078 - Chapter 78

(Illustration of an oyster and pearl by Harry Lisgo)

In 2012 there seemed to be such a lot deaths of people we’d known who’d been part of our lives, friends who had been such real treasures, rare pearls!

Bob and I had reached an age where suddenly it wasn’t ‘elderly’ people we knew dying any more, but friends we knew well, of our own generation, or in one or two cases, one generation above! WE were now ‘the elderly’, with me at 63 and Bob at 66! It comes upon you all of a sudden, and you realise you’re no longer young, fit, or all that mobile!

You may remember me mentioning Jean Carlisle, a lady whose acute breathing difficulties disappeared, when we prayed together one day, some years before? She was now in her nineties and had sadly died; but when she was in hospital the amazing thing was that she had reached out to other patients, and was praying for their well-being and for healing too with the ‘laying on of hands’. She had great faith. In fact, I remember her telling me when I visited her just before she died, that a group of nurses and one or two doctors would ‘line up’ in order to ask her to pray for them too! Jean was an amazing lady.

Another close friend of ours had been fighting terminal cancer since the previous autumn. Joan Sproats was such a beautiful friend, inside and outside; she was such a faithful and solid Christian, as was her husband, Eric. He still is. So many of us, along with her family and friends were praying for her, but sadly Joan lost the battle. It was over so quickly. But it’s at times like this you ask why? Why was such a good person taken when she still had so much living to do? She was our age. 

They say death is the final healing, and Joan trusted in God until the end of her life, she was well aware that her ultimate destiny was with Him, and now she was at peace in His presence.

Isn’t it strange though, when we’re young we think we will live forever, and death will be a long time coming; but we never know, do we, when our time is up?

This reminds me of a conversation that I read in a book one day, of a preacher saying to a young man,

“What do you hope to do when you leave school?”

“Hopefully I’ll get a job!” he replied.

“What then?” asked the preacher.

“I’ll get married and have children?” was his answer.

“What then?” asked the preacher.

“I’ll make lots of money and retire, then put my feet up,” he said.

What then? asked the preacher.

“I’ll enjoy my retirement and take up a hobby!”

What then? said the preacher.

I suppose I’ll end up in a retirement home, and others will care for me, and I will die. . 

What then? said the preacher.

Do we ever consider that question, ‘What then?’

One of my mother’s closest friends, who had known such a lot grief in her life, was further burdened, when her youngest daughter died also in 2012. And yet another close friend of ours died that year, the one I’d written the Wall Song for years before.

This was also the year that Christine James died, a former member of United Folk; she was someone with the biggest heart for the world, for social change, peace and justice. We often used to harmonise together, she was such a colourful character, and now she was gone too.

So much grief was around us, wherever we looked!

But the saddest death of all that year was of a young woman, the daughter of another friend of mine, whose death was drug related.

Whoever peddles drugs has blood on their hands, from production to distribution, even if the pusher has convinced themselves they play a very small and insignificant part! And they don’t just destroy one life, they affect the peace and stability of the entire family unit of their victim. Drugs lead users to slippery slopes that many think they can outmanoeuvre and control, but few survive intact, both physically and mentally.

The Bible has this to say to anyone who puts a stumbling block in the way of his little ones:

"If anyone causes one of these little ones--those who believe in me--to stumble, it would be better for them to have a large millstone hung around their neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea. (Matthew 18.6)

And not one of us will escapes pain or suffering just because we’re good or brave or faithful. The Bible tells us that God makes his sun rise on the bad and the good and causes rain to fall on the just and the unjust. (Matthew 5.45)

But to quote Mr Miyagi from the film the Karate Kid :-

‘When life knocks us down, we have a choice, whether or not to get back up again!”

The Bible tells us that choices we make about faith affect our eternal destiny too, as well as the way we live in our present circumstances.

Someone once said, ‘Faith does not exempt us from the storms of life, but it equips us to go through them. When we’re in the will of God, no storm however severe can take us under.”

The following year brought more sadness. I was invited to conduct a funeral for a child as young as eleven; another for a young man who had committed suicide, and also the funeral of one of our closest and dearest friends, Frank Harvey. 

Frank and his wife had enabled us to have holidays when our children were very young, by lending us their car for a week!

This has been a sad chapter, hasn’t it?

The death of friends became more common from then on; it affects us all does it not?

So let’s just pause here for a while to remember friends and family who have passed on, those who’ve been such an inspiration to us, and whose lives have, without a doubt, lit up our own with the love they’ve given us and shared with others. Let us thank God for them.

Let me tell you about two nasty episodes, which happened the following year. I tell them to emphasise, that we never know what is round the corner, in terms of destiny.

In 2003 I presided at the funeral of my uncle who gave me away at my wedding, in my dad’s place, my Uncle Bob. I had been invited by the family, to anoint him and pray with him, the night before he died. What a privilege that was, for he was the one who had been asked to say the Lord’s Prayer by my dad as he lay dying in 1969.

Towards the end of my uncle’s funeral service, in St Mary’s Church, Howdon. I found I could barely breathe, my throat seemed to be closing up as we began to sing the final hymn. I looked around and saw a vase full of huge pink lilies on a stand behind me; it must have been their pollen which had an adverse effect on me with all the preaching and singing I’d been doing. As I tried to draw breaths in, I felt as if I was trying to suck air in through a narrow straw! I grew hot and felt faint, and so while the congregation sang the final hymn, I sat down gently and did my best to stay calm. Of course, I still had to stand and give a blessing at the end of the hymn, and also lead the funeral procession down the aisle and out of church!

I prayed desperately, “Lord just get me down the aisle!”

How I managed that was truly a miracle, and on seeing Joan, my sister and also a priest, at the back of the church, I held out my books to her and whispered , “Take over!”

I went round the back of the church, where no-one could see me, and I lay down on the grass, trying to breathe, thinking my days had come to an end!

Joan conducted the rest of the service down at the crematorium. In the meantime, she must have notified Bob and Peter, who rushed outside to check on me; and once I recovered Bob took me down to the hospital for a check-up.

I was given an inhaler for use in the future, and was glad to be alive.

I wasn’t alone in the second incident which came about also in 2013. Daniel, my grandson and I would sometimes find slugs in the garden or on the path, and since I didn’t necessarily want my plants damaged by them, we used to scoop each one up with a small shovel and take it out into the back lane outside, and deposit it in amongst the weeds. Each section of weeds we named after a different country. So Daniel and I would ’fly these slugs off’ to Germany, France, Belgium, even as far away as the USA! However, one day, while on our way back towards our garden gate, from one slug’s departure to Norway, I didn’t see a large swarm of wasps on the ground, in the centre of the lane. I didn’t know at the time that a neighbour had just had them smoked out from the eaves of her house by a pest controller, and this is where they had regrouped after their eviction! Perhaps they had been encircling and protecting their queen. They were right ahead of us covering ground, the size of a dustbin lid, and had Daniel not pointed them out to me saying, “Look grandma, what's that?” we would have walked right into the centre of them! I still go cold thinking about it. Daniel saved the day, and he was only two years old at the time!

On a much happier note, my ‘Kaleidoscope of Characters’ project, (40 songs from the Old Testament for children), was finished at last, and I began writing the first song of a brand-new project for children, in which I would set to music or drama, almost every parable Jesus told, 48 of them, again with artwork, lyrics, videos and scores. That first song happened to be ‘The Parable of the Pearl’, based upon Matthew 13.45-46, (see link below) my favourite one out of them all, hence my title for the entire project, ‘Pearls of Great Price’. This parable is all about discovering faith in God, the greatest treasure we could ever find in life. Some never go searching for it, but the Bible urges us:-

“Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; the one who seeks finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened.

“Which of you, if your son asks for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a snake? If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him! (Matthew 7.7-11)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GvQoTXIBVFY...