...Thy Kingdom Come...

Yesterday, I drove down to Menomonie to attend the visitation of a girl I used to know. Jill and I were classmates, went to the same church and youth group and graduated together in the Spring of 1980 from Madison LaFollette High School. We weren’t what you would call close friends. We ran in different circles. But the summer between our sophomore and junior year of high school she and I and about 20 others from our youth group went by train on what to me remains the ultimate retreat of all time: a week’s stay at Holden Village high up in the Cascade Mountains of Washington. (She's the one in the middle somewhere atop a mountain side with friends Bonnie & Laura). Those of us who went formed a unique bond and for the remaining years of high school though Jill and I hung out with different people, whenever we saw each other in the hall or at church we would hug each other like old friends being reunited again after a long interval.

After high school, she attended UW-Whitewater while I attended UW-Madison. I have a vague memory of seeing her at Christmastime in the narthex of Lake Edge Lutheran and like always she embraced me like a long lost family member. That might have been the last time I saw her – December 1980 or ’81. She never made it to any of our high school reunions and in the intervening years I largely kept track of her through our mothers who were good friends and part of the same Circle. Pep – her mom – was something of a spiritual mother to me. After I had received Jesus and been filled with the Holy Spirit, I began to drift away from Lake Edge and worship at another fellowship in Madison. While my folks and others who knew me were troubled by this radical change, Pep cheered me on for she, too, was filled with the Spirit and understood the hunger for worship and the Word. In later years, when I would attend Lake Edge with my family for special occasions, she would draw me aside and look me in the eye to discern how her young disciple was doing.

Sometime in the last ten years, Jill contracted cancer in her sinuses but through the auspices of Mayo Clinic in Rochester, she beat it back and made a full recovery. In fact, PBS’ Frontline featured her story in a piece they did on treating cancer. Two years ago, the cancer returned and this time held on to her (apparently) with a vengeance. She died last week but not before writing her own obituary. She leaves a husband and two adult children, her mom and oodles of friends to mourn her. Jill and her family moved to Menomonie a few years ago. I had every intention of connecting with her – even called their home once and left a message on their answering machine. But she didn’t call me back and somehow I never got around for a second attempt. When my mom called the other day to inform me that her condition was dire, I thought I should drive down and pray with her. But apparently, I would have been too late as unbeknownst to her, she had already passed away. In fact, as my mom was calling me to pray, Pep was rallying people to pray that the Lord would take her daughter such was the suffering she was experiencing.

As I sat in the sanctuary with Pep, my arms around her as we watched the slide show the funeral home people had put together on the big screen, she spoke of her daughter’s journey (“she lost her faith when the cancer came back but right before the end found it again”), her marriage to her husband, Jim (“they had the most excellent marriage ever”) and her daughter’s legacy (“she loved life”). She then turned her head to me and said, “I’ve lost two of them now and it’s not fair.” This referring to her son, Teddy, who died as a young boy. He and “Jilly” (as Pep oft referred to her) were out in a field near their home in Madison collecting purple flowers (“they were weeds, really”) for their mom. He had been chasing their little puppy around and had gotten tired. He handed the pup to Jill and told her he was going to take the flowers home to their mom and as he was crossing the street a car struck and killed him instantly. Teddy was seven years old when he died. Jill was 47. One was taken in a moment. One was slowly strangled by cancer. But both are most certainly gone before their time.

As I watched the slideshow I was struck by Jill’s smile. In almost every picture she exhibited her trademark big toothy smile well known to so many of us back in high school days. This was a woman who had loved life indeed. Too soon was she taken from the ones she loved and who loved her. Too soon that smile won’t shine again this side of heaven.

Driving home in the rain, my hatred of cancer was rekindled. As the years pass and I attend or preside at the funerals of the growing number of friends and family members snuffed out by this ogre – Bob (my roommate from college), Grandpa and Grandma Martin, Aunts Dorothy, Ella and Nancy, Denise (a 21-year-old young woman from Refuge) – it doesn’t make me wish for breakthroughs in cancer research or provoke me to do fundraising for the same. No, a longing steadily grows within me for the coming of the Kingdom in its fullness. In The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe, the prophecy that sustains all faithful subjects of the King while enduring the troubles of a land that is “always winter and never Christmas” is

                    Wrong will be right, when Aslan comes in sight,

                    At the sound of his roar, sorrows will be no more,

                    When he bares his teeth, winter meets its death,

                    And when he shakes his mane, we shall have spring again.

Driving home last night, I found myself longing for Aslan’s return for on that day He will put an end to wars and rumors of wars and bear his teeth at murder and mayhem, sickness and suffering, calamity and cancer. “Then the end will come,” wrote Paul, “when Christ will hand over the kingdom to God the Father after he has destroyed all dominion, authority and power. For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. The last enemy to be destroyed is death” (1 Cor 15:25-26, NIV).” I can’t wait until he stomps for good on all those things that plague us as we wait for the Thaw foretold. On that day, there will be a great hue and cry that will arise more louder than those bothersome vuvuzela horns that have been plaguing the World Cup series of late. For then the saying will come true, “Death has been swallowed up in victory” (1 Cor 15:54, NIV). Even so, Maranatha! Come, Lord Jesus!

“So we're not giving up. How could we! Even though on the outside it often looks like things are falling apart on us, on the inside, where God is making new life, not a day goes by without his unfolding grace. These hard times are small potatoes compared to the coming good times, the lavish celebration prepared for us. There's far more here than meets the eye. The things we see now are here today, gone tomorrow. But the things we can't see now will last forever” Paul, Apostle and Martyr for Jesus Christ, 1st Century (2 Cor 4:16-18, Msg).

P.S. Here's the link to Jill's obituary which she wrote herself: http://rhielfuneralhome.com/obituaries.php?id=340