Tend the Fire, Part Two | The Living Who Die for the Dying to Live

Feb 2

7 min read

Preface: I’ve told this story in other settings before. I tell it here in a different form to serve a different purpose. If you’ve already read a previous version, I encourage you to keep reading so as not to miss the point of this article.

In the summer of 2018, I stopped in to visit a dear, elderly woman-friend. This woman was special and intriguing to me — stately, engaging, encouraging, always curious and open to learning new things about the world and the people in it. We had an interesting relationship; both being fascinated with people and spiritual things but having gone in different directions in regard to the latter in search of the answers to our questions. I had found my answers in Jesus, 27 years earlier. She had been open to exploring many spiritual ideas and experiences — except Jesus. Only now was she beginning to hint at her feelings of disappointment and coming up empty.

She answered my knock with, “Come in and sit down! I’ll be there in a minute.” I came in and sat at the kitchen table. A minute later, I watched her totter in on a walker, which I had not seen before. As we sat at her kitchen table together, sun rays drawing diagonal lines between us through the window shades, dancing leaf-shadows playing across our faces, she told me that she had been losing weight and hadn’t been able to make it stop. I flashed a look at her, thinking she didn’t have an ounce to spare. Her doctors couldn’t find the cause and were suggesting that her body was simply getting old and wearing out. She capped the revelation with someone’s estimate that she may have, perhaps, a month or two left to live.

My response to her revelation is mostly a blur. But I remember the conversation taking a turn that prompted me to reach out for the Holy Spirit, gather up my courage, and tell her the story of my own “end of the road” type experiences, surrendering my life to Jesus as a young woman, and experiencing the miracle of spiritual rebirth. To my utter amazement, before I even finished, she responded by saying that she would like to pray. We prayed.

“I accept you, Jesus,” she said, matter-of-factly. I was elated! But something niggled my conscience. I suspected that my sweet friend had simply added Jesus to a row of “gods” collected over the years, all still occupying a mental shelf in her mind. She had experiential knowledge of a great number of “gods,” the most prominent one being self. So much knowledge, in fact, that she had come to think of herself as something of a sage. She was wise in the ways of the world for sure but had not, in the end, found satisfaction for the spiritual hunger that had driven her search.

She closed the conversation by sharing that her children had rightly been pressing her to move into a hospice facility, but she desperately and determinedly did not want to go. I went home that day, talked it all out with my husband, and called her back a day or two later. “If you’re agreeable,” I said, “I would like to come and care for you in your home for a time, so you can stay there awhile longer.”

Don’t mistake this for a story of altruism. I doubt I would have made such an offer under normal circumstances, having no inkling of how to care for a dying person. But my husband, eldest son, and I had lost our 18-year-old son/brother unexpectedly a few months prior to this. Personally, my hands, feet, and lips had been acting automatically out of routine ever since, while my reasoning and feeling parts had been insulated in a bubble-like protected state. Looking back, I was already being carried along in life and I’m certain that the One carrying me arranged the visit that day and everything that happened thereafter.

Another conversation from that week is etched in my memory. It came from a jolt of realization of what I had just set into motion, like stepping outside on a cold day and realizing my locked front door had clicked shut behind me.

“God, what have I done!?” Years of past relationship between my friend and I rushed up and over me — dozens of books on spirituality lining her shelves (different ones lining mine), perhaps hundreds of exchanges of differing spiritual beliefs and experiences, her trying to convince me and I her, and years of proverbial wringing of hands and bruised knees.

In that moment, what I saw was thousands of philosophic and experiential threads inextricably knotted together in a giant, confusing ball… and only one month to get to the center of it. Please don’t judge, but I felt responsible for the eternal destiny of my friend and feared that I had just taken on a job that I was utterly unqualified to do. “God, it’s too big and too complicated. I can’t do it!”

The Holy Spirit was quick to whisper back.

“Don’t worry about everything that isn’t true. Don’t be drawn out into it. Stick to what is true and keep coming back to it.”[i] Just one verse came in my mind:

Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. John 14:6 (ESV)

With a great mental sigh, my panic was defused — the immensity and complexity of what lay ahead was cut down to the simple reminder that I am only a clay jar, Spirit-Light burning inside and spilling out the cracks and holes.[ii] What He was asking of me became doable. Be near to her. Love her and serve her as best you can. Pray as I lead you. Speak as I prompt you. And be ready to give the reason for the hope that is in you.[iii]

I stayed with my friend for a little over a month. She died only a handful of days after moving into hospice care. I wish I could tell you with certainty that she fully surrendered her life to Jesus. Only He knows. What I do know is that, after seeing the divine orchestration of it all, I’m absolutely sure that God was present, that he had a clear agenda, and He was faithful to carry it through to completion.[iv]

This chapter in my life was deeply personal and will always be. But, over time, I was able to take a step back and see a bigger picture, and a deeper meaning, that I was meant to take away from the experience. Now, I see:

A beloved image-bearer,[v] approaching death unknowingly unprepared, having sought and been courted by nearly every version of alternative, artificial light imaginable,[vi] all of them promising to reveal the secrets of life and love but not making good on their promises.[vii]

A daughter and servant of Christ, broken and bereaved, confidence in her own perceptiveness, competency, and power shattered; in need of being carried, and at the mercy of the One carrying her to take and place her where He desired.

And God, foreknowing; fore-planning; full of compassion and grace; arranging and empowering a microcosmic moment in which the living “die” so that the dying may live.

“But we have this treasure in jars of clay, to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us. We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our bodies. For we who live are always being given over to death for Jesus’ sake, so that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our mortal flesh. So death is at work in us, but life in you.” 2 Corinthians 4:7-12

This is what navigating the narrow road in unprecedented times at the end of the age looks like[viii] – understanding that in this life we will have troubles,[ix] and sojourning in our crushed and afflicted state with Firelight in our lamps[x] in a world full of people unprepared to face death but hotly pursued by the One who already died in their stead and wants them to live.[xi]

Today, looking out over the global landscape through my handheld smart-window to the world, I recognize the same characters in composite form:

A world filled with “God so loved… whosoever’s,”[xii] tangled up in a vast cyber-knot of confusing, artificial-hope-giving, dead-end offerings – all claiming to be the answer to the loneliness, emptiness, mental stress, chronic anxiety, isolation, fear, shame, and hopelessness that plague and drive people in endless circles, lost in a sea of artificial light and searching for something real in the midst of it.

A family of suffering servants,[xiii] sprinkled across the globe; struggling to endure under the crushing affliction of death and evil, and/or to accept it as part of the foretold narrow-road experience;[xiv] in various stages of concern/panic over the complexity and impossibility of disproving the falsity of all that proclaims itself be light; crying out to God for help and fighting with everything in us to keep our eyes on the Sprit-Fire moving throughout.

And God… who sees in, and cuts through, the darkness as if it were light;[xv] who urges and nudges His light-bearers to be near to those on whom He has set His redemptive eye;[xvi] who is the Surgeon, able to cut away all that entangles while we simply stand nearby and hold the light; Who asks only that we cling to what is true, love and serve the dying objects of His love, pray for them, speak only as He leads, and be ready to give an answer for the hope that is in us. In other words,

Tend the Fire. See purpose in the crushing. And be ready to move…

Maranatha.

To be continued…

[i] For those following my articles, this is the time and place where the image of “tending the fire” was birthed. https://www.oneleggedsojourner.com/post/tend-the-fire

[ii] 2 Corinthians 4:7

[iii] 1 Peter 3:15

[iv] 1 Timothy 2:1-4; Isaiah 55:10-11

[v] Genesis 1:26-27, 9:6; James 3:7-9

[vi] Isaiah 5:20; Also referencing https://www.oneleggedsojourner.com/post/tend-the-fire

[vii] 2 Corinthians 11:12-15

[viii] Matthew 17:13-14

[ix] John 16:33; Matthew 16:24-26

[x] Matthew 5:14-16

[xi] Romans 10:8-13; Luke 15:1-10; 2 Peter 3:9

[xii] John 3:16

[xiii] 1 Peter 4:1-2; Philippians 2:1-11