An Epitaph Worth Raising the Dead- Acts 9:36-39

Original Picture by Flickr user Cheryl

I'm guessing you're wondering why I used a picture of crochet hooks and a ball of yarn. If you knew my Mema, then you wouldn't wonder. Mema's favorite activity in the world toward the end of her life was sitting in a chair or lying in her bed and working her crochet. She made untold numbers of dish rags and coasters. Most of those were either given away to people she loved or given to someone else to sell for some charity or some other purpose. She never made a dime off of thousands of hours of labor and probably millions of feet of yarn as far as I know. She just enjoyed making them and giving them away. Every time we saw her toward the end of her life, she would tell us to pick another out and would ask if we knew of anyone else who needed one. After her stroke when it became obvious that she would die soon, she began talking in her hospital bed about all of her unfinished crochet projects that she was working on. All the while, her fingers were working as if she were still holding the hooks. I thought, based on the way she was acting and talking, that the projects she was describing were simply products of her imagination that she was cycling through in her last moments. It wasn't until later that I found out the colors she kept talking about and who they were for were actually at the house tucked in her closet.

Crocheting was not all she did to help people. At her funeral, we got to see a lady that we haven't seen for years. She was Mema's constant companion for I have no idea how long. I don't think it was because Mema particularly enjoyed her company, though. It was because the lady needed a friend and a safe place to stay during the day. So most days she was with Mema for most of the day. We got to visit with the preacher of the tiny congregation where she lived. He knew her better than we did because from the first Sunday he started driving to preach at the Big Sandy Church of Christ, he started staying at her house and taking naps in her guest room between services. She had a library of who knows how many books that she set up in her house so others could check books out before the town got a real library. We never stayed at her house during the summer that she didn't get at least 2-3 visitors during the day. Most of them were lonely people who were looking for someone to listen to them. So they stayed at her house all day every day. I couldn't believe it when I found out that Mema had started writing letters to people on our church sick list that she had seen in our bulletin. (Mema had never even been to the town I live in much less met any of the people in the bulletin. But she always insisted on reading the bulletins of any congregation where her family attended.) I wonder how many others she wrote letters to when there was no other way for her to serve them.

Now don't get the wrong impression. Mema had her rough edges! We all found at shortly after she moved in with my parents how stubborn she could be and how blunt she could be! She could drive you insane with some of her antics and semi-manipulative tricks! But in the end, there is nothing in the world that she wouldn't do for anyone. If she had the power to help, she would. Guess which things we remember about her now.

What will people remember about you when you are gone? Tabitha...and Mema, whatever their faults, served in such a way that when they died, people wept. And those they had served had tangible evidence that they could hold up and show to others to prove the service that had been performed. I wonder what would be held up by people if I died today?

Will we be known as people who are "always doing good and helping the poor?" I can't think of a better epitaph. Tabitha's friends said that about her and it moved Peter to raise her from the dead. But the truth is that Tabitha died again later. How glorious to think that both she and Mema will one day again be raised from the dead because they were both in Christ! And when that second resurrection happens, how glorious to hear the voice of God echoing the voice of those friends!

That's what I want at the end of my life. What about you? Of course the key is living now so the epitaph at death is already written. What will your epitaph be?

I've asked. I've seeked. I've knocked. Why have I still not recieved the open door I've been seeking for?- Matthew 7:7-8

For everyone who asks, receives; the one who seeks, finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened.  - Mt. 7:8

One quick question...

If all I have to do is ask then how come I haven't gotten everything I've ever asked for?

Do you struggle with that as much as I do? I have often come to the "prayer promises" passages in the Bible and either rushed through them so I didn't have to deal with them, or else I've just settled to not fully understand them.

I remember very plainly standing in a hospital room of a young man who had either just died or was dying. I am actually fairly confident that he was already dead, but the doctors, for some reason, had not pronounced him dead yet. With his wife wailing in the room, I began praying...earnestly. I reminded God that he had raised people from the dead before. In fact, He had raised people who were much more dead than this man if he was in fact dead. (Lazarus was already in the tomb long enough to start smelling when Jesus told him to come out!) I knew then, and I still do, that God has more than enough power to raise someone who has already been pronounced dead. With that knowledge, I pleaded with God to put life back into this young man who still had not been pronounced dead.

I reasoned with God. I pointed out the praise that He would get when the doctors had to pronounce a miracle instead of a time of death. I begged for the wife of the man that I didn't know how she would make it if he died. How as it fair to let him die when he had raised others!?

I kept praying after even the wife had even given up hope that there was a real reason why the doctors had not pronounced him dead yet. And I left the hospital- and his funeral a few days later- frustrated that this verse about the surety of asking, seeking, and knocking is so difficult to understand in practice.

I also remember the feeling when I walked out to the Vanderbilt parking garage with my brother the night I thought my daughters were going to be born at 27 weeks. They wound up coming at 29.5 weeks and are doing great now! But that night, we got the visit from the doctor who was in charge of telling us all of the statistics of mortality and morbidity for babies that are born that early. Jon David walked me to the car and I shared what had been screaming silently in my mind for hours. "I prayed several weeks ago that if they weren't going to be faithful to God and Christ as adults, that God would take them before they got to that point and were still innocent."

Timidly, I still pray that prayer. I would rather lose my daughters who I love with all my heart for the next several decades and have them for all of eternity than have them till I die and lose them for eternity. That is still my prayer...but that night, anyway, I was scared to death that God had answered my prayer...and I wanted Him to take it back.

Why do we see such strong promises in the scriptures and from the mouth of Jesus and yet know that sometimes prayers are answered with "no?" Jesus, himself, was answered "no" in the Garden of Gethsemane when he begged the Father to take his cup from him. How do we reconcile that?

I have to say humbly that I still have no idea. I know intellectually the arguments about Jesus praying, "nevertheless not my will by yours be done." Those are good and true arguments. But how are we supposed to pray at all believing these commands of ask, seek, and knock when we can't see the specific and detailed plans and will of God from his eternal perspective instead of our temporary one?

Here is what I choose to believe.

Jesus was telling the truth. God makes big promises about our prayers and petitions. Jesus- and others (think Elijah in James 5:17-17)- put that truth into practice and saw incredible results in their prayers. And still at times they were told "no." I wonder if they struggled with these questions like we do. But they chose to believe. And while at times they may have been frustrated and confused about not seeing what God sees when the "no's" came, they chose to keep praying, seeking, and knocking. And their prayers closed and opened the heavens, raised the dead, and healed the sick.

I wonder if I see more "no's" than "yes's" simply because I have not chosen to translate my belief into actions and adventurous faith-led and faith-filled risk-taking like they did. I wonder.

I don't know that I will ever come to a good answer. I have some theories that I am comfortable with. But I don't think they would do you any good, because they didn't do me any good until I came to them myself. But I will choose to believe...and I will pray the prayer of a father who believed as much as he could.

I will choose to ask, seek, and knock expecting the results Jesus promised and when God questions my lack of faith I will reply like that father, "I do believe! Help my unbelief!" (Mark 9:24)