QUEEN. Finally he said "Death." I nudged the King-
KING. Accepting the word "nudge" for the moment, I rubbed my ankle with one hand, clapped him on the shoulder with the other, and congratulated him on the correct answer. He disappeared under the table, and, personally, I never saw him again.
QUEEN. His body was found in the moat next morning.
CHANCELLOR. But what was he doing in the moat, Your Majesty ?
KING. Bobbing about. Try not to ask needless questions.
"The Ugly Duckling" -A. A. Milne
The two women who have had the biggest influence on my ministry here in Sebewaing are people I barely knew. Sister Ella Lohermann's funeral was earlier this year. I ran across a copy of her funeral service today, the first I have ever performed. All I knew about this dear lady was that though she was in a nursing home she was ever faithful to our church. She had a newspaper clipping about our arrival in her Bible. I knew that she love us and prayed for us.
When my family went to visit her in the hospital, we came wanting to pray for her, to minister to her. Instead what I found continues to minister to me to this day. I entered a room filled with the warm presence of God. As she spoke to us, she punctuated her sentences with her continual conversation with her precious Jesus and comments about how beautiful our own Ella was. She prayed over my ministry, over me, over my family, she was already in the presence of the Holy one, one foot in eternity. I remember that my cheeks flushed and I held her hand not wanting to leave that sacred place.
The other woman is being buried tomorrow. Sister Dearing served with her husband as pastors here for 10 years. Their term here ended only by John's death in 1995. They were loved and a dear couple to the church body. Sister Dearing was present at our installation and prayed for Elaine, passing the flame on to her. A picture of that moment hung in the funeral home, I wept to see. Over the year that we've served, she sent us about eight notes of encouragement, saying that we reminded her of she and John when they were young in the ministry. I felt kindred to her. I felt her prayers. I melted at her encouragement.
These dear saints of the old bloodline connected me with the living history of our congregation, but more importantly they were used of God, Angels and flames of fire, ministering to me, and all who knew them. I sat in the funeral home today in silence meditating. It is good to meditate on a life well spent, on death.
Yesterday I had an EGD Scope, a minor surgery taking biopsies from my stomach. I could have died. A thought made all the more real by complications in the operating room. The iv was kinked and I began waking up in the middle of the procedure. They tell me that I flailed; they had to move the iv to the other hand and start over. In the process I inhaled some bile, which has made recovery more painful.
The thing is going into it, and even now, death doesn't scare me. I welcome entering the kingdom of the God I so desperately long for. I know my family will be well taken care of, in good hands. My wife though doesn't like the idea much. I made some flippant comment about the insurance money and she was angry. Perhaps "to live is Christ, and to die is gain," is not fully formed in me that I treat life and death with joke. Perhaps that is just the way of men.
Tomorrow brings more meditation, and goodbyes to another dear saint going home.
