Today’s Word from Pastor Jim…
“Very truly, I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain, but if it dies it bears much fruit.” The words of Jesus in the Gospel of John.
She was old, parts of her were just worn out. She had served well, the children who played with her had grown old now and had children of their own. She was old, had run the race, had kept the faith, and her very existence was compromised. When the big wind finally came, every ounce of her frame was strained. She had in younger years withstood greater force, but this time was just too much. She was old and down she came.
On the hillside above Trinity Lutheran Church lay the remains of an old tree. The tire swing that thrilled the young was long gone and so was she. The clean up crew backed up their trucks and out came the chainsaws. With little regard to her place in our community, she was loaded up and carted off, now little more than firewood to provide warmth when the winter winds return to her Whidbey Island home.
Her demise was not unexpected, we knew this day would come, but in the office, there was a sense of sadness. The view out the window had lost some of its charm. The weeks slipped by, and we thought of her less. Life has a way of moving on, our calendars filled, and the landscape faded again into a backdrop of green. I walked toward my car after an emotionally draining week. Three funerals were on the schedule, two more deaths had just occurred, it is the rhythm of an aging community. It was then that I was visited by hope, by mystery, by something beyond our understanding. The grassy hillside which had been occupied by a single, aged, majestic elder had now given way to three hundred new tree starts. It the face of loss, new life had taken root.
We see in a mirror dimly. We experience life only from a human perspective. In God’s created order, death never gets the last word, death leads to resurrection. With our final breath we will be reborn, nothing to fear, all the old trees before us have made it to the other side and so will we.
”Lo! I tell you a mystery. We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we shall be changed.” The words of the Apostle Paul.
One beggar telling another beggar where to find bread, I am your,
Pastor Jim
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