Five years

Surprised by joy—impatient as the Wind

I turned to share the transport—Oh! with whom

But Thee, long buried in the silent Tomb,

That spot which no vicissitude can find?

Love, faithful love, recalled thee to my mind—

But how could I forget thee?—Through what power,

Even for the least division of an hour,

Have I been so beguiled as to be blind

To my most grievous loss!—That thought’s return

Was the worst pang that sorrow ever bore,

Save one, one only, when I stood forlorn,

Knowing my heart’s best treasure was no more;

That neither present time, nor years unborn

Could to my sight that heavenly face restore.

(William Wordsworth, on the loss of his daughter)

I was told many things as I waited for my father to die, but I was never prepared for how this newfound sense of loss would only deepen with time. The anesthetic joy of college has given way to a steadily-accumulating list of milestones passing unwitnessed and quandaries lacking his insight. You learn to move on, but even this is an unstable term: it's more like becoming old friends with the memories that haunt you. Never less painful, simply more familiar.

I wrote the post below over a period of several weeks following the news that my dad was going to die much more suddenly than I had expected. At the time, I was about to graduate highschool. I never had the heart to finish it. I've made it through five of the sixty-some years I anticipated at the end of the post, and each one of these has brought new people I wish he could meet and experiences I wish he could share. I find him in recurring dreams when I sleep and in notes tucked inside the books that I read. He's there in the decisions I make, spanning prank-ridden college lore to places I've traveled to choices I've made in career and education. The example of his piety and love for the local church has given me the fortitude to hold fast to my confession - sometimes the most difficult decision of all. The older I've grown, the more I've realized that there are very few men capable of living up to such a precedent.

It's a comfort to see how even our Savior was moved by the ugliness of suffering and death in John 11. I'm thankful for the hope He has given me - not only for my own salvation but also for the chance to see my father again - and I rest in the compassion He has shown me in the trials of my present life. It is only because of Him that I am able to finally end the post below, not with the sonnet above, but with the one a man like my father truly deserves.

Death, be not proud, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadful, for thou are not so;
For those whom thou think’st thou dost overthrow
Die not, poor Death, nor yet canst thou kill me.
From rest and sleep, which but thy pictures be,
Much pleasure; then from thee much more must flow,
And soonest our best men with thee do go,
Rest of their bones, and soul’s delivery.
Thou’art slave to fate, chance, kings, and desperate men,
And dost with poison, war, and sickness dwell,
And poppy’or charms can make us sleep as well
And better than thy stroke; why swell’st thou then?
One short sleep past, we wake eternally,
And death shall be no more; Death, thou shalt die.

(John Donne, Holy Sonnet #10)

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June, 2012. "A Tale of Two Readers."

These are just a few of my dad's books. Ever since we first became acquainted with Reformed theology back in 2003/4, he's spent a lot of time putting together a library for our family so that we would have the best resources at our fingertips for learning about our good God. Before that, I was known as the big reader of the family and the majority of the household literature probably consisted of Little House on the Prairie and assorted American Girl series. Now, though, my dad began conscripting every available shelf to house the collection he was building. The bookcase above, for example, is a walled-up doorway that he fitted shelves into. It's in a little back room which he used as an office and where he spent a lot of his free time sharing what he learned with the blogosphere. I was always coming in to visit and he would tell me about all the latest among the blogs - the people he met, the fads evangelicalism was caught up in, and most importantly, what he was learning about God. I always thought of us as Lizzy and Mr. Bennett in Pride & Prejudice. 

My dad's zeal for theology rubbed off on me, and I started collecting these books myself. Dad was organizing our church's bookstore, and whenever a book order came in, there was almost always a book or two he had gotten for me. He signed up for an Amazon.com credit card for the sole purpose of using he rewards points on free books. Yeah, we're hardcore bibliophiles here. 

Then, when I just finished 8th grade, he got sick and had to shut his blog down. As the years of waiting for a liver transplant went by, the side effects of his disease made it difficult for him to stay awake for long and he was unable to read much from the books he had surrounded himself with. What he had learned about God in those books, however, has never left him. On good days, we still talk about the same things we did five years ago, although I'm now the one telling him what the latest is on the blogs. 

This weekend, we found out that my dad's sickness has rapidly gotten worse. In fact, he's too sick now to get a transplant. The doctors are giving him 3 weeks at the most to live. It is a sore blow, as the Puritans would say it, but we know that God's will is infinitely better than ours.

My dad is going to die, but he isn't going to be gone forever. The thought occurred to me to view this as I would a story. Some of the characters are going to be separated for an extended period of time, but in the end, all that matters is that they're going to meet up again. When Odysseus and his family were finally together again, do you think they spent their time mourning their time apart? I'm going to see my dad again, but without any of the pain, sin, and sadness that comes with living in this world. I'm going to see my dad, but only after I've seen Christ first. And sixty-some years apart is nothing compared with eternity together.

Hope

I have seen the business that God has given to the children of man to be busy with. He has made everything beautiful in its time. Also, he has put eternity into man's heart, yet so that he cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end.

I perceived that there is nothing better for them than to be joyful and to do good as long as they live; also that everyone should eat and drink and take pleasure in all his toil—this is God's gift to man. I perceived that whatever God does endures forever; nothing can be added to it, nor anything taken from it. God has done it, so that people fear before him. That which is, already has been; that which is to be, already has been; and God seeks what has been driven away.

Ecclesiastes 3.10-15

I read this passage in my devotions this morning and was stuck by the juxtaposition of man's satisfaction in his God-ordained work and God's own ongoing works of creation and providence. Things got a little spooky when I looked it up in Matthew Henry. He approached it from a different angle than I did, but his commentary deeply resonated with me: God is faithful even in the prolonged, exasperating trials which have no end in sight. The wisdom of his plan is more beautiful than any scenario we could have devised for ourselves.

The passage is too long for me to post the entirety of it here, but I highly recommend checking it out. A lot of it reminds me of Boethius's counsel in his Consolation of Philosophy.

We have seen what changes there are in the world, and must not expect to find the world more sure to us than it has been to others. Now here Solomon shows the hand of God in all those changes; it is he that has made every creature to be that to us which it is, and therefore we must have our eye always upon him.

I. We must make the best of that which is, and must believe it best for the present, and accommodate ourselves to it: He has made every thing beautiful in his time (v. 11), and therefore, while its time lasts, we must be reconciled to it: nay, we must please ourselves with the beauty of it. Note, 1. Every thing is as God has made it; it is really as he appointed it to be, not as it appears to us. 2. That which to us seems most unpleasant is yet, in its proper time, altogether becoming. Cold is as becoming in winter as heat in summer; and the night, in its turn, is a black beauty, as the day, in its turn, is a bright one. 3. There is a wonderful harmony in the divine Providence and all its disposals, so that the events of it, when they come to be considered in their relations and tendencies, together with the seasons of them, will appear very beautiful, to the glory of God and the comfort of those that trust in him. Though we see not the complete beauty of Providence, yet we shall see it, and a glorious sight it will be, when the mystery of God shall be finished. Then every thing shall appear to have been done in the most proper time and it will be the wonder of eternity, Deut. xxxii. 4; Ezek. i. 18.

II. We must wait with patience for the full discovery of that which to us seems intricate and perplexed, acknowledging that we cannot find out the work that God makes from the beginning to the end, and therefore must judge nothing before the time. We are to believe that God has made all beautiful. Every thing is done well, as in creation, so in providence, and we shall see it when the end comes, but till then we are incompetent judges of it. While the picture is in drawing, and the house in building, we see not the beauty of either; but when the artist has put his last hand to them, and given them their finishing strokes, then all appears very good. We see but the middle of God's works, not from the beginning of them (then we should see how admirably the plan was laid in the divine counsels), nor to the end of them, which crowns the action (then we should see the product to be glorious), but we must wait till the veil be rent, and not arraign God's proceedings nor pretend to pass judgment on them...

Glory and holiness

This left me with much to think over after reading it. Particularly the last sentence.

Beginning with glory as an inner attribute of God's nature - fully knowable only to God himself - Leigh then describes God's external manifestation of his glory in all of his works: God not only makes his glory to shine in the heavens but also enables us to magnify him in our obedience and worship in this life. The story culminates in God bringing his people, perfected in body and soul, to enjoy the glory of the new creation with him. For Leigh and his Reformed Orthodox colleagues, all glory belongs to God alone, but this is no abstract statement about a self-centered deity or a slogan motivating a moral program. Soli Deo gloria draws us into a biblical story of creation, providence, redemption, and consummation. God's desire to glorify himself sweeps us up to him in a plot whose unending finale lands us in the New Jerusalem where God is supremely glorified in our sanctification.

(David VanDrunen, God's Glory Alone, p. 31)