Good evening, reader.
This is primarily for my mother. I note it is also for my Aunt Kathy who has asked me to please blog.
Last I blogged it was to mark the occasion of my forty-fifth birthday. Since that birthday I have written two obituaries, my maternal grandfather's and my father's. My grandfather died on March 26, 2026, at the age of ninety nine. My father died August 6, 2026, at the age of seventy one.
Most everything I have to say is for my mother. I actually have been sorting through many thoughts with the intent of how best to express them to her, and then the words I needed landed in my lap courtesy of my father.
Earlier this year he was teaching the adult Bible class at church. His intent was to finish covering the book of Ecclesiastes. He'd covered a good many chapters in earlier lessons, and he wanted to finish the book. He had to step away from teaching due to his declining health. There is one final lesson he'd prepared that he did not deliver. It was unearthed from his computer, and Trey recently sent me a copy of it. I believe there are plans to have someone actually deliver the lesson at church at some point.
In the body of the email he sent, Trey says this:
Attached is the last message your dad prepared for Sunday class. It’s incredibly poignant and such a perfect final Sunday message from him. He shaped so many lives for the better and will continue to do so. The incredible thing is that if there was ever a model for how Solomon advised people in these versus of Ecclesiastes to live their lives, your dad was the perfect example.
The lesson covers Ecclesiastes chapter nine, verses 1-10. I do not know exactly what was on his mind when he wrote this. Certainly likely his own health struggles were a factor, but he could not have known we would read this in the weeks after his death; had he known how this would unfold, I don't think he would have changed a word of what he wrote.
What I have been trying to say to my mother centers on a conversation I had in my parents' home on June 5 of this year. That was the last time I sat at the kitchen table with my dad. Henry's birthday is June 6, and he wanted a sleepover. My parents and I were discussing the trip my mother, my sister, and I took to Scotland in 2023. My father's mother died in 2018. His father preceded her in death, so after her death their house was eventually sold. We originally planned to go to Scotland in 2020, but, if you recall, there was a global pandemic that prevented this. It was around the time we were planning our original trip that my dad decided to use his portion of the sale of his parents' house to send us to Scotland.
On the evening of June 5 I was recalling details of our upgraded plane seats, telling him we left Dallas late at night, were served a steak dinner, slept fairly well in our reclining seats, and woke to a full breakfast spread complete with hot coffee served in real coffee cups. He smiled and remarked that he'd forgotten about the plane upgrade. It was obvious he was so pleased he did this. This is who he was, sending us across the Atlantic in style so we could indulge our love of Outlander and Scotland together. He wasn't even on the trip, but he was happy to send us on our way, making sure we were as comfortable as possible even on the plane. He stayed home and worked while we were in Scotland. He came to the airport with his sons-in-law and grandchildren to welcome us home around midnight when we landed in Monroe.
I am so thankful for our conversation that evening, the night before Henry turned thirteen. I'd be happy to have had any conversation with him that evening, but I am glad the topic made him smile so much. It was and remains a reminder my mother needs, and it is echoed in his final Bible class lesson.
I am not going to quote the entire lesson. This is from the conclusion:
So Solomon has said:
Enjoy the simple things in life. Enjoy the relationships in your life.
Then he adds to that in verse 10:
"Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with your might, for there is no work or thought or knowledge or wisdom in Sheol, to which you are going."
Solomon is not denying the afterlife; he’s emphasizing for us to maximize the potential of this life on earth.
"Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all you got."
When God made a world that is creative, and glorious, and imaginative, He said in Genesis 1:31, "Behold it is very good."
So as long as "whatever your hand finds to do" doesn’t violate some command of God, enjoy whatever your hand finds to do.
Visit the sick or lonely.
Make a meal for the hungry.
Run a marathon, or for us older folks, run a mile.
Read a book.
Write a letter to a friend or relative. Text them if you don’t write letters anymore.
Learn a musical instrument.
Travel to some place you have not been before.
Whatever you take up, do it with all your heart and energy.
Christians are not told to live in caves or monasteries to be pious.
So Solomon has told us in these verses:
Enjoy a meal.
Enjoy the presence of your spouse.
And your family.
Enjoy the excellence when you perform a task well.
When we do so we can see the future, the life beyond the grave.
When we will feast at the marriage supper of the Lamb.
Where relationships with the family of the redeemed will be enjoyed to their fullest extent.
Where we will serve with dancing and triumph and glory and grace.
This is how we get a glimpse of heaven while we are down here, under the sun.
We can get a glimpse of heaven down here, as we dance before death, and practice our coming life above the sun by serving others, by loving others, and by savoring the simple things of this life.
And eventually we will reap our reward in the Heavenly City where the rejoicing, feasting, worshiping, serving, and singing will go on with uninterrupted and never-ending joy.
Next week we will move onto Ecclesiastes 9:11 and the following verses.
I imagine he is continuing as he planned with Ecclesiastes 9:11 and the following verses. He wanted to finish the book, which has twelve chapters; I like to think he was able to finish discussing it with a host of saints or perhaps still is as I type this.
We are still here, under the sun, and we do not have to guess what he would tell us. He spells it out. Enjoy life. Read. Serve others. Enjoy one another. Adopt a rescue dog. Travel. Worship. Keep serving. When he was alive, he was happy to spend his money sending his family around the globe without him. He was happy to give to those in need. He was generous, always, with his money as well as with his time. I knew he was special, but the things people have shared since his death have and continue to reinforce for me what an incredible man he was and the absolute lottery I won as his child.
He could not take a cent with him, and he doesn't need it now. We will feast with him once again, but until then I will think of his smile on the evening of June 5 of this year as I recounted for him details of our Scotland trip. My purpose is not to suggest we return to Scotland (though obviously that's always on the table). My purpose is to use his words to encourage my mother to remember his joy when he was able to bless us and bless others. He was hardworking and responsible and frankly exceptional at his chosen profession, and he lived in such a way that he continues to bless us and allow us to bless others. This would bring him joy.
I was recently prompted to answer a security question for some online portal. The question was, "What is your father's middle name?" I supplied the answer. I took note of the present tense verb, is. He is and will always be my father. Nothing, even his current sleep as he waits for Christ's return and his new body, will change that.
We are tempted to ask so many questions. Obviously we would have liked more time with him, but inherent in that sentiment is this: We do know we will one day be with him in a place outside time. Time can no longer touch him. His spirit is waiting for the day the Lord will raise his earthly body and change it in ways we cannot imagine. We will either rise with him as the dead in Christ, or we will be alive and join him in the air. Either way, we will all be changed. We are assured of this in scripture. On the day of his funeral when we left the gravesite for the closing of the grave I thought to myself that one day, that grave will be opened.
In The Screwtape Letters Lewis says this: "Courage is not simply one of the virtues, but the form of every virtue at the testing point, which means at the point of highest reality."
This summer brought a handful of moments of highest reality. I know I am still processing what has unfolded. In a way I suppose I always will be.
I fully understand there are moments when my exhortation to keep going, to enjoy one another, to find joy in the simple things, rings hollow. It is sometimes easier said than done to be thankful for the many wonderful years we had with him without simultaneously becoming mired in questions and heartache.
I am certainly thankful for so many things. We sang "Goodness of God" this morning in church, and I was able to sing it sincerely. Even today, weeks after my dad's death, I know that God is good, and He has been and continues to be good to me. All my life you have been faithful, and all my life you have been so, so good. I will reap the blessings of having Gordon James as my dad for the rest of my life, and truly throughout eternity as well as he always pointed me to Christ.
I am also aware that I will keep going, life will keep moving, time will meander on until the Lord returns, but a part of me lingers in Room 16 in the first-floor ICU at UMMC in Jackson. He grew a pretty good beard over the summer during the weeks he was hospitalized. My mom took him to St. Francis on June 11. A week later, on June 18, we followed an ambulance over the Mississippi River to UMMC in Jackson where he spent the remaining weeks of his life. I liked the salt and pepper beard he grew. He did not like it so much. The beard remained when he died. He was on some serious blood thinners, so taking a razor to his face was not high on the priority list.
We lingered after he died. Once we left the room we were told to give the nurses some time with him, and then we could return. When we returned, they'd shaved his beard. One of the nurses said she looked him up online and saw his picture posted on the firm's website, so they shaved the beard since it wasn't his usual. I kissed his clean-shaven face. Many of our most poignant moments come in hospitals, where life and death mingle. I felt so many, many things in that moment, certainly heartache, but also relief for him, even joy because I knew he was in the presence of the Lord. You want the mortal body to be fixed. That's the goal, the hope, but there is this gray area between progress and healing and frustration and suffering, and he had been lingering there for months. One step forward, two steps back; I repeated that phrase to myself all summer. This is why his use of the word dancing repeatedly in his last lesson pleases me after witnessing him languish in bed for weeks.
We dance here, under the sun, before death despite knowing the inevitability of death; ultimately we will, ". . . . serve with dancing and triumph and glory and grace." I disliked seeing him in his weakened state. It is not how I will remember him, and I am thankful it was but a small fraction of his life. He was always active, always walking in nature, always running and playing with his grandchildren, and it is soothing to me to know in the spring of this year, when he certainly knew his health was precarious, he was penning a Bible lesson in which he focuses on the bridge between life here, under the sun, and the life to come after death, and he ties them together using the term dancing. Were he reading this, it is at this point he would throw in lyrics from Fiyero's big number in Wicked, "Dancing Through Life."
I have rambled. I know I am not alone in the temptation to mull over what is in the past. The Great Gatsby closes with the famous line, "So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past." Perhaps the human tendency to fixate on the past speaks to the fact that we are designed to live forever in a place where there is no past, only eternity. This world, the world dominated by clocks and calendars and regret, is not our home. We say things like, "Time is a thief," and, "Time is undefeated," but as we sing in church, one day the roll will be called, and The trumpet of the Lord shall sound, and time shall be no more.
When the temptation to wallow in the past overtakes me, I return to what I know he would say, what he did in fact say in his final Bible lesson, to me and to all of us still here, bound by time:
How do we navigate life under the sun knowing we will die, knowing death will come for us all unless the Lord returns first?
I will answer with my father's words:
We can get a glimpse of heaven down here, as we dance before death, and practice our coming life above the sun by serving others, by loving others, and by savoring the simple things of this life.
AZ
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