d been losing a lot of weight lately, but none of us thought it was time. My last conversation with Frank was to ask him to pray for me to be able to drink my coffee straight. He said he would. He asked me to pray for him to find some kind of special heat-resistant tape for a computer machine he was building. Mundane stuff. Coffee creamer and computers.

Then he was gone.

His last text to me was two weeks ago:

My dear Bro. Scott, trusting you are feeling better with a successful outcome. Will continue in prayer for complete healing. Your Bro. Frank

I’ve been sick myself lately, but nothing like Frank. I have a gall bladder that has to come out, kidney stones that need blasting, a fluid collection near my spine that needs draining and assessing, and osteomyelitis that needs treating. I only mention these things because Frank was really burdened for me.

I know. I’m thinking it too. A dying man, sad for his sick friend.

I confess that the original idea behind this post wasn’t about Frank; it was about me. More pointedly, how I heard that scripture yesterday morning. It actually happened to Frank, though.

“Get up, Frank. Time to go home.”

I still don’t know what time he departed this mortal coil, but I think it’s pretty cool to imagine it may have been around the time I was writing these words in my Bible notes:

1/28/26
This familiar scripture hits a new way this morning: it is my “Rise in the New Day, Scott, and go Home…because it’s time.”
Lord, I reach out my hands in faith to you.
Command it, dear Jesus. Just as you commanded the sickness to leave the centurion’s servant¹ and commanded the wind and the waves to stop². How I long to hear these words. May it be soon. In Jesus name.

Instead, my buddy Frank got the call. That’s okay; my day will come. I’ll just miss turning around and seeing a sweet-natured, smiling Frank in his Sunday spot two rows behind Sandy and me. I’m going to miss how he would light up about what supplements are helping him and all the scientific breakthroughs in cancer research he’d been reading about.

One last thing. Frank and I shared a lively discussion on a recent Sunday about how the joys of heaven will be “compounded” throughout eternity. Frank was intrigued. Any conversation about heaven interested him to no end.

“I’d like to know more about that idea, Scott,” he said. “This discussion fascinates me.”

He asked especially for scripture to help him understand it even more. I shared a few with him on the spot³ with the promise to add more that week.

I texted Frank back on the following Tuesday with a longer exposition, and included a quote I had read that put the entire idea of the exponential increase of heaven’s joys into a beautifully poetic image that Frank and I could see.

“Like waves incessantly crashing on the shore, one upon another, so the ages of eternity future will, in endless succession, echo the celebration of sinners saved by grace, all to the glory of God. There will not be in heaven a one-time momentary display of God’s goodness, but an everlasting, ever-increasing infusion and impartation of divine kindness that intensifies with every passing moment.” (Sam Storms)⁴

Well, Frank, is it so? Is it like that so far? I think Frank might say something like, “Oh, Scott, you have no idea.” One of these days I will get to, but for now I wait in hope for my time when the Master will say,

“Get up, Scott. Go home.”

And I will.

Selah, beloved.

Matthew 8:13 ↩︎
Matthew 8:26 ↩︎
Eph. 2:7; 3:16-20; Rom. 11:33; 1 Peter 1:4 ↩︎
www.desiringgod.org/messages/joys-eternal-increase-edwards-on-the-beauty-of-heaven ↩︎

Good Grief

On December 16, our only child, a son, left this earth and found his place at Jesus’ table. Graham’s passing was unexpected and sorely painful, but Sandy and I are finding, in the mess, the beautiful handprint of God. I’m attempting to write in the rawness of this near-season, because that’s how I process. Please forgive any puzzling sentiments; this is brand-new territory. And be patient with me; this may be the first of several postings.

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Burying your child bites.

At any age.

And Christmas, no less.

If it wasn’t so sad, it’d seem almost ‘made-for-Lifetime-tv’ cliche.

An empty stocking. A poignant absence. A cask of memories stoppered, it’s aroma sealed off so that only the fragrance left over could be imbibed. It’s tough sledding.

Yesterday I returned two books to the library for my bride. The sweet girl with the kewpie doll voice asked about our holidays. I paused a couple of ticks, then lied.

It was great, etc., etc., family in town, etc., great food, laughs, etc., etc….

Her co-worker overheard and added, ” oh that’s good; mine was the best in memory.”

I bowed and took my leave. I could’ve sucked the air out of the atmosphere right then with a story made for Kleenex, but what possible end would that achieve? I wheeled toward the exit, smiling, and kept our library a tissue-free zone.

My next stop was the neighborhood hair cuttery. What the heck, I thought. It happened. I can’t hide it forever. So when the smiling girl behind the counter asked my phone number, I knew her screen would pull up two names, mine and my boy’s.

“Are you Scott?”

“That’s me,” I said cheerily enough. A few clacking noises of fingernails on keyboard, then, I took a breath and took my chance.

“You can remove Graham’s name.”

I did it. I requested the erasure of my son’s memory from their hard drive.

She laughed, probably a little too loudly for anyone’s comfort. “Remove it?” she half-smiled, but now seemed momentarily puzzled.

“Yeah, go ahead and take it out.”

In retrospect, I’m pretty sure she thought I was being facetious?

Because now she smiled a full-white-teeth smile.

“I know its morbid,” I continued, “but he’s no longer with us…”

What happened next caught me off-guard.

“Okay, Mr. Mitchell, right this way…”

She never even acknowledged what I said. I followed her to her station and parked in front of her mirror where I saw the reflection of a dad who had just lost his son, laid his body to rest, and would never know the feel of grandkids bouncing on his paralyzed lap. In ten minutes, the insipid business of clippers on head and hair on floor was over; I paid, tipped generously, and quietly removed myself from the premises, already on to the next jejune errand. Sigh. Life goes on.

Good grief.

Tonight, as I compose these thoughts, I’m surrounded by the din of small talk and redolent aroma of coffee in a bookstore cafe. No one here knows me, thankfully, or what I’ve just been through. I find the juxtaposition of conflicted feelings has got me all Sybil-ed out. On the one hand, I’m safe in my nest of anonymity. On the inexplicable other, I want to tap on my cardboard cup with my plastic spoon and announce to the room I’m grieving. I somehow think if I did that, a few might be mildly irritated by the interruption, some would be confusedly alarmed and others might smile, nod in deference, then return to their paused-on paragraphs, none the wiser.

Who would it help? No one, most of all me.

I easily relent.

It’s been almost two weeks removed from “the call” (next post) and the suddenly-childless couple are braving the public. We want to, yes, need to, get out, but we’re not yet ripe for frivolity.

The day after laying our son’s body in a scar in the earth and paying our soulful respects, someone wanted us to leave all that weight and grief behind and let Madea turn our mourning into dancing with them. Completely understandable. But nowhere near our radar.

There is a sort of invisible blanket between the world and me. I find it hard to take in what anyone says. Or perhaps, hard to want to take it in. It is so uninteresting. Yet I want the others to be about me. I dread the moments when the house is empty. If only they would talk to one another and not to me.”
― C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed

Amen, Clive. I so get you.

It’s hard to be on Facebook these days. For all its good, it can be painfully obtrusive or, even worse, obtuse. Aloof. People’s lives (rightfully) have already moved on past our momentary grief. We’re just not that interested in friends’ parties, get-togethers, selfies and animal snaps. But I too have been the unaware perpetrator of similar ‘crimes’ against others’ sorrow. Sitting here atop my own ash heap of dirge, I’m acutely aware of it.

We’ll move on, yes, but grief is, paradoxically, healing.

So we’ll heal here in the warm bath of hurt.

And praise Him in the pile.

On the day I knew of my son’s departure from this hard earth, I was visited by a friend. He came to the house, drew a chair close beside my own in the dining room and wept there with me, wordlessly, for fifteen minutes. Tears didn’t run down his cheeks, they flung outwardly to the floor. After he hugged me and held my hand, he prayed a few-second prayer, hugged me again then left. I still talk about that visit. There was no Romans 8:28, though it’s no less true. No counsel, though we welcome words of life into our soul. No bumper sticker theology. No tweets. No platitudes. Just grief. Good grief.

We’ll be okay.

We are okay.

We’ve been prepared for this. God has made us ready. And when our Father requires us to redeem our suffering by entering into the suffering of another – which He will – we’ll most gladly tell of His good deeds, gracious intentions, expert wisdom and unfailing love – without words, if we have to; with simply being present; with silent sobbing; with resurrection hope; with His authority, because of a new degree added to our schooling.

On the night before Graham’s funeral I wrestled with my responsibility to share something. The people need to hear from us. I didn’t want my silence to be translated into depression or hopeless grief. The pastor in me wanted to explain, expound, exposit and exhort. The encourager in me wanted to encourage the many who came with question marks. It turns out, my pastor friend handled it with all the eloquence and grace I pined for. He was magnificent.

I, on the other hand, listened to my wife who said, “it’s okay for us to grieve, Scott. Just for today, would you be a Dad instead of a minister?”

Yes, my love. Yes, a million times over!

I like Dad mode. Who says it’s supposed to be over?

A Door Called Aldersgate

I get John Wesley. Before he became the guy who said, “I look upon all the world as my parish”* he preferred his parochial, amicable studies and libraries rather than the great halls. He was a cave-dweller. Ministerially, he was a good Oxfordite, a proper Anglican priest, who toed the party line and desired things be done decently and with order. He had some OCD in him, I’d wager. In short, he went with the program.

I do like my cave, but, granted, that last bit is quite unlike me. I have Baptistic roots but there are doors closed to me because of my ‘aberrant’ theology, and, likewise, I have not found a home among their polar opposites (I’m too Baptist I’m told). Ah, well, such is life. My wife quipped a few years ago that if I were the type of person to “play the game”, I would be set for life with meetings and denominational appointments. She followed that up by saying, “I respect you more because you don’t.”

She so completes me.

John-surnamed-Wesley was a fussy dresser, I’m told, always neat and fashionable without being conspicuous, starched to the gills and spotless. Hands soft and manicured, Wesley’s skin was probably sallowed from dwelling indoors by candle’s glow. Continue reading A Door Called Aldersgate