NAME
Throwback Thursday worked so well last week that I’ve decided to do it again!
When I saw that the word for today was name, I immediately thought of a piece I wrote two years ago. You’ll have to read to the end to understand why it came to mind. And I hope, along the way, this might just be a word you, or someone you love, needs to hear.
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The sympathy card caught my eye, with its simple quote from poet Jayne Cortez on the front cover: some poems are never finished.
October 21 will mark 13 years since my grandma’s death. I was pregnant with Aidan at the time. When I arrived home for the funeral, I found my other grandma hospitalized and in critical condition. Grandma Nalean died five days after Grandma Heldt.
In the course of one week, I said goodbye to two of the most significant women in my life. They were the ones who showed me God’s unconditional love. They were always there–encouraging, teaching, supporting, sheltering–and then they weren’t. One glorious October day, with the beauty of God’s good creation most vividly on display, they were both gone.
Death knows no season. It doesn’t worry about interrupting. It pounds on the door in the wee hours of the morning, oblivious to our need for rest. It calls our mobile phone that we’ve forgotten to silence, causing all eyes to stare at us. It doesn’t care about our plans or our deadlines or even our hopes and dreams. It doesn’t care that the first grandchild is on his way, but won’t arrive for another eight months.
Death doesn’t care whether or not the poem is finished.
But God does.
Two years ago, I had the privilege of singing Toccata of Praise with a mass choir consisting of Decorah Chorale, Luren Singers, and Northern Lights. With bold voices we commanded, Alleluia! Alleluia! Celebrate and sing the song of Life!
And then we answered the command, proclaiming not once, but three times, I sing the everlasting song! I sing the everlasting song! I sing the everlasting song!
The everlasting song is a song of peace and love. The everlasting song is jubilant and joyful. The everlasting song is God’s song, the poem that will not be finished until God is at home with all creation and death is no more. Death will end, but life will not. The everlasting song–the poem that will in time be complete, but that will never, ever end–is Life!
The poems that are our lives are not ended by death. Death doesn’t get to determine our opening lines nor our recurring refrains. Death doesn’t get to decide when the words run out. Death, despite its best efforts, will never have the final word. The Word of God is our beginning and our ending, and our hope for all the verses in between.
When Aidan was born, we gave him Grandma Nalean’s maiden name for his middle name–a word that was hers, now his. Some poems are never finished.
Thanks be to God!
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Soon we will celebrate the birth of a baby born in Bethlehem, the one whose name is Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. The poem he continues to write today–the light and life he brings for all this weary world–never ends. Blessed be his name. Amen.