What does a beautiful stained glass window have in common with a senior saint like Wanita? For me it is words like… transcendent, luminous, and iridescent. Light passes through them and everyone is blessed for the experience. Don’t get me wrong, Wanita was not different than anyone else in that she had her little idiosyncratic pieces – like, don’t you dare leave her out of something! I think a great example was her dying on Mother’s Day, I’m sure it was just her way of showing up at everyone’s brunch. Despite that little piece of Wanita, she was really utterly transparent. Light shone through her. There were no hidden agendas nor was there any hint of disingenuous.
After a recent visit, after she had commented that it had been too long since my last visit, she would ask how I was. With my typical rejoinder I would say, “Lovely, I’m just kind of lovely.” With her little giggle and that twinkle in her eye she followed up with a, “Yes, I think you are too!” And we would both giggle as if we had just shared our own little private joke. Which of course we had. Certainly it has been a gift to be a pastor to Wanita. What a shame it would be to be so stuck in our own little drama that we would fail to be blessed by the gift of light that shines through a stained glass window, or through a saint like Wanita.
“Uh ohh”, are those moments where we become mindful of how that transcendence, that luminosity, that iridescence is missing. (Albeit packaged up with the peculiarities of each saint) The pure light of God’s love revealed in Jesus was what shone through Wanita. Didn’t she just love to say, “Oh, the Lord will take care of that.” Or, “That’s in the Lord’s hands.” Rather than these being the prattling on or the mindless response of an old lady these were the expressions of an implicit trust she had in God. This was for her the pure light of her Savior that would push back all darkness.
One of our favorite psalms we would read was the 27th. The images of absolute trust and unfailing conviction that God was her strength resonated with her faith in this Psalm. Picture Wanita, with eyes closed, lips turned up in a smile as I would read to her:
1 The Lord is my light and my salvation;
whom shall I fear?
The Lord is the stronghold of my life;
of whom shall I be afraid?
2 When evildoers assail me
to devour my flesh—
my adversaries and foes—
they shall stumble and fall.
3 Though an army encamp against me,
my heart shall not fear;
though war rise up against me,
yet I will be confident.
4 One thing I asked of the Lord,
that will I seek after:
to live in the house of the Lord
all the days of my life,
to behold the beauty of the Lord,
and to inquire in his temple.
5 For he will hide me in his shelter
in the day of trouble;
he will conceal me under the cover of his tent;
he will set me high on a rock.
6 Now my head is lifted up
above my enemies all around me,
and I will offer in his tent
sacrifices with shouts of joy;
I will sing and make melody to the Lord.
7 Hear, O Lord, when I cry aloud,
be gracious to me and answer me!
8 ‘Come,’ my heart says, ‘seek his face!’
Your face, Lord, do I seek.
9 Do not hide your face from me.
Do not turn your servant away in anger,
you who have been my help.
Do not cast me off, do not forsake me,
O God of my salvation!
10 If my father and mother forsake me,
the Lord will take me up.
11 Teach me your way, O Lord, and lead me on a level path because of my enemies.
12 Do not give me up to the will of my adversaries,
for false witnesses have risen against me,
and they are breathing out violence.
13 I believe that I shall see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living.
14 Wait for the Lord; be strong, and let your heart take courage; wait for the Lord!
When we were done with the reading we revisited verse 13 which should be read as a rhetorical question:
“What if I had not believed that I should see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living?”
Her little wrinkled brow was no less revealing and transparent as she sighed, “I can’t, I can’t imagine how I could have lived my life without that hope in my heart.” Such was the state of Wanita’s daily personal walk with her Lord – assumed but never taken for granted, faithful but never loud.
Recently I was listening to a lecture on spirituality and it became clearer to me why we can become so undone by the passing of Wanita and the likes of her generation for whom faith is so life giving to us all. It was illustrated by this presenter who was speaking of what he called the “wheel of life”. Picture yourself living your daily life on the rim. Maybe you are on the top and everything is fine, but each day changes and maybe you start your downward descent…
You hit the bottom…
But, as the wheel moves forward it also turns upward…
So, it goes, only to be repeated – moving forward while simultaneously living with the peaks and valleys, the ups and downs of life. All the while generally pretty pre-occupied with our own little dramas.
I am convinced that one critical difference between people like Wanita (people like my own Grandparents – beautiful earthly Norwegian people of faith) is that they don’t live on the rim. They live at the hub. While we are so all over the place they, ostensibly, stay at about the same place. Their piety, their faith, their unswerving confidence that the Lord is in charge, trusting that Jesus is enough leaves them in a less mercurial position in life. Their constancy is like a stained glass window through which God shines on the rest of us and we are so grateful. It doesn’t make them better Christians – only closer to Jesus. And for every family who must face the reality that their hub is no longer with them, well…those are their “uh oh” moments to be faced.
What does God wish of you to know?
That’s it – not very complicated. Yet, a life lived with such confidence becomes a conveyer of a beautiful light that others will find utterly life giving, because it is from God.
“What if I had not believed I would see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living?”
May the love and light of Jesus shine through you as it did through Wanita that the world would be blessed.