Chapter 10 Homeward Bound
Chapter 10
Homeward Bound
The glowing sunset behind the coastal mountains stopped me in my tracks as I left the JAF Ministries office. I sat by my van in the parking lot and watched the hues shift and deepen from vivid lilac to pink and then a fiery red. A show-off sunset it was, a sassy kaleidoscope, teasing, inviting me to follow it over the horizon. It was another one of those heaven-inspired moments wooing me not only over the horizon, but home. I knew I couldn’t follow. For now, I could only sit and enjoy.
“Good night, Joni,” a couple of coworkers smiled as they headed toward their cars.
“‘Night.” I said dreamingly. I roused and added, “Hey girls, wait…can you believe that sunset?”
My friends paused, and together we stood, quietly, face-on into the color. It washed us in its glowing tone, touching us like the finger of Midas and making our group a single and silent statue of gold. We were bound together in a timeless moment that we knew was slipping away even as we tried to hold on to it. Drink it all in, we seemed to understand, this won’t last forever.
As the colors peaked, golden rays shot up from behind the mountain just as the last vestige of sun slid beneath its crest. Then, it was gone. Finished.
We watched the sky darken and threaten as fog from the ocean crept up over the hills. I shivered, we said good-bye, and went our separate ways. Getting into my van, I remembered a favorite line from Amy Carmichael: “We will have all of eternity to celebrate the victories, and only a few hours before sunset in which to win them.”
Miss Carmichael knew a lot about the Christian life—and a lot about sunsets. She knew the colors of the fading sun mesmerize us with their beauty, making us stand still and almost believe in timeless moments. Then, in the next second, the lingering pink and gold vanish.
Why am I always surprised at how fast sunsets disappear? How fast my days disappear?
Then again, I’m always amazed at how fast life disappears. I watch a sunset, get in the van, drive away, stop at the gas station, the market, help Ken fix dinner, and then collapse in bed long after dark. Next morning I’m up and at it again. My life will be gone in a flash, in the twinkling of an eye. Suddenly—just like that—it will be over. Finished. The fading beauty of all the good things in life will disappear.
Drink it all in…this won’t last forever. Soon, much sooner than I realize, I will follow that sunset over the horizon and step into the other side of eternity. And if I’m able to look over my shoulder at earth, I know I’ll be stunned that life went by so rapidly. But in heaven, there will literally be no time to think about it.
So I must think about it now.
That’s why God gives us timeless moments in the here and now, striking that resonant chord in our heart that echoes eternity. He woos us away from this world with that heavenly haunting, and it happens when we’re enfolded in the arms of the one we love. Or watch a baby break into a giggle. Or savor a Scripture that springs to life in our heart. Cry when a choir sings a triumphant hymn. Watch a sunset or gaze at the stars.
Timeless moments are those that send our hearts on ahead to heaven. Moments when we demonstrate drastic obedience, choose patience over complaint, or honor God when it’s hard. Amy Carmichael calls this “winning victories” in the few hours we have before sunset.
“Be very careful, then, how you live—not as unwise but as wise, making the most of every opportunity, because the days are evil,” Ephesians 5:15 echoes. Days are fleeting, hours are fading, and before you know it, we will no longer have the chance to prove our love to Jesus with our obedience. We won’t have the time to get back on track. To build with gold, silver, and precious stones.
The sun will have set.
Twilight: Approaching the Passage to Heaven
No one appreciates sunsets like my mother. Lindy, as her friends call her, is like me in that she will put everything on hold to watch a sassy sunset. During the summer, her early evening ritual includes pulling up a chair and sipping coffee on the back porch of her condominium to watch the sun disappear below Sinepuxent Bay on the eastern shore of Maryland. Then she will watch the twilight give way to a thousand twinkling stars that stretch from horizon to horizon. She loves looking up and always telephones me to remind me when there’s a full moon.
Mother is aware of how short the days are. At eighty-one years of age, she has seen ten thousand sunsets and understands that even the brightest day is sure to have its twilight. For her, the shadows are falling longer, thicker, and faster, and the warmth is going out of the air. Her strongest hours of building with gold, silver, and precious stones are waning as the afternoon of her life is passing. Lindy knows she is approaching twilight. But even in her twilight, even though Mother seems grand and old, she is so…young!
I’m convinced it’s because she keeps looking up and focusing on something far beyond her many birthdays and blocked arteries. Heaven is literally nearer to her, and such a focus will always infuse youth into the heart. After all, to live in the heavenlies is to live in a kind of timelessness. People who look up and see beyond the encroaching years enlarge their souls with eternity. They have about them the air of something eternal, not temporal. They know every year draws them closer to heaven, which, in turn, instills more youth into their hearts.
You don’t have to convince my mother, and you don’t have to twist the arm of my friend, Alice McIntire. Although definitely in her twilight, she won’t tell her age because, as she puts it, “Any woman who tells her age, will tell anything.” Alice—who I can at least say is beyond my mother’s years—enjoys looking up as the shadows fall longer and faster. For years her heart has beaten in rhythm with her Savior’s, and every once in a while she seems to tilt her head as if catching the strains of heaven’s celebration. It wouldn’t surprise me if she did. She has an ear for things festive. She lives and looks the part, even after eight decades. Alice knows she will have all of eternity to celebrate the victories, so she’s making the most of the moments in her sunset years. She still teaches a women’s Bible study, and she does it in St. John’s knits with silk blouses and bows, earrings, and jeweled pumps.
Her Bible studies wouldn’t be complete without the best china and linens for coffee and cookies afterward. Her spunk, humor, and style amaze me, and I once said to Alice, “You must be really looking forward to heaven,” to which she replied, “Oh, honey, yes, but I hope I stay around for Jesus’ return…I never like to miss a good party.”
Alice keeps looking up. This is why she stays so young (as does my mother). Every Christian who keeps looking up stretches his heart’s capacity for heaven. They don’t seem old, they are young.
Dr. Sherwood Wirt, editor emeritus of Decision magazine, is closing the ranks behind Alice McIntire and, like her, carries about him the air of youth. “People speak of the ‘transitions’ that age brings, usually in terms of externals such as thinning hair and hearing aids. I am now eighty-three years old and wish to testify that inside, where I live, age means nothing. I am the same person that I was at twenty-one, or forty-six, or sixty-five.”1
I’m not ninety or in my eighties, but I identify. I feel so young inside, somewhere around the age of twelve or thirteen. As though I were a little girl. A girl like my mother who still bundles up to run outside and gaze at the moon. Or Alice who selects the latest designs off the petite rack. And Dr. Wirt who disarms you every time with that twinkle in his blue eyes. We feel young when we forget the temporal and focus on the eternal—that’s what children do who have no concept of time, and of such is the kingdom of heaven.
People such as these understand that time is not their natural environment. They realize they are spiritual beings having a short stint in a physical experience. Time, for them, doesn’t seem quite so much a stalking enemy as a passage—albeit difficult—into a brighter, better eternity.
When the Passage Is Painful
It may be brighter at twilight, but not necessarily easier.
That final passage for my mother, Alice, or Dr. Wirt may be swift and sweet, but there’s no guarantee. For many, the passage is ugly and painful.
It was this way for Billie Barrows, the wife of Cliff Barrows. For more than forty years they labored together with Dr. Graham, full of zest for life and zeal for the good fight. That zeal buoyed Billie during her last nine years as she wrestled courageously against breast cancer, which spread into her liver, bones, and finally, her brain. She chose the high road and kept a joyful outlook, building up her body with the medicine of a happy heart, as well as a regimen of vitamins, various teas, and beet and carrot juice. But even with five chemotherapy treatments, Billie could not stave off the disease.
Surrounded by a loving family, boosted by prayer, and bolstered by a fighting spirit, hers should have been the model passage—wonderfully serene with chariots swinging low as the angels quietly came to carry her home. It wasn’t that way. It was a knock-down-drag-out fight in the center ring, with time bullying and battering and showing no mercy.
On five different occasions her sons and daughters flew from the far corners of the country to join their dad at Billie’s bedside. Surely this time God will take Mother home, they reasoned. But it was not her appointed time. During the last two weeks Billie’s joy, which had been such an inspiration to Cliff, friends, doctors, and the family was silenced by the ticking of each painful minute that failed to bring release.
The deathbed was not a place of blessing for Billie. But it did become a place of blessing for the family. Cliff and his sons and daughters, in-laws, and grandchildren discovered a deeper, richer blessing in being together. Not around a holiday table with laughter and lighthearted moments, but around a bed of affliction that poignantly offered moments of love and reconciliation. Although Billie couldn’t communicate, the large tears that rolled down her cheeks right before she died, said it all. Finally, blessed release came. She left the land of the dying for the land of the living.
Not long after Billie’s funeral, I called her daughter, Bonnie. We talked about the wrenching agony of those last days. “Joni, Christians shouldn’t glamorize death. Death is Satan’s last-ditch effort, and he’s going to make it as awful as he can.”
There was a long pause.
“But God has the last word. Resurrection. And at the graveside we were able to sing—actually, we kept singing it every day—
‘Soar we now where Christ has led,
Following our exalted Head,
Made like Him, like Him we rise,
Ours the cross, the grave, the skies.’”
I could hear the smile in Bonnie’s voice, and it wasn’t hard to imagine that same smile through tears as she and her family left the graveside singing that hymn of victory, “Christ the Lord Has Risen Today.”
As I hung up, I thought of Corrie ten Boom, the Dutch woman who was sent to a Nazi concentration camp for hiding Jewish families. Years after Tante Corrie’s release, her companion, Pam Rosewell, sat by her bedside when she was old and stroke-stricken. Watching Corrie’s mind and body waste away to a thin shadow of her former self, she wondered—much like Billie’s family—why the Lord didn’t take Tante Corrie home sooner. But Pam observed after the funeral of her elderly friend, “Every day she lived was a victory over the devil…he would have had her die fifty years earlier in Ravensbruck, but just the act of living, without doing a thing, just breathing life in and out was a triumph. If her final years had not influenced any person on earth and if the only reason the Lord allowed her to remain on earth was to make a silent daily statement to the principalities in heavenly places that ‘Jesus is victor,’ then it was an important silence indeed.”
Was something of eternal value actually being accrued to Billie’s account just by her surviving a few extra months or weeks? Were unseen divine realities at work? Realities that the Barrows family were unable to detect through the blinding veil of suffering? Perhaps God’s glory will ultimately be more golden because of family faith forged at her bedside—a victory that will be credited to Billie. The days of her dying may have been evil, but she labored on the best she could. Her body obeyed the impulse of God-given life. And perhaps that—no glamour intended—was a victory.
In all their suffering, neither Tante Corrie nor Billie were diminished.
I am standing upon the seashore. A ship at my side spreads her white sails to the morning breeze and starts for the blue ocean. She is an object of beauty and strength, and I stand and watch her until at length she hangs like a speck of white cloud just where the sea and sky come down to mingle with each other. Then someone at my side says: “There! She’s gone.”
Gone where? Gone from my sight—that is all.
She is just as large in mast and hull and spar as she was when she left my side, and just as able to bear her load of living freight to the place of destination. Her diminished size is in me, not in her; and just at the moment when someone at my side says, “There! She’s gone,” there are other eyes watching her coming, and other voices ready to take up the glad shout, “There she comes!”
And that is Dying!
—Author Unknown
I look at my own degenerating body and wonder how I will approach that final passage. Will it be short and sweet? Or long and agonizing? Will my husband be able to take care of me? Or will my quadriplegia better suit me for a nursing home? It’s not so much I’m afraid of death as dying.
Whether it’s painfully prolonged or a peaceful passing in the night, I’m strangely comforted by the thought that the servant shouldn’t expect to suffer less than his Master. There is no holy peace with death. Theologian Alexander Schmemann wrote in his classic For the Life of the World, “Only if Christ is life, is death what Christianity proclaims it to be, namely an enemy to be destroyed, not a ‘mystery’ to be explained.”2 Even earth will convulse in upheaval in its final birth pangs before the new heavens and new earth. All seeds—whether a plant, a person, or a planet—must die. But then, the harvest.
Between Death and the Resurrection
Until the harvest, Billie and Tante Corrie are not diminished while they are presently in heaven. They gained immeasurably the instant they crossed from the land of the dying to the land of the living. Second Corinthians 5:8 explains that “to be away from the body [is to be] at home with the Lord.” Billie and Tante Corrie are not present with the Lord in some soul-sleep right now; they are “at home” with Him in the best sense of the word. They are alive, awake, aware, and full of the joy of having come home. Home where they fit, feel warm and welcomed, a place where they belong. Who can begin to measure the fullness of the meaning of that word “home”!
There’s another way that departed saints are not diminished and the clue is given in Luke 16:19–31. Jesus relays not a parable, but an amazing real-life occurrence after the death of a beggar named Lazarus and a rich man. The rich man was very conscious of his hellish surroundings as well as the condition of his brothers who still remained on earth, and he wanted desperately to warn his family. He felt, saw, prayed, remembered, and desired. My point? If lost souls can feel and care, how much more can those who have died in the faith!
Tante Corrie and Billie presently reside with the Lord of Glory, the Lord of love. How deeply they must feel and pray and see. How fervent must be their love. Could it be that our loved ones in glory are able to love us now? Pray for us now? Love does not die; it cannot die because it cannot fail. Love is a part of a departed saint’s being, not his body, but his person. I’m convinced that Billie now loves her husband Cliff with a purer, holier, and more intense love than ever known on earth. And even if she is able to observe the mistakes, blunders, and tears of her loved ones on earth, she has the benefit of an end-of-time view, she is able to see the bigger, better picture.
In heaven, we do not lose, for “to die is gain.” We aren’t less, we’re more. When we die, we’re not in some soul-sleep of a stupor, not purgatory, and we’re certainly not unconscious. We are at home with the Lord. Home!
Then, the Resurrection and Rest
Then one day, the Resurrection. “But your dead will live; their bodies will rise. You who dwell in the dust, wake up and shout for joy. Your dew is like the dew of the morning; the earth will give birth to her dead” (Isaiah 26:19).
The veil over this unseen divine reality was pulled back for me one peculiar Sunday afternoon. My mother-in-law recently purchased a family grave plot at a cemetery called Forest Lawn. She would not sign the papers, however, until Ken and I looked at the lot and gave our approval. “Do I have to?” I whined at Ken. I could think of better things to do with our Sunday afternoon.
Playing the submissive wife, I trekked to Forest Lawn with Ken, looked at my grave site located in a section called “Murmuring Pines,” and listened to the realtor (that’s what she was actually called) remind me that what with my head “here,” and my feet “there,” I would have a grand view of the valley and distant mountains. That’s important, I told her. I also told her I did not have plans to stay there very long.
While the realtor and my mother-in-law conferred over the papers, I looked around at the hundreds of tombstones. It suddenly struck me that I was sitting on the exact spot where my body will rise, should I die before Christ comes. Resting on that grassy hillside did more to ignite the reality of the Resurrection than hearing sermons or reading essays on the subject. One day actual beings will return to actual graves and reunite to rise.
And then, heaven.
Then, rest.
Not the rest of inactivity, but rest from the pain, the weariness, and the disappointment. I may only be cresting middle age, but like many of my friends who have toiled for years, I’m ready for a rest. No more wrestling against sin. No more prying the world’s suction cups off my heart. No knock-down-drag-out fights with the devil. No collapsing in bed after an exhausting day only to snatch a few hours before you are up and at it again. “There remains…a Sabbath-rest for the people of God” (Hebrews 4:9).
This thought alone makes the earthly toil not only bearable, but lighter. I can remember how, after hours of riding my horse to check gates and fences, my weary mount would be wet with sweat, her head hanging low. I had to urge her to put one tired hoof in front of another. Then as soon as she caught a whiff of home or recognized the fences of her own pasture, her ears would pick up and her pace would quicken. The nearer we came to the barn, the more eager her trot. After a quick unsaddling, she would joyfully roll in the dirt and take long deep drinks from the trough. How good it feels for a beast to be home, to be able to rest.
How good it will feel for us to rest, to be at home.
Maybe the writers of the Bible—some who had scars on their bodies from stonings, others whose joints were stiff from chains that chaffed—had this sweet rest in mind, a rest that perked them up and quickened their pace. They wrote vigorous encouragements like, “Let us, therefore, make every effort to enter that rest” and “Seeing that the days are short, make every effort…” and “Redeem the time for the days are evil.” The weary labor for them seemed featherweight compared with the glorious rest into which they were about to enter.
Seize the Day!
The sun is setting. There are only a few hours left in which to gain heavenly victories.
I believe we are in the twilight of our hardships as well as the twilight of the world’s history. I believe the days are short. My closing words for you are “Make the most of every opportunity” (Colossians 4:5). It is what Alice and my mother are doing, and it is what Billie and Tante Corrie did those last painful years of their lives. If we could hear it from the lips of Amy Carmichael herself, perhaps we would sense the urgency of winning triumphs for Christ in these last few hours before the sun disappears.
I tried to drive home this “end-of-time” perspective to Kim, a young Christian woman with Lou Gehrig’s disease who was vacillating between going on a respirator or not. She wasn’t sure if a respirator would be something that would sustain her life or just prolong her dying. We talked about how the impact of her decision would affect not just her but a wide circle of family and friends. We discussed the facts of her disease and whether or not she was, indeed, imminently dying. We talked about the difference between selfishness and selflessness.
I breathed a quick prayer, asking God to help me to be as sensitive as I could, and then I said to Kim, “If you can resolve these questions with a Spirit-controlled conscience, then I don’t think you can make a wrong decision. But between the two, there may be a better choice. And to guide you, let me read one final and powerful verse from 2 Peter 3:8.
“It begins, ‘But do not forget this one thing, dear friends.’ You probably know from your days in Sunday school that what Peter is about to say is ultra-important, like Jesus saying, ‘Verily, verily!’ And he continues, ‘With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day.’”
I explained to Kim why that verse is so key. We all recognize the old adage that God looks at the last two thousand years as only a couple of days gone by, but how many of us ever consider the next half of the verse? The part about seeing each day as like a thousand years? It’s a little like divine geometry, a mathematical formula assuring us that each day is a chance to invest in a thousand years worth of eternity. God gives us a twenty-four-hour slice of time in which to make the most of every opportunity, opportunities that will have eternal repercussions.
The way we spend—the way Kim spends—the hours and moments counts. It counts far more than we realize. I suggested to Kim that she ought to smile and say “thanks” when her mother syringes liquid lunch into her G-tube. It’s a way of making the most of an opportunity, and it could resound to 359 years of eternal benefit to her, her mother, and glory to God. Kim gave a little laugh when I told her this. “And when you bite your tongue from complaining about something, it could shake out to 500 years of eternal bliss, benefit, and glory!” What a way for this young woman to live out her remaining days. If Kim were to live only two more weeks with this heavenly perspective, it pans out to be fourteen thousand years in heaven. If she were to live a month, that figures out to thirty thousand years of eternal investment.
I’m not saying that every day here exactly equals one thousand years there. Remember, heaven has a different kind of time. Time just is in heaven. My purpose in using 2 Peter 3:8 was simply to give heavenly meaning to Kim’s earthly hours.
Little wonder Psalm 90:12 says, “Teach us to number our days aright, that we may gain a heart of wisdom.” This is the kind of wisdom God wants you to apply to your twenty-four-hour slices of time. This is the kind of wisdom that sends your heart on ahead to heaven.
Oh, if we could only realize how short life is. James 4:14 says, “What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes.” And if we need another nudge, Isaiah 40:6–7 says, “All men are like grass…the grass withers and the flowers fall, because the breath of the Lord blows on them. Surely the people are grass.” Therefore make every effort. The days are evil. Redeem the time.
Make the most of your moments.
Come Home!
Yes, the older I get, the younger I feel. The faster time flies, the more precious my hours become. On some days, I feel as though I might be called Home any moment.
I had this “let’s go home” feeling when I used to play in the woods beyond our backyard. As soon as I got home from elementary school, and while Mom was preparing dinner, I would put my things in my room and race out the back door to play tag with Kathy and a few neighborhood kids. We would call to each other and our shouts would echo through the tall oak trees. Everything echoed—the chatter of birds, the distant clatter of an old lawnmower, the slamming of screen doors. Our play was so much fun that an hour would go by and I’d hardly realize it. I barely noticed the rays of the sinking sun cutting long shadows through the trees. Kathy and I knew that soon Mother would call us home.
Funny, I rarely took it upon myself to go home unless called. I rather enjoyed hearing the sound of Daddy’s or Mom’s voice through cupped hands, shouting my name. No sooner did I hope they’d call when I would hear the familiar ding-ding-a-ling-ding of the dinner bell by the back door.
“Supper’s ready…time to come home!”
It’s odd how I can still hear Mother’s voice. It almost makes me cry; it just about made me cry when I was a child. The echo of the bell…the haunting sound through the woods…the joy about to break open my heart for the love of home, the warmth of family…not to mention fried chicken and mashed potatoes by a glowing fire in the dining room. And often during summer, after the table was cleared and dessert was over, we’d sit in the backyard and watch the sun go down.
“There it goes…”
“It’s almost gone…just a little tip of light left.”
Our family would vie for who’d be the last one to see the sun set.
And then, we’d wait until the stars came out, singing hymns and counting the constellations. It was all I could hope for as a kid. And here I am an adult still looking beyond Ursa Major, singing heaven’s melodies, and winning victories until earth’s twilight gives way to the dawn of eternity.
Most of the things that have deeply possessed my soul have been echoes that have died away as soon as they caught my ear. But the echo of that dinner bell, now, many years later, has not died but is swelling into the sound itself.
When that happens to any of us, when those tantalizing glimpses, those promises never quite fulfilled find broader, more complete fulfillment in our maturing years, then we know we’ve found what we’ve longed for. Beyond every possibility of a doubt, we would say, “Here at last is the thing I was made for…this is the healing of the old ache.”
That’s why for me, the echoes are getting louder. They resonate with the rich, full, and deep tones of Someone calling just a short distance away.
Softly and tenderly Jesus is calling,
Calling for you and for me;
See, on the portals He’s waiting and watching,
Watching for you and for me.
Come Home, come Home,
Ye who are weary, come Home;
Earnestly, tenderly, Jesus is calling,
Calling, O sinner, come Home!3