dual personalities

 Yesterday was the OM’s birthday. He would have been 70 years old, but he died on June 30th.

He started to get sick around Easter. There were ups and downs–three stays in the hospital and a couple of weeks in a rehab facility in between. By the grace of God all our children were home and were able to see him before he died. He was ready. Our pastor had been by to see him that night and had reminded him: “My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand. My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all, and no one is able to snatch them out of the Father’s hand.” (John 10:27–29)

I didn’t feel like blogging for a long time, but I am feeling the urge again.

One thing I wanted to comment on was the passing of the great John MacArthur on July 14. Here is John Piper’s tribute. Anne Kennedy’s husband Matt said this:

I am grateful to God for John MacArthur. I remember listening to his sermons in the darkness of an Episcopalian seminary in the late 90s. I’m a cradle Episcopalian. It felt subversive, like smuggling bibles into communist China. But it was light and truth in a hard place. MacArthur’s boldness and unwavering commitment to the scriptures became a model for me that I’ve tried to live up to. Sure, I’m Anglican, so the list of things I disagree with him about isn’t short but the sheer courage of the man and his willingness to speak when others held their tongues….not to mention his deep love for his people, a love that led him to pour himself out from the pulpit Sunday by Sunday until his health failed him, we should honor such men and revere their memories. The world isn’t worthy of them.

I, too, in the dark days of my search for a new church found John MacArthur, along with R.S. Sproul, John Piper, Tim Keller et al. They taught me the true meaning of the Gospel. (Of course, not everyone agrees and some thought of him as “the Wicked Warlock of the West” and didn’t hesitate to call him that. It has always been thus.)

Into paradise may the angels lead you.

And here’s a poem by Seamus Heaney, care of my friend Don:

Mint

It looked like a clump of small dusty nettles

Growing wild at the gable of the house
Beyond where we dumped our refuse and old bottles:
Unverdant ever, almost beneath notice.

But, to be fair, it also spelled promise
And newness in the back yard of our life
As if something callow yet tenacious
Sauntered in green alleys and grew rife.

The snip of scissor blades, the light of Sunday
Mornings when the mint was cut and loved:
My last things will be first things slipping from me.
Yet let all things go free that have survived.

Let the smells of mint go heady and defenceless
Like inmates liberated in that yard.
Like the disregarded ones we turned against
Because we’d failed them by our disregard.