C-19 Reflection #23: Mourning With Saints and Heroes

C-19 Reflection (#23)

Theme: Mourning With Saints and Heroes

Scripture Readings:

Matthew 5:4 – “Blessed are those who mourn for they will be comforted”

Romans 12:15 – “Rejoice with those who rejoice; mourn with those who mourn.”

Reflection:

Saints are people whose commitments and passions move us closer to God than we could get without them in our lives. They are not perfect people, but they are indispensable people.  Saints are one of the essential services for the life of faith. My sister, Elizabeth is a saint. If she is nobody else’s saint, she is my saint.

Beth is five years older than me, and my only sibling. During a key period in our growing up years, it felt like she walked away from faith and family. This was hard for everyone, but especially hard for my mom. I never really understood my sister’s choices or her relationships during those late teenage, early young adult years, but I prayed and prayed that God would bring her back “home.”

When those prayers were finally answered many years later, she came back hard and true, on her knees with her hands open, bringing with her a heart for God and heart of gold. She has never wavered in pursuit of God’s love and God’s purposes, even though her journey has been filled with significant personal and relational pain, loss and sorrow. She has shed her fair share of tears, over a broken marriage, struggling children and lost dreams.

It was only when I became a youth pastor working closely with struggling high school students myself did it begin to dawn on me how much my sister would have been affected by losing her father at the age of fifteen. It was devastating for all of us, my mom, our grandparents and aunts and uncles, my cousins and me, but that kind of loss for a fifteen year old daughter goes deeper and longer than most people realize.

Not long after my sister gave birth to her first child, who she named for our father, she was baptized in the little church my parents had planted years before, and the rest is salvation history. Part of this is her patient leadership with her boys and their families. She is a happy grandmother.

These days my sister is my mom’s best friend, only roommate and full time personal care companion. She lives a quiet life of daily sacrifice and service and she has become a woman of patience, grace and prayer, like my Gramma, and like my mom, yet in her own unique and beautiful way. Even though I have been the one who has the official history of making good choices in line with our family’s heritage, at the centre of that heritage is faith in a merciful God, who is forever turning people around. It is Beth who is her father’s daughter and our family’s dream come true.

Every so often I text my sister and tell her that she is my hero. I don’t think she really knows how to quite receive that from me, because she has always been proud and respectful of what she sees as my high calling. She is not an overly educated person or a trained professional or anything like that, but she is the hands and feet of my love for our mom lived out in ways that are well beyond my training and ability. That’s all I need in order to be taught and mentored in the faith by her. That’s all I need to name someone as a saint and a hero.

Most of you don’t know my sister but I get to be influenced by her startlingly passionate way. Time and time again she gets my attention and shapes my focus so simply and unpretentiously. Saints do this regularly by the way they are. They sneak up on you in unspectacular ways, with offerings from hearts educated by the mercy of God that you didn’t see coming but realize you needed.  

I hope that the text she sent me yesterday helps you to see her passion for Christ and compassion for people playing out in her everyday.

“It was lovely. We finally got to Skype with Christine, Brad, Lilly and Christopher.  Karl brought some cream for coffee and some homemade masks so got to see him from a distance. Sad day for Nova Scotia today however. Sad day everyday for the world. Keep holding on to the promises of God and in prayer a lot during the day. How about you guys?”

May the God of mercy bless you all with the gifts of the saints during this season!