Author: W. Keith Brenton

Following – 3

/ W. Keith Brenton / 2 Comments

Jesus fasted.

Among the gospel writers, only Matthew (4) and Luke (4) mention it.

After fasting forty days and forty nights, he was hungry.

Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, left the Jordan and was led by the Spirit into the wilderness, where for forty days he was tempted by the devil. He ate nothing during those days, and at the end of them he was hungry.

It’s one of the few places in scripture that fasting is mentioned apart from prayer.

I think that’s for the same reason that prayer — and God Himself, for that matter — are never mentioned in the book of Esther, though fasting is. If we can’t see them there, we’re not reaching the right conclusions. If Esther and her people fasted without praying, then all they did was go on a diet. If  justice for her people happened without God, then coincidence is king of the universe, because Hamaan was evil and deserved the consequences of his murderous bigotry.

Likewise, if Jesus went out into the wilderness to prepare for His ministry and fasted without praying, then He was simply on a radical weight-loss program, perhaps designed to make Him look like an ascetic shaman. If He withstood even just the temptation to create food for Himself without the strength that comes from communing with God, then prayer has no power and He was not God’s Son — only a starving mystic with extraordinary self-control.

I’ve blogged a little about fasting before. I’m no expert on it. There are right ways to do it. There are wrong ways to do it. Books have been written about it. Some are doubtless more valuable than others.

With or without reading them, I think we can draw the conclusion from scripture that God’s people fasted, and almost without exception, accompanied their fasts with prayer. Sometimes they expressed petitions and desires. Often they simply praised Him. Other times they mourned and/or repented. They expressed the depth of their need for and dependence on God by going without physical nourishment. In this way, they told Him that He was more important to them than food; that their god was not their stomachs; that they hungered and thirsted for His righteousness; that they had tasted and seen that the Lord is good; that their communication with Him was sacred and private and not for the benefit of being seen by others and regarded as somehow holy for what they had done without.

But if we think we can follow Jesus, minister as He did, resist temptation, and do the things He did while regarding this practice as optional — I believe we’re fooling ourselves.

Fasting is not simply a quaint and ancient custom or a passé commandment from a set of laws that have all served their purpose.

Fasting is a recognition of God’s providence.

It is the physical, expressing the spiritual.

It is hunger, declaring desire.

It is emptiness, seeking fulfillment.

It is the way Jesus chose to prepare for His life of ministry, and to build the strength of His character, His self-discipline before facing forty days of temptation from Satan’s seemingly undivided attention.

You see, that’s what the other synoptic gospel writer, Mark (1), does not fail to communicate:

At once the Spirit sent him out into the wilderness, and he was in the wilderness forty days, being tempted by Satan. He was with the wild animals, and angels attended him.

Nor was that likely the last time Satan tried:

When the devil had finished all this tempting, he left him until an opportune time. ~ Luke 4:13

If fasting was a source of spiritual strength that could empower Him to journey all the way from the TransJordan to Galilee (see the next verse) … to withstand temptations to satisfy self, seize easy power, trade faith for fact … then why do we ignore, neglect or even reject it?

Following Jesus means fasting and prayer.

Following – 2

/ W. Keith Brenton / 1 Comment

First, you do what’s right.

Then, you speak of the One who makes things right.

Jesus began his life of public ministry by listening to his prophetic cousin John encourage people to repent and submitting Himself to the waters of baptism.

See Matthew 3, Luke 3, and Mark 1.

Why?

It’s not like He needed to repent, because He did not sin (Hebrews 4:15).

I think John the Baptizer gives us one reason: to reveal Jesus to others (John 1:31) — and Jesus gives us another that is equally inarguable: it was the right thing to do (Matthew 3:15).

So among all the other extraordinary qualities communicated in baptism, here are these two reasons as foundational examples. We need to begin our lives of public ministry by revealing Jesus to others, and to do the right things because they’re the right things to do.

I’m not going to get in to a discussion of faith and works. I’m convinced that Paul and James have no argument with each other. We do what we do because we believe. We communicate Whom we believe in by what we do and say.

And you can’t separate doing and saying as powerful tools in communicating the gospel. If what you do doesn’t match what you say — or vice-versa — you have no credibility as a follower of Christ trying to live and speak His life to others.

Don’t forget that not only did John identify Jesus as his Lord; the voice of God Himself and the presence of the dove testify to Who the Christ is, and Whose Son He is, and Whom He pleases by doing the right thing, and Whose Spirit rests upon Him.

If there is a better way to begin a life of ministry to God and to others — bringing them together or even just closer together — then Jesus doesn’t communicate it to us by His words or His example.

Following Him means going with Him into the water, into death to self, into a resurrection to a new life.

Following Him means being immersed in His life.

Following – 1

/ W. Keith Brenton / 3 Comments

I’ve come to a conclusion today. I think I’ve been building toward it for years.

We’ve done ourselves and others and our Lord a disservice by trying to categorize the Christian life.

We’ve split it into categories like good behavior, faith, spiritual discipline, discipleship, evangelism, benevolence, worship, fellowship, and on and on and on.

Convinced that we must master one area, perhaps, before we move on to the next.

Listening in Bible class a couple of weeks ago to what the apostle had to say in 2 Peter 1, I realized that wasn’t what he or his Lord had in mind at all:

For this very reason, make every effort to add to your faith goodness; and to goodness, knowledge; and to knowledge, self-control; and to self-control, perseverance; and to perseverance, godliness; and to godliness, mutual affection; and to mutual affection, love. ~ 2 Peter 1:5-7

You don’t master one before you move on to the next. You keep adding them to each other in an ongoing, lifelong process. How do I know that?

None of us is going to master any of them. I mean, we’ve all read Romans 1, haven’t we?

But we can all grow in each of them:

For if you possess these qualities in increasing measure, they will keep you from being ineffective and unproductive in your knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. ~ 2 Peter 1:8

So we don’t grow into them for ourselves alone, nor even to glorify God alone — but to become effective and productive.

The Christian life is a life that follows Christ, in every way. Being a disciple means following Him in every way He lived His life. He is our perfect example of a life that IS ministry; He emptied Himself and took the form of a servant and became obedient even to death on a cross, serving as our example of self-sacrifice even to that extreme..

His life was one life; not a series of mastering categories and moving on, but of meeting people who sin — where they are in their sin — and helping them master it. He pointed, not to Himself, but to the Father.

So I’ve tagged this first post in a series of indefinite length with several tags that are new to this blog: “evangelism,” “ministry,” and “following Christ.” They’re new because I’ve never really written much about them before. I’ve never really written much about them before because I don’t really know very much about them.

I’m 58 years old. I may not have that many more years and opportunities to learn. Now is the best time there is.

I’m planning to learn as much as I can from studying Jesus’ life and example from the gospels, prophecy, epistles and any other sources where I can find His journey.

You’re welcome to join me on this journey. I would love to have the company, and the chance to benefit from the wisdom of others who have traveled it before (or have never been on this road) and have come (or are coming) to the same conclusion (or even a different one).

Even if it didn’t take you 58 years to get where you are.

Why War Is So Popular These Days

/ W. Keith Brenton / 12 Comments

Oh, did I shock you?

I’m so sorry to have treaded on your delicate sensitivities.

JesusBearsHisMachineGunBut war is popular these days, and I’m going to tell you why I think it is.

We glorify it. We worship it. Because it’s exactly what we think we want.

Since long before 9/11, we’ve made and gobbled up the movies and television shows and books and video games where might makes right and good guys blow bad guys away and heroes are people who have at least one gun in each hand and a missile launcher in their backpack and a couple of ammo belts crossed over their chests.

What a bunch of crap.

But we buy it and we love to buy it because we believe the world is full of evil and it has nicked us once or twice and we want our revenge and we want to believe that the best way to deal with it is to blow it away.

What incredible bullpuckey.

That’s the easy way to deal with evil. You don’t like something; it’s evil: blow it away. You were right and righteous to do so. Good must always triumph over evil, and you must be the agent of good, so if you blew something away, you must be good to do so and it must be evil.

What a heap of fewmets.

When you gulp them down like they were steak, you don’t have a clue or care to guess how many dollars you are pouring into the coffers of the very, very rich people who fund that propaganda in order to make themselves very, very much richer at the cost of sanity, limbs and lives.

When you buy into that philosophy — when you spend those bucks to see that movie or buy that video game or purchase that gun or gullibly swallow everything that website has to say about your God-given American right to own and use a gun at your discretion so you can blow away the bad guys — you’ve bought shit.

The problem is not that I’m willing to call your closely-held sacred beliefs a bunch of excrement; the problem is, there’s hardly anyone left who’s willing to say so and give you the reasons why. American Christianity is almost totally sold out to might-makes-right religion and God-is-on-our-side theology.

And the secular voices that have been willing to try to stem the tide have been almost totally flooded over as well.

There are no popular movies like Bridge on the River Kwai or television series like M*A*S*H or the original Star Trek around to show episodes that show and tell or even just imply how absolutely devastating, barbaric, and unconscionable the acts of war can be. No documentaries are ever made anymore that hint at criticism of anything that our government and armed forces might be doing that’s questionable.

In fact, journalists and photographers are literally not allowed to even show us what it’s like to prosecute a war or to exterminate entire towns and villages of men, women and children or even photograph the flag-draped caskets of the young men and women we sent to wage those battles as our proxies. No, that might jeopardize the ongoing operation — even if the coverage is years old when it is shown.

Plus, I don’t know of any current high school teachers or even fully-tenured college professors who would, career-wise at the very least, long survive teaching works like Johnny Got His Gun or Mark Twain’s The War Prayer.

There’s no thrill to the seemingly endless talks of a peace table, so you won’t find any video games that feature them. Instead, they feature the virtual unreality of getting to blow away someone that you want to hate — even when you don’t have a clue or care who they might be, or might be working for or toward, or protecting. They just have a uniform of a different color. Or skin of a different color. Or a religion of a different color. So they’re the bad guys, and even though you’re in their territory close to their homes and their families, you go there and blow them away. Glorious. Rah-rah for our side. And if you miss and get blown away yourself, hey — you get a re-do!

I don’t have to tell you that the people we send to do our battles for us do not get a re-do. Just because you don’t see their caskets doesn’t mean some don’t come back in them. Or that others don’t come back severely scarred — physically, mentally, emotionally, socially — because of what they’ve seen and sometimes what they’ve had to do.

And practically no one is willing to say a word against it.

No, we’ll just let our returning patriots burn out and fail at life and go quietly mad and continue to cut funding for their care and rehabilitation.

Utter, unChristian, inhuman insanity.

Well, dammitall, I will say a word against it from time to time. War is hell. It maims people. It poisons people. It drives people insane. It kills people. It kills our people. It kills their people. It kills Gods’ people.

“Thou shalt not kill.”

“You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy. But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your Father in heaven.”

“Anyone who hates a brother or sister is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life residing in him.”

So you are free to disagree with me and my interpretations of the above scriptures (plus many, many, many more) and embrace your closely-held sacred beliefs that this is exactly the way Jesus would handle things in defense of God’s chosen people, Americans — with a machine-gun in each hand and missile launcher on his back and two ammo belts across his chest.

You can defend every one of those beliefs with whatever twist of scripture you wish to quote from your favorite pulpit or website, in absolutely clear conscience because that’s what you’ve heard and read and — by God, literally — that’s what you want to believe and Jesus died so you could believe it. In fact, you are free to take your sacredly-acquired gun and ammo and just shoot me dead for disagreeing with you because you are right and therefore have the right to exterminate me. I’m your bad guy. Shoot away. I won’t stop you. I don’t have a gun.

But I will tell you, while I still live and breathe, that the way things are in the world right now was never what God intended or wanted for us.

Folks, if you think you can make it better by supporting the culture of blow-it-away, you’re not just fooling yourself but you’re bequeathing future generations a heritage of bloodshed and death and madness and conscience-less violence.

That future is a sewer.

If you’re not standing against it for the sake of your kids and their kids, you are just going with the flow and adding to it.

What a thrill for you.

Why is war so popular these days?

Because it’s what we think we want.

And we are dead wrong.

A Farewell, and Thanks

/ W. Keith Brenton / 5 Comments

Dear Friends,

1It gives me no pleasure to write this, but I am no longer going to be publishing the e-zine New Wineskins. As both a print magazine and later an online e-zine, New Wineskins has had a colorful history over the last 20+ years, but I can no longer continue to publish it.

I simply don’t have any of the essential ingredients that it takes: time, money, and heart.

I’m working fulltime now in a university office where two recent departures have left the rest of us shouldering more responsibilities, and I’m raising a teenage daughter on my own — as well as preaching once or twice a month at my small and loving church home — and that is taking all the time and energy I can spare.

The money wasn’t a problem until my family’s income shrank by 80%. And while hosting has always been generously provided free, the e-mail connections are not. Fact is, I just can’t afford them anymore.

But the main ingredient was heart, and I have lost mine. Angi was my partner in this ministry for the past ten years, starting with a simple jointly-written article and progressing to helping editor Greg Taylor move the publication from print to online, and eventually publishing it on our own. With her death on May 8, half my life and heart went with her, and it was simply too much to continue doing this.

100For a while, I could continue the conversation to the best of my ability as a loving brother in Christ … even with angry people, hateful people, bitter people, condemning people, people who could only see the communion cup filled with the blood of vengeance and exclusion for those who did not share their every view — rather than with the grace of Christ.

I don’t have the heart for those arguments anymore. And I was tempted to lose my own measure of His grace beyond what I cared to resist. I am much more interested in exploring new and better ways of sharing the Story, the gospel of Jesus Christ, with those who have not heard it, or who seek to more fully grasp it.

But that doesn’t mean I don’t appreciate every person who has ever contributed time, thought, prayer, money, advertising revenue, articles, encouragement, participation on the ZOE board of directors and music ministry which oversaw this ministry for a good long while, offers to assist, technical assistance and free hosting from Alliance Software (which I pray they will continue to provide as the site moves to an archive, at least for a while), leadership and spiritual direction, founding zeal, enthusiasm for resuscitation when energies and resources were running low — all of the vitality that made the New Wineskins conversation worthwhile.

I do, and with a depth of gratitude that mere words can’t express.

I would list the names, from founding Wineskins editors Rubel Shelly and Mike Cope through Greg Taylor and Eric Noah-Wilson to the last person to send me an article proposal just a couple of days ago — but there would be too many. You know who you are, and you know what a difference you have made in opening hearts to the greater grace of our Lord.

If New Wineskins has been as much of a blessing in your life as it has been in mine (and I sincerely doubt that is even possible), then that is all of the gratification that I’ll ever need from having served as her WebServant for all these years.

Thank you for your grace, patience and understanding as I close out that service.

And may the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ and the transcendent peace of His Holy Spirit and the love of our God and Father be with you always.

Keith Brenton, WebServant

New Wineskins e-zine
on Facebook

Movies I Can’t Watch Right Now

/ W. Keith Brenton / 4 Comments

Most of ’em. Most of ’em that I own, it seems like.

Certainly not our favorite, Angi’s and mine: Sense and Sensibility. Not because of any great dramatic loss in its story that triggers the pain. No reason other than the fact that it was our favorite.

Not Goodbye, Mr. Chips. We both kind of liked Brit-lit movies.  I never got to share this one with her. It was still in the wrapper when I made the mistake of trying to watch it weeks after I lost her, and completely came apart when Arthur Chipping (Peter O’Toole) said to his bride of twenty-some years, “Will we always be in love this way?” Because I suddenly remembered, from seeing the movie when I was fourteen years old, the scene that came next: the buzz-bomb’s motor cutting out, the shriek of air as it fell, the sound of her voice singing from the USO tent below.

sleeplessI can’t watch Sleepless in Seattle. Can’t handle Tom Hanks as Sam Baldwin telling the D.J.: “Well, I’m gonna get out of bed every morning… breathe in and out all day long. Then, after a while I won’t have to remind myself to get out of bed every morning and breathe in and out… and, then after a while, I won’t have to think about how I had it great and perfect for a while.”

I’m not ready to be there, Sam. Not now. If ever.

Won’t be watching What Dreams May Come, even if there’s a reunion in the afterlife painted by widower Chris Nielsen (Robin Williams) by his deeply grieving wife Annie (Annabella Sciorra).

No viewings of Love Actually. Don’t want to break down with Liam Neeson’s character Daniel when he remembers his departed Joanna.

Shadowlands is off my viewing list. Not going to put myself through Jack’s (Anthony Hopkins) loss of Joy (Debra Winger), or the unanswerable question her daughter puts to the renowned theologian.

Can’t watch the first five minutes of Up. Not a chance.

Not even the first five minutes of 2009’s Star Trek. No way.

These and a quite a few more are off-limits right now. They may be for quite a while.

It’s hard to imagine a Christmas without Love Actually. But then it’s really hard to imagine a Christmas without Angi.

Seems so easy to tell someone who’s lost half their life to buck up, cheer up, stiff upper lip … when you haven’t experienced a loss that deep yourself; or even haven’t for a long time. It’s easy even when you have. But it’s inconsiderate at the very least.

We all grieve in our own way.

We all mourn at our own pace.

And I think we all deal with it any way we can.

Maybe there will come a time when I can try out one of those banned movies again. Right now, though, just thinking and writing about them is costing me half-a-box of tissues. Still, I write to deal with it, as much as I can deal with it. Maybe I will deal with it better, someday.

In the meantime, I guess I’ll just have to be entertained with brainless comedies and storyless sci-fi and pointless adventures.

Yet even when I do get to the point where I can watch you again, Sam Baldwin, I will still be grateful to be able to think about how I had it great and perfect … for a while.

Does God Really Tell Women to Sit Down and Shut Up in Church?

/ W. Keith Brenton / 91 Comments

A gifted young woman is hired as a minister at a church within the fellowship of churches of Christ, and from some of the reactions to the event, you’d think that the Apocalypse had somehow been triggered.

It’s not like this has never happened before, for one thing, and for another … this fellowship has long promoted a concept called congregational autonomy. Which simply means that one church has no business sticking its nose in the business of another.

With all due respect to the classic interpretation of 1 Corinthians 14 and 1 Timothy 2 – which has been that of virtually all churches for more than a thousand years – I think there are too many other scriptures which refute Paul’s instructions there as normative throughout all time: a woman evangelist of Sychar, Samaria in John’s gospel; the women evangelists of the resurrection at the close of Luke’s; the partnership of Prisca with Aquila in instructing Apollos more perfectly regarding baptism … as well as others I’m sure we’ve all encountered.

The circumstances at Corinth were clear: what women were not to do was interrupt with questions, adding to the chaos that already existed among the gathered saints in their one-upsmanship in place of worship and edification. Can any other picture be drawn from scripture of what was happening there?

Nor can there be any question what was taking place in Ephesus where Timothy served: men were praying yet quarreling in anger; women were dressing to attract attention to themselves rather than to bring God glory. They had not yet learned how to behave as believers and were therefore not qualified to teach. As to Paul’s reminder of the order in creation, would it not be because women were attempting to exert authority over men – rather than share in it – that he tells them they must not? It’s a reminder that man and woman were created to complement and fill each other’s needs and serve side by side; it was a prophecy of God after they had sinned that this equality of purpose would no longer take place. Surely God’s desire to restore His relationship to His children would be to the original state of creation, not after sin and the fall from His grace.

We cannot conflate these two separate circumstances and places as a single scripture, nor interpret them as if they mean something now that they did not mean to those originally addressed.

If women were instructed to prophesy with their heads covered by authority in 1 Corinthians 11, then Paul cannot be forbidding their ministry entirely a scant three chapters later. That simply does not make sense.

I think we have to face the possibility that we – and generations before us – may have been wrong about our interpretation of these scriptures as normative for all time.

And that Jesus wants, desires and calls all people everywhere not only to repent and believe but also to share His gospel in whatever setting they are in, no matter what genders are present, or whether the walls of a church building surround them.

My late wife Angi never preached in a pulpit. But I’d challenge anyone to read her keynote address a year ago February at an Azusa-Pacific University conference and prove to me from scripture that no man could possibly be blessed by hearing that message by virtue of the fact that he was sitting in a church building hearing it live when it was delivered.

Then you can explain to me why God gives such gifts to both men and women, but only wants half of them to use those gifts to His glory if both are present and worshiping together.

Tell me it’s because Eve sinned first, before Adam did. And that’s why God placed a curse on all His children until the end of time.

So therefore women aren’t allowed to preach.

Bullpuckey.

God never cursed Eve nor Adam nor us. He told them the consequences of their actions. He told them it would no longer be like it was in Eden’s paradise. It was no curse to affect all people for all time, but a prophecy that sin had thwarted His wishes for us all, and yet that He would restore those intentions and reconcile His children to Himself.

Paul wouldn’t have expected his readers to stop at half the story of the fall – forgetting entirely the relationship people once had with God in the garden – and neither should we.

That reconciliation and restoration of relationship took place at the cross. We live and must act in that grace, living that reconciliation extended to ALL people. So we are ALL commissioned by the Great Commission. The Spirit is poured out on ALL, both men and women. We are ALL one in Christ Jesus; no male nor female.

Either those things are true ALL the time.

Or they are not true at all.

Quotable, To The Last

/ W. Keith Brenton / 3 Comments

I like talking about Angi and remembering her, especially with others. I know this is awkward for some folks, and I respect that. But it helps to know that she’s remembered.

She could turn a phrase.

Even in her last days.

***

When she began to be really sick and when just getting out of bed and getting dressed was beginning to be a chore for her, we were talking about the commitments (financial and otherwise) that we might no longer be able to keep.

“We do the best we can with what we have,” I said. “That’s become my motto.”

My driven, type-A personality wife responded: “Mine is ‘I am not in control.'”

***

She became pretty much bedfast. As Angi’s appetite and ability to digest dwindled away to nothing, she would sometimes think of something that sounded good to eat, and I’d go get it for her. The refrigerator soon became full of things that she couldn’t eat. And her weight fell.

Once while she was struggling with a single bite of whipped lemon yogurt and failing, I shook my head in exasperated failure. “I feel so inadequate to your needs,” I said.

She smiled up at me sweetly and said, “And I feel so inadequate to yours.”

***

The chemo was progressing. Angi had begun to lose her hair; she had ordered a wig by mail that turned out too blonde and exchanged it (again by mail) for a darker one. The blood chemistry cancer markers had looked so good. But just days later, the CT scan told a different, damning story. When her medical oncologist recommended discontinuing chemo — that it was doing more harm than good to her comfort — and begin hospice care, she thought only a few moments and agreed.

We went home and stared at each other. Finally, I asked her: “What’s going through your mind?”

She hesitated a second and said, “I’m mad that I paid $325 for this wig and only got to wear it three times.”

***

In her last week, we opened our home to anyone who wanted to visit. Frequent visitors were our friend David and his wife Susan, the chancellor at WCU where Angi served as provost. As the cancer moved into her brain and the effects of starvation were becoming apparent, it was difficult for her to express herself with words. Sometimes they had different meanings to her than they did to the rest of us. Sometimes things came out that didn’t make sense at all. One of the last things she told David was, “I’m sorry I messed up graduation.”

He of course assured her that she hadn’t, and I assumed it was one of those things she said that just didn’t make sense. He told me otherwise: “Oh, no. We had talked about her taking a bigger role at graduation in a few days. She was just telling me she’s sorry she wasn’t going to get to be a part of it.”

***

The phrase that remained with her until speech was no longer possible was “I love you.” She said it to everyone who visited: family, friends from church, colleagues, neighbors, our doctor, hospice nurses.

It wasn’t that we all didn’t already know it.

She just wanted to make sure.

One Month

/ W. Keith Brenton / 6 Comments

Wednesday I posted on Facebook:

If I were to blame/be angry at God over the death of my beloved wife, then I must also blame/be angry with Him over the death of His Son.

If I were to credit God with the resurrection of His beloved Son, then I must also credit Him with the resurrection of my dear wife.

Did God bring sin and death into this world or love and life? Which was His desire for us, His children?

Would the two pairings have meaning at all if not opposed to each other? Or if the other did not exist?

Eden was never intended to remain paradise, then; nor was it a mere crucible or test tube. Eden was meant to be the first battlefield.

And so what was within God’s will — sin and death — was not itself God’s will — love and life — but necessary for His will to have meaning to us; to enable us to choose love and life over sin and death.

To choose His will for us and not what gratifies self and kills the soul.

I can’t put this in simpler words. This is the only rational response I can pose to the great gaping WHY that challenges us all.

God is not to blame.

It is simply the way things MUST be, for anything to have meaning or purpose or significance.

It is not bigger than God.

It is the way He chose to make it fair for us to choose.

And we must choose.

Now it’s Saturday, and the day is done.

I — we, my family, all those who love her — lost Angi one month ago today.

What will we choose?

What will I choose?

Will I choose to continue believing, go on trusting?

A friend who has experienced the loss of his wife as well as a dear child (in a way that I feel certain would have broken me) commented on this blog recently that after such an experience, it was possible for him to keep his faith for a while. He said that for him, it was about two months.

I keep putting on the brave face. I keep writing to encourage myself, and sometimes it seems to encourage others. I keep busy, putting off having to deal with the loss fully. There are so many other things that require my attention. I have plenty of excuses to procrastinate.

But the cracks in the courage still show up. I can weep. I can patch them up. I can cover them over with a smile and brave words.

Still I know the measure of joy I knew is gone. It  will always be gone, as long as I live and breathe.

And I find there are things that I still can’t do.

I can’t seem to find time, make time, put myself to the time to continue posting submissions at New Wineskins. I have commitments to people. I have proposed to myself extending the current edition about “Lament” to a second month, into which we have gone an entire week and a day now. I just can’t seem to do what needs to be done.

Yes, I believe the e-zine still blesses people. The blessings I receive by e-mail and Facebook message from folks who’ve been blessed by it still outnumber the railings and the condemnings by quite a good margin.

Yes, I believe Angi would want me to continue working at it, keeping it up to date and fresh.

Yes, I still want to do it.

I just can’t seem to now. Not yet. It hurts to try. It hurts to think about it.

One month.

And I wonder — though my friend’s comment was in no way a challenge, dare, or warning; simply a personal observation — how long will my faith persist before the cracks start to show?

Two months? Three? A year?

I don’t know.

It would be so much more than a shame, a pity or even a tragedy to be fighting and running for the prize in an arena of witnesses, then let the accuser cut in … give up the fight and quit the race; not finish the course.

Not keep the faith.

Running in vain.

How long can I keep faith flying on wings like eagles before my pace slows to a run that grows weary and then a walk that ends in a faint?

If I were truly alone, it would not take long at all.

But I’m not.

There may be people who can go it alone, and walk and run and fly solo on a wing and a prayer and a book of scriptural verses.

I’m not one of them.

Like the author of St. Patrick’s Breastplate, I need Christ before me in the pages of the Word, yes.

I need Christ behind me in the witness of His saints, yes.

I need Christ above me, bearing my prayers to His Father, absolutely.

But also …

I need Christ within me through His Holy Spirit.

I need Christ about me in the surround of His church.

Christ beneath me,
Christ above me,
Christ on my right,
Christ on my left,
Christ when I lie down,
Christ when I sit down,
Christ when I arise,
Christ in the heart of every man who thinks of me,
Christ in the mouth of everyone who speaks of me,
Christ in every eye that sees me,
Christ in every ear that hears me.

If you don’t need that, I suppose that’s fine for you. But I know what I need. What I’ve always needed. What I need now more than ever before. What I always will need, in increasing measure and greater grace and wider fellowship and deeper love and endless trust.

Until the day I breathe my last.

And it’s only been a month.

Borrowing Wisdom

/ W. Keith Brenton / 4 Comments

Angela BrentonThrough the past few weeks of ongoing grief at losing Angi one capability at a time, I’ve been blessed by words of wisdom from many people, when I could not muster any wisdom of my own.

First, from Craig Smith, a colleague and former supervisor, who may not even remember the exchange. When his father passed away many years ago and I was dumbstruck for words to comfort, I stupidly said to him: “I can’t even imagine losing my dad. How do you deal with it?” He shrugged matter-of-factly: “You just do.” Those may not seem like profound words, but through his delivery of them and the kind of person he is, they were. They helped me through the loss of my dad a few years later, and they have continued to help me. I decided even before losing Angi that you can deal with adversities well, or you can deal with things poorly — and it’s usually easier for your family and those you love if you deal with them well.

Second, from Mike Cope, a former minister at our church home in Abilene, who wrote “Megan’s Secrets” about the challenges faced by his indomitable young daughter and losing her at a tender age. Among those words were the advice to accept with grace the words and actions that others offer intending to comfort and encourage you when you are grieving … but only sting and hurt instead. You take them in with the spirit in which they are given, not necessarily the content of them. That is true grace. I’ve come to think of his advice as a corollary to the Golden Rule: “Receive from others as you would have them receive from you.”

Third, from Amy Ray, Angi’s chemo nurse who (in a very brief span of time) became a dear friend. As Angi lost more of her faculties, she could no longer speak but could still understand what was spoken to her; even smile when her cousin Roger said funny things to her. It was at this time, when Angi had been off chemo and in hospice care at home for almost a week, that Amy called me to ask about her. “Keith,” she said when I told her, “Have you given her permission to die?” I immediately (and thoughtlessly) answered, “Yes, of course!” but as we talked, I began to understand that Amy meant that I needed to tell Angi that. So as Carol, Roger’s wife, sat holding her hand, I went in to Angi’s little bedroom-made-hospital-chamber and told her.

“Sweetheart, this is going to be really hard for me to say. But these last few weeks while you’ve slept at night, you’ve been talking in your sleep, and the only word you’ve said has been ‘Huh-uh.’ I’ve wondered if you’ve been telling the Lord you’re not ready to go yet. I just want you to know that if He comes for you again, you don’t have to say ‘huh-uh’ anymore. You go with Him. You leave this suffering behind.

“You’ve made everything so easy for us. We’ve sold this house; it closes tomorrow! We’ve bought another one that will be perfect for us. You’ve done everything anyone could do to bless our lives more than anyone could have asked. I’ve talked to Matt and he understands how much you’re hurting, and that you may not be with us by the time he can get here, and he’s alright with that.”

About that time, Carol motioned our daughter Laura in and she sat on the bedside by her mom. “And this one is stronger than she has ever been! You’ve raised her strong and smart, and she can handle anything. So we all want you to know that if the Lord comes for you, and you have anything to say about it, you go home with Him. We’ll be alright. We will miss you like everything. But we’ll be alright.”

Angi had a restless night, beset by pain, and about 4:30 I gave her a couple of soda straw-fulls of water — all she could still swallow — and that seemed to calm her so she could sleep.

Sometime between then and 7:00 when I awakened next to her in the recliner, she went home.

There are words of wisdom that change your life. Some of them are in poetry, some hidden like treasure in scripture, and some come from the lips of those who love you.

But the words of wisdom that I borrow most often came from my friends (you know who you are) who learned that their second child, still in the womb, would only survive at best a few minutes into this world. That is exactly what came to pass. The minister of their small home church conveyed their words to him, at their request, during the memorial service for their little son:

“We don’t know why God took our sweet baby home so soon. We don’t know why these things have to happen. But we also don’t know why He has blessed us with each other, with a wonderful marriage, with a beautiful little daughter, and with a loving family and friends.”

As I mourn Angi, these words of wisdom put life in perspective for me.

And I will always be grateful to God for the people who were willing to let Him speak through them to me.