Part One of this can be read here.
Donald sits at the kitchen table in silence, blankly gazing at the back yard.
The wisteria are getting a little ragged, and need to be trimmed. The open window to his left allows in a few bugs. Hummingbirds rob the feeders and robins snatch up the seed Donald scattered on the flat river rocks at 4;30 that morning. Iris had a rough night, so he gave up on sleep after 4:00.
Silence. Sip of coffee. A glance at the worn study Bible in front of him.
He wasn’t always a believer. The late 60’s were filled with skepticism, and it wasn’t until a late night walk in 1970 that he joined the ranks of Bible-believing Baptists. Iris was thrilled, though they both recognized that she’d never realize her dream of becoming a missionary. At any rate, having absorbed the workaholic characteristics of his father, Donald threw himself into the Word and the church.
He was their first Sunday School teacher for young married adults. When church leaders decried a lack of outreach for singles, Donald took that on. When leaders in the youth department lacked enough serious teachers, he taught high school boys (much to his son’s dismay). Youth director search committees. Head of Sunday School department. Deacon. Building and grounds committee. Church janitor. Youth director. Nursery worker. Christmas parties and prayer vigils. Rebuilding the church after the flood in ’79, despite having lost the Christian bookstore into which he had sunk his retirement funds.
The kids grew up and went their own ways, making the mistakes their parents programmed them to make. The most beautiful grandchildren in the world arrived, 6 of them. Donald retired earlier than he wanted in order to be close to Iris. Her immobility shrank her world physically, and narrowed Donald’s as well. He cares for the yard, the house, the ailing love of his life. He doggedly attends a new church in a strip mall out on highway 5126, just before you get to the Kilgore lumber yard.
The aging teacher sighs and resurrects himself from the table. There’s laundry to do, and dishes to wash. He staggers down the hall to check on Iris, lying in her hospital bed in the last room on the left. She’s there (where else would she be?), listening to one of her programs. Today’s a good day, so he tosses the medicines and needles into a drawer, and thinks, “So…today You’re gonna help us?”
He meanders back towards the kitchen, right hand trailing along the wall for support, past the bookshelves filled with concordances and commentaries, Francis Shaeffer and Dietrich Bonhoeffer. His guitar languishes in the corner, its leather case hoarding dust. It’s a 1960 Gibson acoustic guitar with mother-of-pearl inlaid frets.
Donald taught himself how to play the guitar back in high school, and at one time could tune it using a piano despite not knowing one key from another. That was before his hearing began to slip in his twenties. Musically gifted man loses hearing prematurely. As Molly Ivins wrote, such a thing was “…evidence that the Great Scriptwriter in the sky has an overdeveloped sense of irony.”
Ah, well, he thinks. What’s another pleasure lost? Don’t all things end?
Chores completed, Donald returns to the kitchen and his cold coffee. He and the Bible on the table ignore one another.
Bad days often follow rough nights, and today is no exception. “Where,” he muses, “is God today? Is He in my forgetfulness? My exhaustion? Does He reside in Iris’ broken frame or the geographical distance between us and the kids? Is He in our former church, the one that pushed us out after 30 years of service?” He shrugs his thoughts aside, and pulls out an outline for another church play he’s been working on. This one is about brothers and forgiveness. Before too long, though, the papers are forgotten as Donald stares out the window again.
When Donald was saved, it was a rescue from the meaninglessness of agnosticism. He feared an existence without significance, and discovering the reality of Christ gave Donald a peace that transcended all else. Now, though, after more than 6 decades on earth, he wants more.
More than mere survival. More than preparing a Sunday School lesson just so the process keeps at bay the specter of skepticism. More than merely putting one spiritual foot in front of the other. More than searching godly books for new perspectives on old truths in order not to forget those truths.
Snapping awake, Donald wonders how long he’s been asleep, and rises to make the trek southwards back through the house to see if Iris is doing well. She can’t holler loud enough to summon Donald, so he’s got to see her just to hear her. “Open your eyes and listen” is the old family joke.
Iris’ needs satisfied, Donald makes it as far as the couch before giving up.
He slouches on the edge, looking through the door into the sun room they added on to the house 18 years ago. He can see the dining table he made of some beautiful maple planks. Through the doorframe from the sun room streams enough afternoon light to softly illumine the living room. Outside the window, beautiful birds are flittering and dancing over seeds and flowers. The wisteria bobs sleepily in the wind, brushing against a tire swing with its clusters of purple-lavender blooms that evoke images of grapes. Through the open windows waft rich scents of gardenias and honeysuckle. In the foreground, pictures of the grandkids beam at him from the end table that holds his glasses and a book by his favorite apologist. Donald begins to hum an old hymn, one he and his mother used to sing as he played the guitar. He thinks about supper, about the fancy lasagna he’s planning to cook for Iris. She’s gonna love it.
He surprises himself with a quiet prayer, “It’s beautiful, this place You’ve made. All of it. Thank you for every last bit of it.”
And for a time, a Spirit-filled moment of beauty and joy silences the hounds of doubt sufficiently for Donald to sleep.
Beautiful … in a word, it’s all about struggling well in the midst of it. Thanks.
I have recently subscribed to SBC Voices because I feel like it is a window to the hearts of pastors within our umbrella organization. I have to tell you that I’ve been struggling. I love my pastor and my church family but I’m really struggling with the “heart” of the overall church today. I’m struggling with its priorities, it focus, and the blurred parameters between building an organization and building the Kingdom of God. I find myself dealing with some real anger, questioning some relationships and realizing that beneath it all is just a sadness because we have strayed so terribly far from our first love. I hope you will pray for me.
This article written by Jeremy Parks really hit me this morning. I feel it is such an analogy for the church today, even as it is an honest look at the hearts and the moments of doubt of those who love God and have served Him well in their lives. And then I thought about how very short life is. Wasn’t it just yesterday that I gave birth to my firstborn? Wasn’t it just yesterday when my heart was filled to overflowing with the realization that Jesus died for me – and if it were only me – He would still have paid the price? I thought about His suffering and how His end objective was always restoration and healing – salvation – sozo – a completed work. Wasn’t it just yesterday when my heart was filled with such incredible hope that the church could change the world?
I pray that Donald will always be treasured within the halls of our church because we will understand his significance to God and to us. And I pray that we will always work to that goal of sozo – salvation, complete healing and restoration: spiritual, physical, emotional. And I pray that we will remember to come alongside those who sometimes doubt and be Jesus to them. Thanks for listening!
Thank you contributing, Kay.
I believe our churches are filled with Donald and Iris (whose story is linked at the top). Sometimes our human drive for progress and change leaves behind those who led us through the last round of progresses and changes. It’s not so much that they refuse to keep up as it is that they need some patience as they try to participate in the upheaval. They have so much on their plates in simply getting through the day and yet they are at time in their lives when they have less energy than ever.
Jeremy Parks,
Absolutely wonderful, is all I can say.
Thank you for this . . .
I hope everyone who comes to this blog reads it, Jeremy.
I needed this post today and I am very grateful for its sharing, which I have received as blessing.
” Jesus did not come to explain away suffering or to remove it.
He came to fill it with His Presence.”
(J. Claude)
Jeremy,
I read this post again. I’ll have to say it brought tears to my eyes.
When I think of aging, it makes me think of CB Scott.
I am missing something on the CB Scott reference.
Jeremy,
I saw a picture of CB Scott on here somewhere, and he sure looked old to me.
My sensibilities on this are mixed. There’s not a wealth of information in the scriptures on caring for the elderly, or what we are to do in the years when we seem to not be able to much other than survive. We hear the accounts of those rare saints who are cheerful in their last days. Most of those I have seen seem disillusioned by the end of their life. They spend much of their time out of the way and the visits from their progeny are sparse. The value of their years of wisdom seems mitigated by a loss of cognitive function.
Indeed, Christ scolded a man who wanted to bury his father before coming and following him. Wasn’t it important to minister to his father in his last days? If you do the math on Abraham’s father, Isaac was born before Abraham’s father died. How can that be if Abraham waited in Haran until his father died and Isaac was born after Abraham had been in Canaan for some time? The only conclusion I can reach is that Abraham took his inheritance, making his father legally dead to him although he was still alive, and left for Canaan following God’s instruction.
On the other hand, Joseph brought his father to be with him in Egypt and took him back to bury him in Canaan.
We have a sense of self-worth that is dependent on our ability to do things. So when we lose the ability to do things, we despair. In this case a person might be inclined to say, “I’m not worth anything.” So someone might come up and respond, “You are worth the blood of Jesus Christ.” Both statements are true. The first statement is teleological and the second statement is ontological. So the disconnect is between our teleological lack of value and our ontological pricelessness.
When it boils down to is this: it’s not that what we do makes us important, but that God makes what we do important. If we can only survive, then our dependence on God is an important testimony to his guiding influence. We deserve nothing for having been a great generation of godly leaders. But God deserves all the glory for using us as such, and we may rest in our waning strength satisfied in the work of God.
So identify your efforts as worth no more than the present weakness of your living forebears and learn their stories so that God may be glorified in what he did through them and what he can do through you.