“Let not your hearts be troubled. Believe in God; believe also in me. In my Father's house are many rooms. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, that where I am you may be also." (John 14:1-3)
These are Jesus's words to his disciples on the night before his crucifixion. I think they are also the first verses I ever memorized for a reason other than getting a gold star in Sunday School. I memorized these because I needed them, and because I read them so many times I couldn't *not* memorize them.
I had just turned 12, and my grandfather had died after being in a coma for several days. (Or maybe weeks? It felt like months.) The experience of losing someone I loved deeply was a turning point in my young life. It was that experience that forced me to leave my childhood behind and step forward into a scary new world where my parents couldn't fix things when they went wrong, where no amount of anguished prayer could change the future to go the way I wanted it.
I suppose I was lucky to get 12 years before losing a loved one, but it was also a hard age for it. I was inconsolable for much of the visitation and the funeral. I literally could not stop crying. I was crying for my grandfather, certainly, but I think I was also crying for the loss of what I'd once thought was a secure world where things mostly went okay.
Finally, George Donald Berger sat me down and walked my through these first few verses of John 14. And it was those verses that made the rest of the day, and the weeks and months that followed, bearable for me. Even though I lost my faith for a time in the years following, those words of Jesus got me through a few hard times growing up. I will always be grateful for Bro. George for taking those few minutes with me.
Those verses are important to me today as, once again, we're living in a time where we can't apply a simple fix and making everything all right again. (Though social distancing can certainly help.) But we don't need to let our hearts be troubled; as my friend Jay wrote in an email this morning, "Jesus has overcome the world and is greater than any of the present and future troubles that we will face."
This photo is of me and my grandfather from 1973. He was in the hospital--a broken hip, maybe?--and I'd brought him a present. I think that's a cigar on his lap ... in the hospital! Ha!
These are Jesus's words to his disciples on the night before his crucifixion. I think they are also the first verses I ever memorized for a reason other than getting a gold star in Sunday School. I memorized these because I needed them, and because I read them so many times I couldn't *not* memorize them.
I had just turned 12, and my grandfather had died after being in a coma for several days. (Or maybe weeks? It felt like months.) The experience of losing someone I loved deeply was a turning point in my young life. It was that experience that forced me to leave my childhood behind and step forward into a scary new world where my parents couldn't fix things when they went wrong, where no amount of anguished prayer could change the future to go the way I wanted it.
I suppose I was lucky to get 12 years before losing a loved one, but it was also a hard age for it. I was inconsolable for much of the visitation and the funeral. I literally could not stop crying. I was crying for my grandfather, certainly, but I think I was also crying for the loss of what I'd once thought was a secure world where things mostly went okay.
Finally, George Donald Berger sat me down and walked my through these first few verses of John 14. And it was those verses that made the rest of the day, and the weeks and months that followed, bearable for me. Even though I lost my faith for a time in the years following, those words of Jesus got me through a few hard times growing up. I will always be grateful for Bro. George for taking those few minutes with me.
Those verses are important to me today as, once again, we're living in a time where we can't apply a simple fix and making everything all right again. (Though social distancing can certainly help.) But we don't need to let our hearts be troubled; as my friend Jay wrote in an email this morning, "Jesus has overcome the world and is greater than any of the present and future troubles that we will face."
This photo is of me and my grandfather from 1973. He was in the hospital--a broken hip, maybe?--and I'd brought him a present. I think that's a cigar on his lap ... in the hospital! Ha!
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