“You must play your cards as best you can when such a stake is on the table.”
SHERLOCK HOLMES, “THE ADVENTURE OF CHARLES AUGUSTUS MILVERTON”
THE GRAVESIDE SERVICE for Carly Woods, for family and close friends only, was excruciating. People cried, laughed, and sang. I didn’t sing and I didn’t laugh.
After we drove to the church for her memorial service, I looked at the people sitting around me. I picked out likely wife beaters, child molesters, drug users, a woman who’d poisoned her first husband, and a teenager who would eventually kill a classmate.
The decent ones seemed gullible, unaware that sitting in a church service doesn’t make someone a saint. Their minds are at ease, right up to the moment the smiling usher pulls a knife and shoves it through their heart.
Cynical? I suspect people who refuse to cooperate. I suspect people too eager to cooperate. I suspect people who aren’t friendly and people who are. When our new neighbor moved in and he was friendly, I ran a criminal background check on him. I just like to keep my head out of the sand. It’s a good way to stay alive. I mean, only if that’s important to you.
There’s something ironic about a skeptic sitting in church. It’s like a vegetarian at a steak house. The people around you have tastes that you just don’t have … and frankly don’t want.
It’s especially ironic to be pondering this as you sit in the front row, guest of the bereaved family … a church family. Don’t get me wrong. I was honored. But boy, was I a fish out of water.
The one consolation was Kendra coming with me. She’d met Carly and liked her, but they weren’t close. She knew it meant a lot to me, so she came.
As music played and somebody sang about “The Far Country,” a slide show of Carly’s life played on the big screen. The little girl pictures were adorable, the troubled adolescence evident, but in the last number of years Carly’s face was different. A grown woman whose face had reverted to childhood. She’d become innocent again. I remembered how she called me “Uncle Ollie.” I knew she loved me. I loved her too but wasn’t good at showing it. Story of my life.
Soon my face was hot and wet. I wondered why they didn’t open a window or something. I felt Kendra’s hand on my arm, but I couldn’t look at her.
Jake stood. I’ve heard him preach a few dozen sermons at me, but I wasn’t prepared for this. He tried to speak three times. The words started but stopped. He grabbed the sides of the podium and tried again.
“I’m not a preacher. I’m just … a father.” I felt it in my throat. “And the only reason I’m up here is that I was asked to do this by someone I couldn’t say no to. Carly. I told her I’d probably break down. She said, ‘If you do, it’s okay. They’ll understand, Daddy.’ ”
“I said—” Jake’s voice broke. “Well, I’ll leave that between us. The last few months, the last years, Carly and Janet and I have found encouragement in God’s Word. I want to read from 2 Timothy 4:6–8. Paul says, ‘The time has come for my departure. I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. Now there is in store for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will award to me on that day.’
“Paul calls his death a departure. A relocation. It’s not ceasing to exist; it’s just moving from one place to another. Paul knew that the moment he died he’d be with Jesus. He wrote, ‘To depart and be with Christ, which is better by far.’ ”
Jake gripped the podium, knuckles white.
“It’s hard on us, but Carly’s more alive and happier this moment than she’s ever been. Death isn’t a hole; it’s a doorway. It’s not the end of life; it’s a transition to new life. The best isn’t behind us if we know Jesus. The best is still ahead.”
How can you say that, Jake? How can you know?
Jake glanced at his notes, then looked up. “One day Carly said to me, ‘We’re homesick for Eden, aren’t we, Daddy?’ I liked that—homesick for Eden, for its beauties and pleasures and health and relationships. The Bible says heaven’s our home. It’s paradoxical, isn’t it? Our home’s a place we’ve never been. We’re not at home in this world because we were made for a better world. The Bible calls it the new earth.”
Jake looked at people all over the congregation, then at his family members sitting next to me in the front row. But he wasn’t looking at me. He didn’t want me to think he was talking to me. Naturally, he was.
“God wants us to have joy … yet we end up searching for joy in all the wrong places, and instead we find addictions and hollowness and misery.”
Yep.
“Janet and I and Carly have clung to God’s promises in Revelation 21 and 22: ‘Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth … I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God.… And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Now the dwelling of God is with men, and he will live with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God.’ ” It says, ‘[God] will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.’ And then in the next chapter it says, ‘No longer will there be any curse.’
“Second Peter 3:13 says, ‘In keeping with his promise we are looking forward to a new heaven and a new earth, the home of righteousness.’ Well, that’s what our family’s been looking forward to. We know there’s a reunion ahead. And we know that someday we’re going to walk the new earth together.
“Maybe you’re thinking this is a memorial service, so I should be talking just about Carly, not about Jesus.”
You got it, Jake.
“Well, Jesus was and is the most important person in Carly’s life, and she made me promise I’d tell you about Him. For all I know she may be listening right now. I’m not going to let her down. One day I’ll join her … I’ll see my little girl again.”
He stopped. The pause was long and gut-wrenching.
“God is so holy that He can’t allow sin into His presence. Romans 3:23 says, ‘All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.’ Because we’re sinners, we can’t enter heaven as we are. God loves us just the way we are, but He loves us too much to let us stay this way. That’s why Christ came, to change us.
“So heaven is not our default destination. Unless our sin problem is dealt with, the only place we can go is where God isn’t … and that’s hell. Judging by what’s said at most funerals, you’d think everyone’s going to heaven. But Jesus said otherwise. The Bible says we’re not good enough to go to heaven on our own.”
I squirmed. Jake had a captive audience, and he knew it. Unless a murder was discovered in the next few minutes, I couldn’t escape.
“How much does God love us?” Jake asked. “He went to hell for us on the cross so that we wouldn’t have to. God took on our worst suffering so we could go to heaven. What more would you ask God to do than what He’s done for you?
“Like any gift, forgiveness can be offered, but it isn’t ours until we receive it—and we can only do that through repenting and confessing our sins and saying yes to God’s offer. If you haven’t done that, you can do it quietly now.”
Jake the evangelist. He wasn’t this way when I first met him. He’s a far better man in most ways, but this part irritates me.
“I began the message by reading from Revelation 21. I’ll finish with reading a few more verses: ‘ “It is done. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End. To him who is thirsty I will give to drink without cost from the spring of the water of life.” ’ ”
Weird. Right when he said those words I was thinking how thirsty I was.
Afterward we had a huge dinner at Jake’s church. When I was finishing my second dessert, pecan pie, Jake asked, “How was your dinner?”
“Well, I didn’t drink the Kool-Aid.”
He stared blankly.
“Jim Jones. Guyana. Religious cult. Poisoned Kool-Aid. Get it?”
“So, what did you think?”
“The coffee was a little weak. Great pie though.”
“What did you think of the service?”
“Didn’t know any of the songs except ‘Amazing Grace.’ You guys don’t sing familiar stuff, do you?”
“What did you want, the Beach Boys? Anyway, thanks for coming, Ollie.”
“I … wouldn’t have missed it. I mean … it was Carly.”
Jake’s face collapsed, and he put his arms around me. I felt him shaking. We hugged a long time, longer than I’ve ever hugged a man, though I don’t keep a book on that sort of thing.
When we let go, I saw Kendra looking at us. Tears were streaming down her face. I put my arm around my little girl. Now she was hugging me.
“I’m glad you have each other,” Jake said to us. “Be grateful. Don’t let go of each other, okay? Fathers and daughters shouldn’t have regrets. Carly and I didn’t have any.”
Janet came up beside Jake. Now they were hugging.
Kendra and I walked out, my arm around her shoulder.
I wasn’t sure how a man could feel so incredibly empty and full at the same time.
