Asleep in Jesus

Asleep in Jesus…
I woke to a misty mountain morning. The after-image of my dream floated on the fog and I saw them, the two brothers, sitting hunkered down on their heels like they always did, by the fence line. Daddy, wearing his Massey Ferguson baseball cap, was peering off into the pasture, checking out his cows. Uncle Harold, wearing overalls, pulled his Prince Albert can of tobacco out and delicately rolled his own cigarette, twisting the end to keep the tobacco from slipping out. He lit up and they sat there in comfortable companionship, the older brother babysitter and his younger baby brother, Uncle Harold and Daddy. I miss those two old Calhoun cusses.
Autumn is my time of remembrance. As the leaves blaze and the air cools, my inner vision clears and it seems the dark glass between this world and the next is thinner, more transparent. Dreams are often of those I love who have gone on before. I find myself thinking more about death, not in a morbid way but a contemplative exercise in my mortality. In my sixties, death has a new reality and unlike my thirties, forties and fifties, I can imagine my own ending.
At my little Southern Baptist church, Jesus’ death came up most frequently during revivals when the visiting preacher painted vivid word pictures of a gruesome crucifixion and a fiery hell. We didn’t observe Lent and our Easter celebration was singing “Up from the Grave He Arose” without much consideration for the grave. Our church art was a painting of the River Jordan, appropriate for dunking Baptists. Catholics had the death scene down pat. The nine Stations of the Cross, stained glass images and statues of saints and Jesus dripping blood as they faced death surrounded them at mass every week. The forty days of Lent ended Good Friday night with stripping the sanctuary bare, a striking symbol for the reality of death.
As so often happens for me, a hymn tune circles around the inside of soul and I find myself singing, “Asleep in Jesus, blessed sleep, from which none ever wakes to weep! A calm and undisturbed repose, unbroken by the last of foes.” What happens after death remains a mystery even unto this day. We have more knowledge about the exact time of death, brain death, and the physiological changes that occur as our body shuts down but we cannot say with scientific certainty exactly what happens to the essential us after death of the body. Images of standing on the banks of the River Jordan waiting to cross over to the other side, being asleep in Jesus, beyond the sunset, the sweet by and by… these words and music are a bridge for my imagination that help me prepare for my final days.
What I can say is absolutely true for me, a faith statement that is inexplicable and indefensible, is I will go to be with God. I suspect my imagination is neither accurate nor wide enough to contain the reality of life after death and for that I am grateful. I do not need a little “g” God when my time to die comes. I need the deep, deep love of Jesus…
O the deep, deep love of Jesus, vast, unmeasured, boundless, free!
Rolling as a mighty ocean in its fullness over me!
Underneath me, all around me, is the current of Thy love
Leading onward, leading homeward to Thy glorious rest above!
This old hymn, written in a minor key, says all I know about death and the ever after…God’s love in the person of Jesus will carry me on its ocean waves homeward to a new existence in all its unimaginable fullness. That is more than enough for me.Selah.

It came in a plain brown paper grocery sack...

It came in a brown paper grocery sack, neatly folded with a letter. We took it out and spread it on the floor, colors tumbling all over themselves as it lay in a thirteen foot square… a quilt for the inside of the high barn made of outdoor material. One of our friends, Linda Urquhart, who with her husband had recently visited us, made this beautiful expression of joy as a surprise gift. She named it “The Barn Dance”. We will hang it this week and it will brighten the inside of the barn just in time for our barn dance this Saturday night. Linda and Grant are coming so she will get to see her work of art in place. An extravagant gift, given from a generous heart, created by hand just for us… it takes our breath away.
Generosity is one of the most winsome of the virtues for me. In teaching our children to share, we are really trying to teach them how to be generous with what they have been given. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus used a litany that illustrated the gifts of generosity. Judge not and you will not be judged. Forgive and you will be forgiven. Give and it will be given to you in the same measure. An open hearted, open handed, open to love spirit is to my mind, the hallmark of a generous soul, one who gives without any thought of repayment.
Sunday morning, World Communion Day, Pastor Pat reminded us that Jesus sat at many tables and shared meals with many people. She spoke of the importance of family meals, meals where we share more than food, where we lay down who we are and embrace those who sit with us to eat bread and sop the gravy off our plates. When Jesus ate with Levi, the reviled tax collector, it was a communion meal, open to all those who were considered to be unclean, unfit, undesirable. In short, it was a table where we have a place saved for us. For none of us, no matter how good we look on the outside, are righteous enough to earn a place at the table. Jesus’ generous heart, his ability to bless and call forth the best we have to offer, caused Levi to turn around his life and can do the same for us. Generosity in all its forms leaves love and warmth in its wake.
Dear Lord, let me be generous this week. Help me to see places and people who need something I can give. Let me give with a laughing heart as I remember the riot of quilt colors that came out of that plain brown bag. Remove the spirit of judgment in my soul and replace it with forgiveness. Help me forgive myself as well as others so that I may come to you with a clean heart and open arms. Amen.

Bring ye all your tithes into the storehouse...

Bring ye all your tithes into the storehouse…
There were certain immutable unchanging rituals in our little Baptist church… twice a year revivals, the Lord’s Supper once every three months, immersion baptism, once a month business meetings, and once a year Pledge Sunday in the fall. We sang “Bring Ye All Ye Tithes into the Storehouse”, listened to Brother Kannon exhort us to give a tenth, passed in the little promise cards and moved on to regular church the next Sunday. There were no long, drawn out campaigns, special speakers or programs, just a simple guilt inducing sermon and pass the plate, please. Everyone did what they could and we managed. I remember the year Daddy got upset with the Southern Baptist Convention and asked Brother Kannon to keep his tithe in our church. They had a long discussion about the why’s and wherefore’s but his request was honored. The Baptist tradition of priesthood of the believer can get messy sometimes when the believers don’t all believe the same things. In this season when the hay is in the barn and the garden has been harvested, I am choosing to tithe my blessings. I began counting them this week and they are as plentiful as the weed seeds in the pasture.
I give thanks for the perfectly beautiful dew laden spider webs in the maple tree by the barn. In the morning as I walk down, they sparkle and remind me of the paradox of simplicity and complexity in nature, and my life. When a strand is broken, the spider reweaves the web, repairs what is broken and moves back to the center to wait. When the web in my life has broken in the past year, with God’s help, I have been able to restore the broken strands and I am grateful.
The cool morning air gives the horses and donkeys extra get in their get along. They come out of the stalls racing and kicking the kinks out in joyful abandon. I laugh to see the little donkeys’ legs move up and down, straight kneed, as they race to the hay pile. Junie B stops to give me a little love nip and nudge on her way to the pasture and we stand with my head laid on her neck, breathing in the sweet scent of horse. For that one moment, all is well in my world and I give thanks for the love of animals that enriches my life.
Michael and I sit on our bedroom deck moonwatching. It is so close that if I climbed the dead locust tree, I believe I could reach out and touch it. The silver light streams over the world we see and rests on us in benediction blessing. I count our blessings… forty three years of marriage, three children, seven soon to be eight grandchildren, a life together that has not always been easy but has always been good, a homeplace here in these old mountains with friends who are family, and the abiding presence of God in our lives.
Autumn is my season of remembering…remembering those I loved who have died, the warmth of the summer season of work and play, the laughter and tears that came my way, the blessed gift of my life as I enter the season of old age, and the memories of my journey towards God that began so many years ago as a little child at church. I tithe my memories and my gratitude is endless. Thanks be to the Great Gift Giver, the One who brought me into being, the Love that has never let me go. I pray that I will be as generous in my gratitude as God has been generous in my life. Let me live my life, God, with open hands and open heart, able to receive and give in equal measure, balanced in grace and gratitude. Amen.