What can I write for your funeral, my son?
What can I tell our friends? Our family?
Why do people go to funerals? For the "deceased"? For themselves? For the family?

I know nearly no one really knew our Baby, Elias. We kept him mostly to ourselves.  What you know of him is probably what you've seen in videos we've posted.  So I'd like to tell you a little about him, and about our story with him.

When Brandy convinced me to have another child, I was apprehensive. I kept telling her "If three is good enough for God, it's good enough for me" (referencing the trinity).  My secret fear, which I shared with her, was that something could go wrong. A journal entry from around that time reads:

"I'm always paranoid whenever she's pregnant that something will go wrong with the pregnancy/baby, so pray for me. That's part of my fear of having more children, I feel like all the ones so far have five fingers and toes, and we should quit while we're ahead. But God has spoken..." 

When she was pregnant though, I was happy, all my hesitation was gone but I still was concerned for my child who was coming. We prayed and prayed for his health, for his safety.

Elias was born. Minutes later he was diagnosed with TEF. Holding him, from that first sweet little cry we loved him to overflowing.  I can see his sweet face in my mind as I type this.
As the news spread that he would be undergoing surgery, so many people helped and loved us, joining us in prayer! As we were bringing him to the surgical area, the surgeon anesthesiologist came out and told us stories about work done in Africa. The mothers there whose babies have TEF walk for days to the hospital, their babies are starved and near death by the time they get surgery. He reassured us that Elias would be OK.

The surgery was successful.  He recovered from the surgery, but got a respiratory illness while there.  We prayed, and it went away.
When we got to take the tubes off, hold him, and see his eyes open! His sweet blue eyes - I have a video of his first bath, we were up all night holding him. I remember how he would watch the lights in the hospital, he always liked looking at lights.

When we took him home, it soon became apparent that he had some kind of liver issue. The doctors suspected it was biliary atresia, a condition requiring a liver transplant, and often fatal.  We prayed it would go away, I even entered in my journal a covenant that if God would just make it go away as though it had not been there, I would count it as a true miracle.  The following Sunday it resolved in the middle of a church service, a miracle!

He grew and grew, always well at the doctors, beautiful boy, full of talks. So expressive! He would grab at everything, watching him reach for his toys, grab them, get more and more expressive.
The kids would play with him constantly and he knew all their faces. I would look forward to coming home each morning from the night shift to greet him and kiss him, I would wash my hands and change my shirt every time hoping to prevent passing any germs on to him. He would recognize me and if I reached for him, when he was lying down, he would arch his back so I could reach around and pick him up. Everything was such a joy, he was beginning to sit himself up in his chair - he almost always wanted someone to talk to him.  If he was crying, nine times out of ten he would start smiling and talking again if we would just talk to him. I would hold him and carry him into the bedroom where the closet mirrors were, and he would watch his reflection and start talking to it.  I could tell his lungs were congested, and he was having something like asthma attacks - we told so much to the doctors but the doctors kept telling us nothing was wrong.

Brandy called me, I came, saw the paramedics.

At the hospital we prayed! Jesus' parable came to mind, the one He told to show that we ought always to pray and not lose heart: the parable of the widow and the unjust judge - give me justice against my adversary! Death is my adversary! We didn't stop praying.  Jesus' question at the end of the parable is "when the Son of Man comes, will He find faith on the earth?  I could not believe that God who had seen my son through a successful surgery, healed him from the liver issue, would now let him die.

Elias was anointed with oil by several pastors, prayed for by hundreds, maybe thousands. Yet he was taken! Some people say God did it, that He took our son...yet death is the final enemy!

Can prayers be unanswered? Psalm 50 God reassures us:"Call on me in the day of trouble, and I will save you, and you will glorify me" Is this true? Many would twist this in a desperate bid to justify God and say that death is a sort of salvation.

Many prayed for "God's will to be done".  I never did. I knew that in most people's minds, "God's will" in that phrase is used as an equivalent to the death of my sweet helpless son.  But I don't believe that. God's will for infants is clear to us: "It is not the will of my Father in heaven that one of these little ones should perish."  Jesus said that.

Is God ever on the side of death?

As his young daughter died in his arms, Martin Luther reproached himself because God had blessed him as no bishop in 1000 years, yet he could not find it in his heart to give God thanks at the death of his daughter Magdalena. Rather he said:

"You will rise and shine like the stars and the sun. How strange it is to know that she is at peace and all is well, and yet to be so sorrowful!"

READ THE GOSPELS! - Did Jesus ever pat anyone on the back and send them away? When infants were brought to him, did He ever say "Sorry, God wants this one" and twist their necks? No! Did he agree with Martha about delaying her brother's resurrection 'til the last day?  Is it for nothing that his apostle John tells us that "The Son of Man came to destroy the works of the devil."?
When was it ever Jesus "Will" to withhold healing from someone brought to Him?

And Jesus says "Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father."

Luther was right not to thank God for his daughter's death.  As in the parable of the tares: "An enemy did this!" Death is an enemy. God calls it the final enemy. It is to be thrown into the lake of fire along with Satan.  God receives the souls of His own, including the souls of those little ones to whom belongs the Kingdom, but He does not wish their deaths.

I hate death! Brandy and I want to hate what God hates, and love what He loves. We would have taught Elias to do the same.

We show you the best that we can. This whole funeral -the songs, the clothing, our son's clean white casket- is not to make death (my enemy and God's) "pretty"; rather this is warpaint.
We are flaunting the gifts of life and love in the face of the enemy, passing the blade of God under his nose - preparing our feet for the day when God crushes him under our feet!  I love my son and will never stop! I will always pray for his resurrection, until the coming of Christ, if it takes that long.

So...if death is an enemy, why does God allow it?  Why does God let Himself "lose" in the losses of His saints?  Why are we allowed to cry out without answer? Like the Psalmist: 


"...you have rejected us and disgraced us
and have not gone out with our armies.
    You have made us turn back from the foe,
and those who hate us have gotten spoil..."


And lest Job's friends come to say that this sort of thing is ours as a payment for some secret sin, the psalmist and I continue:


"All this has come upon us,
though we have not forgotten you,
and we have not been false to your covenant."


There was no praying, no fasting, no scriptural instruction or condition not met for my son's healing.  Sometimes I believe all life of saints on earth between the Fall and Christ's second coming is a commentary and repetition of the book of Job.
God allows his servants here sometimes to be harassed and tortured by Satan without answer except those moments (Like the end of the book of Job) when he reveals Himself for a moment, and we repent in dust and ashes for any ill thoughts of Him. But it is better to have been appalled at this state of things and expect better from our God as Job did than to (like his "comforters") say that God's in His heaven, and all's right with the world.

"After the LORD had spoken these words to Job, the LORD said to Eliphaz the Temanite: “My anger burns against you and against your two friends, for you have not spoken of me what is right, as my servant Job has."


Will we curse God and die? How can we? He still has the words of eternal life.
Can we still trust in His goodness in the face of this? He is all our goodness!  I think of my son, my Elias, my beautiful son, and know that all his sweetness and Goodness is an overflow of the goodness of God, a God who brought him into being and promises his resurrection.
We have been promised a regeneration of all things - even the prophets did not receive what had been promised - I will wait for the day of restoration and judgement.

There is a hole in the universe - my son!  What is this universe, a universe without Elias? It is a foreign place, and I never want to get used to it. May I never be false to my God or my Son and proclaim a false recovery from a wound that cannot be healed until the regeneration of all things at the Coming of our Lord,  Jesus Christ.

What would you do, if you were told to answer 5-2=, and if you were told that you could not answer "3", for there was no longer any "3" to put in that place?  You could only wait, and hold the place until the right answer could once again be given.

Our Son! We cannot be healed - not until the restoration, we can only be sustained in the midst of ruins, trusting in the Goodness of God and the sureness of His promises.  So that's what we do, we patch the hole with promises until the day we receive them.

We know we are not the first ones to have lost a dear baby, and we likely will not be the last.  Most have not had the love and support of friends and family as we have, most have not been given the ever-present help of Christ in the hands and help of so many as we have. We are humbled by all of you, humbled at how you have all rushed so quickly to help us, and keep us from any of the myriads of associated indignities and hassles that surround something as horrible as the death of a loved one.  We have been uniquely blessed and freed to fight in prayer for our son until his spirit left to the Father, and then freed to grieve and pray and hope.

And you, our friends, our family, who have joined us in suffering and prayer, please join us in hope!  Your suffering and prayers are not, were not, in vain.  All the promises are in Christ "Yes and Amen", even if we have to wait until His coming to be vindicated, our prayers will be brought to remembrance, and answered, and on that day it won't be us, but rather death who will be robbed and humiliated.

Elias.

A son of prayers, if there ever was one. He's still wheezy more than a baby should be (the surgeon told us that infants with TEF have softer tracheas), and his herniated belly-button might be causing us more concern than it warrants (doctors don't do anything about them until kids are four years old or so) - but overall he's been gaining weight quickly and acting more and more like his brothers and sister did at his age. I can finally write about him now, since the raw agony of panic has for the most part subsided, along with the bulk of all those feelings of foreboding I had before.

Still, the valleys of the shadow formed such a regular sort of rhythm for the last several months we can't help but feel a bit of flinching expectancy. Father, please forgive our fears, and at the same time don't lead us into temptation-deliver us from evil.

Also been feeling a general cloud of malaise - probably from lack of sleep and company - these last few weeks. Brandy has had even less sleep than I have, and the older kids have suffered quite a bit of neglect in the mornings. It's a little disappointing how much our family boat can rock after a few big waves. But still, the comforting rhythms of Thanking our Father in Heaven for our breakfast, reading to the kids before bed, or going through the first ten or so questions of the Westminster Shorter Catechism have done a lot to help us find our sea-legs again. The one thing I do miss is closer fellowship with other strong believers (or even not so strong believers).

I guess we could seek it out, but it's difficult to find time or presence of mind to arrange anything that would work, and so many friendly visits with believers we don't know so well can end up being mostly small talk.

Small talk...is it the human equivalent of canine rear-sniffing? I guess it's necessary in its way, as a sort of preliminary to real conversations that might follow; but it can be very tiring.

Going through Genesis for our weekly bible-study. Brandy can't participate as much since she's doing the bulk of baby-holding, and since bible-study hours coincide with Elias' fussy hours. Ben and Rose have been our faithful attendees for the past six months or more, others have come and gone, TJ's been so busy with his extra work at the Roaster in Camano Island he hasn't shown for a while. In a lot of ways a good bible study is a lot harder to put together than a "teaching". The organizer has to come up with questions that aren't too hard for people to understand, but aren't too easy either. Just like in a class, people are hesitant to answer the first because they think they'll get it wrong and embarrass themselves, or reluctant to answer the second kind because it's boring or degrading. Thinking of good questions is like fine-tuning a dial.

But life is Good, God has blessed us, I am full of blessings and peanut butter. The only think I want right now is Light, more Light - conscious fellowship with God in Christ.

"Raze it, raze it, even to the foundation thereof."-Ps. 137:7

(this is the verse that always pops into mind when looking at a straight razor, although the phrase was directed by nasty Edomites towards Jerusalem, I think I can reappropriate it for a different purpose.)

My first straight razor shave was without much of the blood and tears promised by Amazon reviewers to first-timers. It easily took off an amount of scruffiness that would have clogged a disposable razor after two swipes. But still, asking myself why I bought it, I guess the main reason is that I liked the idea of it. True, it's more efficient at removing beardiness than the bags of razor encrusted plastic sticks I was using before, and also true, it will cost less in the long run; but those aren't what pushed me over the edge.

I guess the romance of something less specialized is a better part of it, the attraction G.K. Chesterton wrote about in his essay "The Universal Stick".

But not quite, because if I was going to go Chestertonian, I'd be using a knife.

It could also be a sort of nostalgia, the way some people enjoy old cars, fedoras, pipes and "classic" movies.

I suppose I could ask my little brother, because I found out the day before yesterday that he beat me to the punch and has been shaving w/ a straight razor for two months now.

All reasons combined, I think it was worth it.

So anyways, I haven't written much in quite a while. Here's an article response I just wrote to the "Falcon", SPU's newspaper.

In reply to Pech's article "Give it up, churches", I would like to point out some insufficiencies I see in his reasoning. He points out that "reasonable people can disagree" on whether homosexuality is a sin and whether God intended marriage to be between a man and a woman. I don't think it's a matter of whether disagreement is possible between reasonable people, it's a matter of coming down on the correct side of the disagreement. Many people throughout history have been both reasonable and mistaken.

Next, he asks, "If the church's main concern is God's approval or disapproval of marriages, why not leave that up to God?" I hope that this isn't the church's mainconcern, the church's main concern should be obedient devotion and faithfulness to God in Christ. However, if faithfulness to God includes confessing (in the sense of "saying the same thing") then to repeat to His creation the Word of God regarding the responsibilities of states and the definition of evils is part of what constitutes faithfulness.

If we were to leave the church's obedience "up to God", and still want to call itself the church, it would be playing the part of the son in Jesus' parable who told his Father "yes, I'll go work in the field", while remaining firmly planted on his rear end. Being the Church involves both saying yes to God's proposed mission and in His power carrying though with that resolve.

Pech then cheekily asks: "If God does not count gay marriages as legitimate, won't he simply, you know, not count them?" - yes, yes he will, but God's frustration in scripture often seems to come from having to "tread the winepress alone". Should we also scold the Apostle Paul for speaking to the pagan governor Felix about "righteousness, self-control and the coming judgement" rather than leaving these things for God to sort out when the right time came? This may have been what Felix would have preferred at the time, but Christ's apostle Paul exhibits no such inclinations.

Oddly enough, Pech goes on to bluntly state: "The state shouldn't be in the marriage business at all". Putting the historical problems with this statement aside, it seems that this is a position he hopes the church and state will adopt, and it carries with it an obligation of the state regarding marriage (that they shouldn't have anything to do with it). Isn't telling the state what it should do about marriage what he's chastizing the "church" for?

After telling the church it should not dictate the responsibilities of the state, Pech...dictates the responsibilities of the state.: "...To protect and serve its people, not to legislate their morality." The cliche "you can't legislate morality" which he summons to make his point, falls apart fairly quickly. All legislation depends on moral judgements. Why do we disagree with any laws? Because we don't think they are right (i.e., "moral"). Supporters of "gay marriage" don't believe it's "right" (i.e. "moral") to deny marriage to people practicing homosexuality - this is a moral judgement. The question is not whether the state should legislate morality, the question on the table is: whose morality should it legislate? Pech's? The "church"'s? The supporters of "gay marriage"?

Shane ends with "If the only value [presumably of the church] is to degrade a group of people, what kind of witness is that?" My response would be agreement in principle. However, if it happens to be true that same sex marriage is wrong, and if the scripture is true that "Righteousness exalts a nation, But sin is a disgrace [i.e. degrading] to any people.", then the ones seeking to degrade a group of people are the supporters of same sex marriage. And if the church finds its value in aiding and abetting the degrading of a nation, well, what kind of a witness is that?

Talked to a depressed friend yesterday, and asked him where he thought individual human worth came from. He said

"Do you want to know the "right" answer?"

Me: "I want to hear what you think the right answer is, but I want to hear your answer."

Friend: "Well, the "right" answer, 'Jesus died for our sins & we're redeemed' - but me? I have no idea."

This followed with a little more conversation in which I mentioned that I think scripture says our worth is based on us being created in God's image-not necessarily the redemption.

I also shared that when I was in a similar spiral I prayed for God to help me to feel what I knew. I also probably kept him longer than was good for either of us.

All during that conversation, I was trying to remember when I felt the same way.

Once I did. It's been such a long time though, I don't feel that way any longer and haven't for quite a while. I don't want to forget though.

It's one thing to repeat the "right" answers, or to correct someone's "right" answers, but until you've gotten inside someone's anguish and tried to really understand the problem, I've found that people (others have done this to me and I've done it-God forgive me-to others) tend to shoot over the heads of the people they're trying to help, and after blowing the smoke from their barrels with a satisfied smile, they get irritated that their patient can't see that their problem has been neatly solved. Maybe they'll reload and try again. Maybe they'll blame the patient's obstinacy. Maybe they'll blame the patient for something else.

But maybe, just maybe, there is a God in heaven,

A God who hears prayer and does, really does, something about these things.

I have a regimen of praying - or trying to pray.

Oh God, help me to stop just talking to the ceiling & beg you with something like reality for the things only you can do.

Ephesians. The "Praise of His Glory" - what does it mean?

"New Heavens and earth, where righteousness dwells.

The earth will be full of the knowledge of the glory of YHWH as the waters cover the sea.

Then the end will come, when he hands over the kingdom to God the Father after he has destroyed all dominion, authority and power...The last enemy to be destroyed is death...When he has done this, then the Son himself will be made subject to him who put everything under him, so that God may be all in all.

the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God."

Here are a few verses that indicate the big picture of God's plan. It becomes difficult to understand certain things (like the place & purpose of the Law) if we think that God's "endgame" is merely to have the souls of justified men & women join him in a heavenly plane. That's not the picture that we get from scripture.

Reading Romans & his other epistles, it gets confusing to hear Paul explain what the Law is all about. One minute he's saying God gave it to increase transgressions. The next He's saying that it has "righteous requirements". Then it's a schoolmaster to bring us to Christ. It can't produce righteousness. And he says that Abraham was righteous before the Law came, merely by faith. So, if there was righteousness by faith apart from the law before the Law came, what was the point of it coming in the first place?!? What need for Christ?

Well, I don't know all the answers, but I think the reason this seems confusing is that we assume that God's point in this whole spread is to get people justified. If that were all there were to it, then not much of what God has done through the ages makes any sense.

But God doesn't intend to stop with our justification. Justification and restoration of right relationship with God is just the starting point. First the Jews for thousands of years are trained by the Law to know what righteousness looks like. The Law, just like the birth of Seth, the calling of Abraham, the choosing of Jacob, the anointing of David, are all stepping stones on the mysteriously gradual plan of God to redeem the entire created world. It trains them for the messiah's coming but they-and then the Gentiles-are justified by faith. Jesus Christ comes, and in Himself creates a new human nature through his Life, Death, and Resurrection. That nature is to be formed in us both through the Spirit, in the "inner man" (or woman). The Law of Christ is in us through the spirit. That's where we are now in the program.

Then at his coming our bodies will be redeemed.

Then authority will be given to the saints to rule in their redeemed bodies, indwelt by the Spirit and given eternal, spiritual, physical bodies. Under Christ they will rule.

All men will be raised, judged, separated to their eternal destinies.

Then the universe itself will be recreated, renewed, just as we were.

Then all things will have been returned to the creator, and the whole beautiful works will be filled with his glory. Every beauty & excellence in every person, mountain, food, story, blade of grass, or whatever created thing that exists, will be recognizeable as coming from God the Father.

And that's when the saints will see that it really is to the "praise of His glory" - with the glory of God shining out of every drop of water, every leaf, every eye, all will be taken in and enjoyed by the Sons and Daughters of God and result in an endless process of enjoyment and praise for that Glory.

Ups and downs. School gets so wearisome past a certain point, when you've learned what you wanted to know and are then forced to read and listen to all sorts of banalities that suck the excitement out of discovery. I doubt that it's possible to be bored to death, but I don't doubt that a person's natural interests and curiosity can be kidnapped and smothered to death in some dark alley by peer-reviewed academic mob-bosses. Lord, deliver me from my enemies!

Or maybe I'm just whining because my mental exercise routine has become less like a footrace and more like a forced march - in either case, the endurance and requisite muscle groups of the mind are growing, which is one of the main reasons for the whole exercise in the first place, right?

I've been reading through Ephesians, especially chapter 1, in preparation for a home group that looks as if it won't be taking place for a while. But it's impossible to seek God in the instruction of his apostles without coming away the better for it, and one thing among many that struck me was the confidence with which Paul says "when you believed you were marked with the seal of the Holy Spirit, and that's how you know you're going to get the inheritance."

Now, to cite something that isn't visible, tangible, or otherwise immediately detectable as evidence for something in an unseen future seems odd somehow, unless the "marking" of the holy spirit isn't as ethereal and uncertain as I've often felt.

Then I came across Richard Baxter's words in his "Dying thoughts": "That this Spirit is given to all true believers is evident by the effects of His being given, They have ends, affections, and lives different from the rest of mankind; they live upon the hopes of a better life, and their heavenly interest overrules all the opposite interests of this world. In order to this they live under the conduct of divine authority, and to obey and please God is the great business of their lives. The men of the world discern this difference, and therefore hate and oppose them, because they find themselves condemned by their heavenly temper and conversation. Believers are conscious of this difference; for they desire to be better, and to trust and love God more, and to have more of the heavenly life and comforts; and when their infirmities make them doubt of their own sincerity, they would not change their Governor, rule, or hopes, for all the world; and it is never so well and pleasant with them, as when they can trust and love God most; and in their worst and weakest condition they would fain be perfect...whence are thy groanings after God, thy desires to be nearer to His glory, to know him and love Him more?...Who breathed into thee all those requests thou hast sent up to God? Overvalue not corrupt nature, it brings forth no such fruits as these...Thy holy desires are, alas! too weak, but they are holy." -

This is comforting to me, because I often wonder what real evidence there is of the Life of God in me, if there's anything that proves I've received the Holy Spirit. The things that Baxter points out I see as true in me and in the others I know who've responded to the call of God. Usually it's difficult to get anyone to say what the real change in converted persons IS, and when we read the apostle's words "Do you not realize that Christ Jesus is in you--unless, of course, you fail the test?", we think "uhhhhh, what's the test? what are the questions? Is it multiple choice or true/false? or is it more of a feeling?" Most Christians I've met (including the one I meet in the mirror) get concerned because they don't see the holiness they want or expect in their own lives.

But, thank God, I can adapt Baxter's pronouns and say: "my hopes have been too low; but I have hoped in God, and for his heavenly glory. My prayers have been too dull and interrupted; but I have prayed for holiness and heaven. My labors have been too slothful; but I have labored for God and Christ and the good of mankind. though my motion was too weak and slow, it has been God-ward, and therefore it is from God."

Just found out today that the Clinicals for the last two school years in the Nursing Program here at SPU (which I have not yet even completed prereqs for, much less been admitted to) are 15hrs per week, on top of 10 more hours of class time, not counting homework. That's 26 hrs/wk. I also work 40+ hrs/wk. Now, I know all things are possible with God, but I wonder if all things are prudent. I don't want to neglect my family any more than I already do. (Well, I'd rather not neglect them at all...)

I believed and still believe this is where the Lord's leading is, or at least that I've not had any restraint 'til now - which coupled w/ an initial desire seems to be the mechanism by which I'm normally led - so I'm going to keep going for it.

If this (Nursing) falls through I don't know what else I could really do in the way of securing solid training for future employment that would also provide me with enough free time to plant a church here. I've seen enough churches fall apart or fall on hard times not to want to rely totally on the generosity of God's flock for provision for my family, who all enjoy having roofs and beds and food and such things. At least Paul had tentmaking as a fallback or supplement, and he was single. I am not single, I'm not even double. I'm quintuple-no, Brandy's pregnant, make that sextuple. So with this small tribe relying on me for sustenance, I DO desire (and I don't think this is lack of faith) some sort of resilient qualifications of the sort that could allow me to provide said sustenance. A Classics degree doesn't exactly fit that bill.

Prayers appreciated.