Upon further reflection, despite my grief over the loss of my wife’s companionship, I am beginning to appreciate that it was God’s gracious gift for her to precede me in passing on to glory. During the last few years, since the injuries she sustained in a fall in January 2013 and a subsequent fall in November 2015, both of which required trips to the hospital emergency room and admission to the hospital, followed by long and painful rehabilitations and a slow healing process, she had grown increasingly dependent on my assistance. She regained most of her mobility after the first fall, including progressing from a wheelchair to a walker and then to walking on her own, as well as being able to drive her car. After the second fall, although she again progressed remarkably in her mobility, her eyesight was degrading due to an unrelated condition, so she did not feel safe in driving her car and was less confident in her sense of balance when walking.

As a consequence, I began to drive her everywhere she needed to go and to hold her hand whenever she walked anywhere outside of our home. I became her almost constant companion and helper to the point of doing the laundry, the grocery shopping and preparing meals or securing takeout to bring home. Then, by the time we had endured the hassle of preparing our house for sale, packing, moving into a senior living facility and unpacking, her health had deteriorated to the point she once again needed a wheelchair. This provided her with sufficient mobility around the apartment, but I was needed to assist when we went anywhere else.

Finally, when she was hospitalized for the last time I was able to be with her every day up until the day she passed away. Despite my sorrow in being left alone after 54 years of experiencing life together with Mary, I now realize what a blessing it was for her to precede me. I am feeling lonelier than ever before, but I am glad that I did not leave her alone to fend for herself in the last days of her mortal life. I was able to be with her and see to her needs until she did not need me to anymore.

What a gracious gift from God that was. And I know that his grace will sustain me throughout the remainder of my life also. Praise the Lord!

Let’s face it; the grief that I continue to experience due to my wife’s passing is essentially self-pity over my being left behind. The more I reflect on the last few days of Mary’s mortal life the more I realize she was more than ready to move on to her home in glory. She had struggled with illness and injuries for most of her life, beginning in her teenage years and continuing on a regular basis for all of the years we were together. In addition she had fought  prejudice against her as a professional woman with a family from both religious and secular quarters. She felt there were few people who truly understood her strong desires for both career and motherhood.

In spite of this, she lived a long, full and richly rewarding life, filled with many singular achievements. In the end I believe she felt she had accomplished her purpose here on earth and had completed the work God had prepared for her. She had retired from her academic career in 2007, been increasingly involved in activities at our church and had just a few items remaining on her “bucket list’. These included seeing our Spiritual Entrepreneurship book published at long last in September of last year, followed that same month by our moving from our home of 33 years to an active senior living facility in close proximity to our daughter’s family. Then we closed on the sale of our home on November 21 of last year. She passed away exactly one month later on December 21. Job accomplished, work completed.

That she was ready to go home was evidenced by her statement to the doctors five days after her admission to the hospital yet once again that she “was ready to meet her Maker”.  That same day the doctors concluded they had done all they could for her and recommended we consider hospice care. Then I realized she was not only ready, but eager, to move on when she woke up on her last day in the hospital. looked at me and asked, “Why am I still here?” And finally, on the day after we moved her to the hospice facility she passed away very quietly and peacefully. She was there one minute and the next minute she was gone. What a way to go!

So when I reflect on her passing I thank God not only for a life well lived, but also for the ease of her transition to her eternal home. And I thank him for the privilege I had of knowing her and sharing in her journey of life for so many years.

And I am also beginning to realize the blessings God has in store for me now. I am able to participate more freely in the lives of our daughter and her family. I am living in close proximity to their home (it is only a 10 minute drive from my apartment), and I can attend more of our grandsons’ athletic events (which had become quite difficult for us as Mary’s health declined). She was remorseful about our inability to participate more fully in their lives, but now I feel her presence with me as I see them and feel that in some way I am helping to fulfill her heartfelt desire to be with them.

These new lessons learned are bringing great comfort to me and giving me a renewed sense of optimism about the future. I eagerly await even more lessons to be learned.

I am beginning to learn that life goes on following the loss of a spouse. It will never be the same as it was, of course.  But being different does not necessarily mean worse. And I am finding new avenues to share the life lessons Mary and I learned during our 54-plus years together. Each new experience, including becoming a widower, provides another addition to the lode of experiential knowledge I have accumulated during my life, and opens up the way to another group (in this case, widowers) with whom I can share a common experience. Realizing this, I have come to welcome each new experience I encounter (whether good or  bad on the surface) as yet another opportunity to identify with others on a level that cannot be reached by anyone who has not had that same of similar experience. And so I am learning to thank God always for all things.

And then, upon further reflection, as I look back on my life with Mary I realize that without her companionship, support and, yes, her critique and challenges to me, I would never have had the success in life I have enjoyed. And I believe the reverse is also true for her. As the scripture says;

“As iron sharpens iron, so one person sharpens another.” (Proverbs 27:17 NIV)

Although I didn’t always appreciate it at the time, I gradually came to realize the value in seeing things from a different (in this case feminine) perspective. All of the major decisions we made were joint decisions, arrived at after much discussion and prayer. And, in the final analysis, they proved to be good decisions, although some of them turned out much different than we had anticipated. Marriage, we discovered, is meant to be a venture shared by two equal partners.

After Mary passed away I wondered how I would be able to fill my time now that I no longer had an ever-expanding “honey do” list. But I am finding that my calendar continues to fill up with new, and often unexpected, opportunities each week. The challenge for me is to identify the best choice among the many good things I could do. I find this is driving me to spend more time in prayer, seeking God’s guidance each and every day. Not necessarily being on my knees for prolonged periods, but cultivating a more constant awareness of God’s presence with me and listening more intently to what he is whispering to me all day long. And the results have been very rewarding. I am experiencing a renewed zest for life and all that it brings with it, and looking forward hopefully and expectantly to even better things in the future.

Hallelujah! What a great time to be alive!

On December 21, 2017 my beautiful wife, the love of my life and my constant companion for over 54 years, passed away. God, how I miss her! I deeply grieve over her loss. And yet, it is my loss of her companionship that I grieve, for she has gained the heavenly realm by her passing. Hers is all gain and not loss. Nevertheless, I grieve.

However, when I honestly reflect on her passing,  I realize that I have gained an understanding of several things that I never had before. First of all, I have a deep and abiding sense of peace. I shouldn’t really say that I understand it, because it is a peace that passes understanding. Let’s just say that I have experienced it, so I know that it is real. It comes, I believe, when I focus on the realization that, after many years of struggle with a host of illnesses and accidents, Mary is no longer suffering any pain. She is in a place where sorrow and suffering have passed away, and she is enjoying face to face fellowship with Jesus, her Lord and Savior – something that I look forward to myself one day in the not too distant future. So I rejoice with her over that.

Then, there is this. I was in somewhat of a state of shock when Mary passed away. Not that it was that unexpected. She had been diagnosed with an incurable and terminal liver disease in 1990 and told that she had only a few years to live without a liver transplant. Although she was on the waiting list for a transplant for over 17 years, she never received one. She lived for over 27 years after the diagnosis, continually confounding her doctors. Nevertheless we knew the day would come when the doctors had done everything they could, and it finally did. My shock was that many years ago, the Lord had told us that he had work for both of us and told me that I would have a long and sometimes difficult journey, and that no one would go all the way with me but my wife. So, why was I still here after she passed away? Was my journey soon to be over also. Then I realized that she was still with me, not by my side, but in my heart. Wherever I go now, and for however long, she will be with me to the end, as will Jesus.

In pondering this, I came to understand a statement Jesus made that I had never been able to comprehend before. He said, “Everyone who lives and believes in me will never die.” How could that be? Shortly before Mary passed away, he had said to me, “She will live.” I had taken that to mean that she would recover from her hospitalization yet once more. But what he meant was that she would not die, but merely pass from this mortal existence into an immortal one. And she would receive an immortal body to replace the worn and tattered one she was leaving behind. This, too, added to my sense of joy and peace.

There will undoubtedly be many more lessons for me to learn as I travel onward with the Lord, and I will do my best to share them as they occur.

You may have heard it said that prostitution is the world’s oldest profession, but that is simply not true. The very first profession is that of steward. So what is a steward? A steward is someone who manages with authority the affairs of his master. Dr. William Barclay in his commentary on “The Letters to the Corinthians” says:

“The steward was … in charge of the whole administration of the house or the estate; he controlled the staff; he issued the supplies
and the rations; he ran the whole household; but, however much he controlled the household staff of slaves, he himself was still a slave
where the master was concerned…”

So who were the first stewards? It was Adam and Eve. In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth, the sun, moon and stars and the entire vast (and still expanding) universe. Then he created Man, and he created Woman as a companion and fellow worker with the Man.

God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish in the sea and
the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground.”

In other words he commissioned them as stewards over his creation. They were given authority to oversee what God had created, with but one stipulation.

“And the LORD God commanded the man, “You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; but you must not eat from the tree of the
knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat from it you will certainly die.” (Genesis 2:16-17 NIV)

Now when Adam and Eve violated this stipulation, God did not say “You’re fired!” They retained their position of stewardship, but God told them their work would become much more difficult. (Genesis 3:14-19) God’s original intention for Man to be in charge of tending to his creation has never changed. As descendants of Adam and Eve we still bear that same responsibility. And God has made it clear that he takes our responsibility seriously and will require us to give an accounting of how well we have discharged our duties. Jesus illustrated this quite plainly in his parable about stewardship in Matthew 25:14-30.

So the point of stewardship is not about how much of our money we donate to the church, but about how well we have taken care of that portion of God’s creation he has entrusted to us. After all, he created it all, including us, and it all belongs to him, including our own bodies. (I Corinthians 6:19, 20 and I Corinthians 7:23) As Job realized, we brought nothing into this world and we cannot take anything with us when we leave it. So what is important is not how much we have amassed, but how well we have performed our duties as stewards of God’s creation. That will be our lasting legacy.

What is sin? Is it breaking one (or more) of the Ten Commandments. Is it doing something that hurts yourself and/or someone else? It is all of that and more. Sin is actually so pervasive that it is difficult to avoid, even when we are doing what we perceive to be good things. Rob Bell found this out when, as the pastor of a dynamic, growing church he discovered that a significant amount of his time was spent trying to please other people and he was crumbling under the load. As he describes in his book “Velvet Elvis”, he started going to a therapist for counseling. The therapist helped him to see that he was overreacting to an experience in his early teens that created a need in him to prove his worth to himself and others. His issue was a simple one: sin. Then the therapist said, “Your job is the relentless pursuit of who God has made you to be. And anything else you do is sin and you need to repent of it.”

Wow! Talk about pervasive. That covers a lot of ground – anything that keeps us from the relentless pursuit of who God has made us to be. Or, as I like to put it, that would be anything that hinders us from accomplishing our purpose in life, or in other words from fulfilling our God-ordained destiny. So to avoid sin we need to discover our purpose in life, the destiny that God intends for us and we need to passionately pursue it. And that means nothing short of our salvation; not only the forgiveness of our sins, but also our reconciliation with God and one another. God intends for us to learn to live more and more in harmony with him and all of his children. Our salvation then is part of his larger plan to restore the whole of his creation, of which we are an integral part. As the author of Ephesians says,

“{God} has made known to us the mystery of his will according to his good pleasure, which he purposed in Christ, to be put into effect when the times reach their fulfillment—to bring unity to all things in heaven and on earth under Christ. In him we were also chosen, having been predestined according to the plan of him who works out everything in conformity with the purpose of his will…” (Ephesians 1:9-11 NIV)

Or, as Rob Bell says,

“Salvation is the entire universe being brought back into harmony with its maker.”

In light of this understanding it is incumbent upon us to make sure we are doing nothing that hinders God from accomplishing his purpose in us and through us for his whole creation. The relentless pursuit of who God has made us to be means leaving all else behind and following Jesus wherever he leads us, rather than following our own agenda, however good we think it to be. Anything that hinders us in that pursuit is sin. Consider what is at stake, for

“All creation anticipates the day when it will join God’s children in glorious freedom from death and decay. For we know that all creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time.” (Romans 8:21-22 NLT)

Our pastor reminded us today of the responsibility we have as followers of Christ. After his resurrection, and just before his ascension into heaven, Jesus charged his disciples with what has come to be known as the Great Commission. He said,

“All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.” (Matthew 28:18-20 NIV)

Jesus had spent some three years preaching about the kingdom of God, ministering to the poor, the sick and the outcasts, and teaching his disciples in the process, grooming them to participate in his ministry. Having alienated the religious authorities, he was arrested on trumped-up charges, ridiculed, scourged and then put to death on the cross. However, three days later he rose from the dead and appeared to his disciples on several occasions, on the last of which he gave them this charge. He also instructed them,

“Do not leave Jerusalem, but wait for the gift my Father promised, which you have heard me speak about. For John baptized with water, but in a few days you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit… you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” (Acts 1:5,6,8 NIV)

The he was taken up to heaven and a cloud hid him from their sight. They waited as he had instructed, and then forty days later

When the day of Pentecost came, they were all together in one place. Suddenly a sound like the blowing of a violent wind came from heaven and filled the whole house where they were sitting. They saw what seemed to be tongues of fire that separated and came to rest on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit enabled them. (Acts 2:1-4 NIV)

Hearing the noise, a large crowd gathered. Peter, who not many days before had denied knowing Jesus, stood before them and preached a powerful sermon declaring that Jesus, whom they had seen crucified, had been raised from the dead and exalted to the right hand of God, where he had received from the Father the promised Holy Spirit and had poured out what they now saw and heard. He urged them,

“Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins. And you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. The promise is for you and your children and for all who are far off—for all whom the Lord our God will call.” Those who accepted his message were baptized, and about three thousand were added to their number that day.
Acts 2:38-39, 41 NIV)

The Holy Spirit had passed the baton of ministry from Jesus to the Body of Christ, the Church. What began some two thousand years ago is still happening today. As followers of Christ, we are tasked with carrying on his ministry. As our pastor said today, we are writing the next chapters of the Book of Acts. And as Watchman Nee says in his book “The Release of the Spirit”:

“The people of God should know the ultimate purpose of the church, and also the inter-relationship among the church, God’s power, and God’s work. There came a time when God committed Himself to human form – in the person of Jesus Christ of Nazareth. Before the Word became flesh, God’s fullness knew no bounds. However, once the incarnation became a reality, His work and His power were limited to the flesh. Will this man, Jesus Christ, restrict or manifest God? The Bible shows us that, far from limiting God, He has wonderfully manifested God’s fullness. The fullness of God is the fullness of this flesh.

In our day God commits Himself to the church. His power and His work are in the church. Just as in the Gospels we find all God’s work given to the Son, so today God has entrusted all His works to the church and will not act apart from it. From the day of Pentecost up to the present, God’s work has been carried out through the church. Think of the church’s tremendous responsibility. God’s committal to the church is like His committal previously to one Man, Christ -without reservation or restriction. But the church may restrict God’s work or limit his manifestation…”

It is our responsibility to see that this does not happen. We must yield ourselves to God to allow him to work through us unhindered. When we do, as Jesus said,

“Very truly I tell you, whoever believes in me will do the works I have been doing, and they will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father.” (John 14:12 NIV)

The Bible tells us it is through faith and patience that we inherit God’s promises.

“We do not want you to become lazy, but to imitate those who through faith and patience inherit what has been promised.” – Hebrews 6:12

My faith and patience are both being severely tested at this time. I wrote earlier (see “Giving Thanks Always for All Things”) about the recent changes in my health, but I have learned to live with these without undue concern. However, I am experiencing more difficulty in dealing with my wife Mary’s health. Although she was diagnosed with an incurable autoimmune liver disease in 1990 and told she would soon need a liver transplant in order to survive, she has lived for over 26 years without a transplant and without experiencing the rate of health decline that the doctors expected. Within the last year, though, she began to exhibit some of the symptoms that would indicate that the liver failure was progressing. During that time she also fell several times, with the most recent (shortly after Thanksgiving last year) resulting in a stress fracture of one of her vertebrae. This put her in the hospital for several days followed by several weeks in rehab to promote healing of her back and to counter the effects of the progression of the liver disease. This was a devastating blow to her, having previously suffered a fractured pelvis and injured shoulder in a January 2013 fall that had put her in the hospital and then in rehab for over a month. Although she had fully recovered from that fall, this was deja vu with a sense of “here we go again.” On top of that, her doctor now told her the liver disease had “entered another stage” and that she should expect a continuing downward spiral in her health and that a liver transplant was unlikely due to her age and overall health. A rather grim prognosis.

I have felt for a long time, however, that God has been telling me our mission on earth is not yet complete and he still has work for both of us, work requiring both of us to be healthy. Along with this comes a promise that God is healing Mary in ways that go beyond what the doctors can do. I am learning that faith and patience are needed in order to receive these promises. The hardest part for me is patience. The prayers of many have gone up on our behalf, and the doctor has been surprised that Mary shows signs of improvement when he expected further decline. Nevertheless, this has been an extremely slow, though steady, process. Why can’t God speed it up? The answer seems to be that this is a time of learning to wait on God, to trust that he is using this time to prepare us for the work he has for us, work that will require both faith and patience. He has told me the things I perceive as obstacles and hindrances to our progress will actually become stepping stones to help us on our way.

Here we are in mid-March 2017 and Mary’s healing is not yet complete. Once I identify a problem I want to get it resolved right away. This time, though, it is not something I can control. God has told me to let go of it and let him finish what he has started. It is hard for me to wait on him, but I am learning.

Our pastor recently preached a sermon in which he told us that truly healthy living (body, mind and soul) begins with getting our priorities straight. That is great advice for a number of reasons. There is only so much time in a day (or a lifetime for that matter), and we continually make choices (deliberately or by default) as to how we are going to fill that time. If we have clear-cut goals for what we want to accomplish and determine what is necessary to accomplish them, we can then establish priorities to help us focus on what is important. If not, we will just wander from one activity to another without really getting anywhere.

The key to setting proper goals for our lives and correctly aligning our priorities to accomplish them is to seek God’s advice. After all, he created us for a purpose and has a plan for our lives that is intended to fulfill that purpose. The Bible is his instruction book to explain his purpose and plan. Reading the Bible, while asking God to help us understand what he is saying to us in it, enables us to discover his intentions for us.

The Psalms tell us in several places that reverence for God is the beginning of wisdom. Acknowledging his sovereignty then is the first step in discovering who we are and why we are here on this earth. Jesus reinforced this by saying the first and greatest of God’s commandments is to love the Lord our God with all of our heart, and soul and mind. He went on to say the second is to love our neighbors as ourselves. He then illustrated this by telling a story about a man who went out of his way to help a stranger in need. (Luke 10:30-37). Our lives should be ordered such that our foremost priorities are to demonstrate our love for God and for those around us.  This means much more than just saying “I love you”.  Love involves commitment, not just an emotional feeling.  Love is demonstrated in the way we treat people.

Remember: “But God demonstrates his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.” (Romans 5:8)

And: “Greater love has no man than this, that a man lay down his life for a friend.” (John 15:13)

Now obviously the ultimate sacrifice anyone can make is to die in order that someone else can live.  But, while most of us will probably never have the opportunity to demonstrate our love in this manner, there is another sense in which we can all “lay down our lives” on a daily basis. This is by giving preference to others so their needs can be met, even when it means we must sacrifice what we want.   The Apostle Paul said to the Christians at Rome:

“Be kindly affectioned one to another with brotherly love; in honor preferring one another.” (Romans 12:10)

Remember Jesus also said:

“Anyone wanting to be a leader among you must be your servant.  And if you want to be right at the top, you must serve like a slave.  Your attitude must be like my own, for I, the Messiah, did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give my life as a ransom for many.” (Matthew 20:26-28 )

God’s priorities always place people above things. We do well when we follow his example.

The world today seems increasingly to be divided into warring camps – based on religion, nationality, gender, liberalism, conservatism, and many other isms. Each is these is occupied with hurling insults, slanders and hatred – if not grenades and bombs – at the others. There seems to be little desire for peace and reconciliation among the warring factions, much less a realistic chance of achieving these. But if you are overwhelmed by the flood of vitriol that fills the news today, take heart. There is hope for the future.

That hope is based on recognizing who the real enemy is. It is not the people on the other side of the fence that divides us. In fact, it is not people at all. Our enemy is much more pervasive and powerful than that. He harbors a deep-seated hatred for all of mankind and seeks to destroy us by dividing and conquering us. The Bible says of him:

“Be alert and of sober mind. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour.” I Peter 5:8 NIV

And he is not alone. He has a host of spiritual beings in league with him, all of them bent on our destruction. Because of this, the Bible instructs us to:

” … be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power.  Put on the full armor of God, so that you can take your stand against the devil’s schemes. For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.” Ephesians 6:10-12 NIV

Powerful as they are, the spiritual forces of evil are no match for us if we are in fellowship with God, because

“the Spirit in you is far stronger than anything in the world.” 1 John 4:4 (MSG)

So we are guaranteed the victory, not just for ourselves and our little group, but for all mankind, if we recognize who the real enemy is, stop fighting one another, and come together against him and his minions, relying on the power of Holy Spirit within us.

Rejoice, brothers and sisters, the war may not be over yet, but the battle is already won.