Tag: Comfort

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.

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

better than fine: an advent meditation

[937 words, 5 minutes]

There’s a popular meme of a cartoon dog sitting glaze-eyed in a burning room with a mug of coffee within reach. He seems to be disassociatively resigned to his fate as the caption reads, “This is fine.”

As bad as the world gets, we don’t have to check out and pretend it’s not as horrible as they say. It’s bad. It’s really bad, granted. But Bethlehem would like a word. That little town long, long ago was mourning in lonely exile when something brilliant was taking place under its nose. Captive Israel (and the world) needed ransoming, and O Little Town of Bethlehem seemed as good of a place as any to get it started.

The beauty of Christmas is that it knows nothing of defeat. Mourning, yes. Disappointment, of course. But never defeat. As we find ourselves in the season of Advent, let this guiding promise illuminate our approach: Christmas reminds us that God is operating smack dab in the middle of the unholiest of messes and redeeming from it a much better story.

The Christmas story really begins in a garden full of trees. One might say Christmas was being scripted from the very beginning: a perfect world illuminated by God’s presence, resounding with angelic worship.1 And somewhere in the middle of it all, a couple and a tree that would change everything.2

The devil slithers into the narrative and messes it all up. The angels are caught in mid-song. The stars stop dancing. Darkness as black as death falls across Eden. Demons are given free rein to hunt and prowl the earth. Plagues of violence, lust, murder, and hate spread until they torch the outer boundaries of the once-flourishing world.

David, a key player in the Christmas saga, wrestled with the same kind of stuff we do today. What do we do when the room is burning down around us?

When the foundations are destroyed,
what can the righteous do?

Psa 11:3

What, David, what? What can the righteous do? Shrug our shoulders? Acquiesce? Sulk? Fret? Surrender to our fate? No, David says. We shift our gaze from the burning room to the throne in Heaven.

The LORD is in his holy temple;
the LORD—his throne is in heaven.
His eyes watch…The Lord examines the righteous…The upright will see His face.

Psalm 11:4-7

Martin Luther caught a bit of the drama in his famous hymn:3

And though this world, with devils filled, should threaten to undo us…

But he quickly pivoted to the Hope of humanity in our fallen world:

Did we in our own strength confide,
our striving would be losing,
were not the right Man on our side,
the Man of God’s own choosing…

The first gospel verse in scripture (Genesis 3:15) shines into the dark void, declaring One who will “crush the head” of the serpent and destroy his dominion over the earth. At the news I’m sure the hearkening angels, in full voice, heralded once again and the stars resumed their dance with unrestrained delight.

It won’t be an easy path for humanity, not by a long shot. “There will always be conflict between the ancient serpent and the offspring of Adam and Eve, until the day the Right Man comes — Jesus — and “destroys the works of the devil.” And the Right Man did come, and He did what He came to do.

Even when it looks like all is lost, everything’s fine. All is well.

In his book, Let Earth Receive Her King, Alistair Begg elaborates on the Advent promise:

Because God is in control, nothing could prevent the birth of that promised head-crusher of the serpent, Jesus of Nazareth. Because God is in control, nothing could prevent the perfect life that He lived. Because God is in control, nothing could prevent His triumph on the cross, when He bruised the serpent’s head. And because God is in control, nothing can prevent the coming age when the serpent is totally defeated and God’s great reversal is complete.

The baby in the manger at Christmas is the “he” of Genesis 3:15. We can rest in the reality that Jesus was, is, and always will be in control. We can remember that He will one day gather all who are His own and usher us into a new Eden. We can enjoy looking forward to the day when He will give to each of His people the privilege of enjoying eternal life with no sin, no sorrow, no sickness, no bitterness, no family divisions, no political wrangling – just never-ending beauty as we enjoy perfect communion with our Creator4.

Isn’t God kind to give away the end of the Story in the very beginning of the Story? Otherwise we would think Twitter is real life; that our grieving and groaning will remain unrequited; that we are stuck in a George Bailey horror show forever; that evil will always have the upper hand; that there is no change, no resolution, no getting out alive.

Imagine sitting in a burning room bravely pretending to be okay with it all, yet knowing in our hearts it will never, ever be fine. In truth, everything may not be fine right now, but all is well nonetheless (if you know what I mean). Advent hope doesn’t anesthetize present pain but rather gives it context and company—God entered the mess rather than explaining it away from a distance.

Christmas spares us from the dog in the meme’s delusional “This is fine” take, and transforms it into the best Christmas message of all: “All is well.”

Selah, beloved.

  1. Job 38:7 ↩︎
  2. Genesis 3:1-7 ↩︎
  3. Luther, Martin, A Mighty Fortress Is Our God ↩︎
  4. Begg, Alistair, Let Earth Receive Her King, p. 24 ↩︎

all the way home

[5 minutes]

Thirty six years ago a baby boy was born in the same city where I first spotted the girl I would marry and who would later be his mommy. That baby was born to someone else, but that someone already gave him up to Jesus so that we could have the rapturous joy of bringing him home. That was then.

He was the answer to his mama’s many prayers and the happy surprise of his disabled daddy. He’s perfect, we said. All his fingers and toes and not a flaw to be seen. He actually favored me. I had only wanted daughters, not a son, but he changed all that with my first look. That was then.

Graham learned how to walk by steadying a pudgy hand on my wheelchair tire, trailing trustingly along as I s l o w l y rolled across the living room floor, him putting one foot gingerly in front of the other. His favorite way to travel was to perch himself between my legs and ride on my footrests, giggling and bouncing at the world in front of him. We were Thunderbolt and Lightfoot. Speed Racer and Chim-Chim. My favorite way for him to ride was when Gra-Gra climbed on my lap, pulled himself upright, facing me. When he grabbed a fistful of my shirt and pumped his legs up and down, that was my signal. Off we went, doing wheelies and spinning and carving donuts in the carpet. That was then.

We could take him anywhere. He smiled at everybody he saw and they usually smiled back. Our little guy loved to sing Jesus songs and was never off-pitch. He made friends easily. He told other little boys on the McDonald’s playground about Jesus. He loved church, he loved his cousins, and he loved Christmas and Halloween and birthdays and pretty much any other day of the year. That was then.

The boy could pick up any instrument and learn how to play it by ear. Like his mama, music was inside him and moved him. He wasn’t a great student, didn’t have the handwriting skills of his mother, but he was the spark of life in every classroom. From kindergarten through elementary school, he was rewarded as the student with the most personality, aka class clown. That was then.

The angels God assigned to our Graham had their hands full. Rambunctious, daring, and always scoping out the next epic adventure, we never knew for sure if we had a tight enough hold on him. He was so adaptable, which is a good thing on the one hand, but not always on the other. Don’t get me wrong; Graham wasn’t a troublemaker, but trouble often found him anyway. That was then.

He gave his heart to Jesus before he became a teenager. I may have mentioned it earlier, but our son didn’t shy away from telling people about Jesus. He went on mission trips, laid hands on people and prayed for their healing, traveled hut to hut with the gospel, and left his only pair of shoes in Honduras for another who had no shoes. That was then.

Prodigals aren’t as rare as you’d think. Especially not the ones who grew up in pastor’s homes. Like many of us, Graham had high hopes but he got mad at a God whom he accused of ruining his dreams. He didn’t know what to do with that, where to take all that anger. It molested him, throttled him, imprisoned him. He became addicted to it, wore it all on both sleeves, and it became the death of him. That was then.

The thing about God’s mercy is that it keeps following us and hounding us and nipping at our heels. All the way home, the psalm says. All. The. Way. Home. God’s lovingkindness never lets up. I shared with another parent of a prodigal just this week the same words that encouraged Sandy and me when our beautiful son died: the power and strength and determined will of God’s hold on us is eternally stronger than our will to walk away from him.

The other thing about prodigals is that some of them, perhaps more than we think, come home. Graham sure did.

God’s merciful love did that. It followed him all the way home, praise Jesus.

Graham would be 36 today. Sandy is in Georgia this week to celebrate still being his mom. She has many things on her docket, but none more important than sitting by Graham’s graveside and reminiscing about all the “that was then” moments. It’s been almost twelve years now, but still we grieve — and that’s okay. Some years are harder than others to celebrate his birthday while mourning his passing. This is one of those years. Sigh.

Were it not for the rich mercies of Christ Jesus, we might just stay by his cemetery plot and never leave, chained to unremedied sorrow. But a hope greater than our grieving is beating in our chests and beckoning us on. We can drive away from that plot of ground, assured and at peace, because there’s a new now, not then, past the veil and scrim of this side of eternity, where Graham is waiting for us to get Home too.

Selah, beloved.