Dear trekker,

This month marks the beginning of our 17th year of writing this monthly newsletter. Our purpose and intentions remain the same… “Oh Lord, don’t let me die until I pass on the power of God to the next generation; your might to all who are to come” (Psalm 71:18).

So long as I am able to write, I plan to do so. As I write on the day of the passing of radio’s greatest and most influential voice in history, I am reminded anew of my own mortality. If we live, trekker, we die, since the odds of going to heaven in a chariot are not very good.

God has a unique way (no doubt for each of us) of reminding one we were not made for this world, to dwell here forever. So this newsletter is to bring my/our pilgrimage up to date in the light of Scripture. Some personal musings seem to be in order within the context of “eternal life“ or forever life as I like to call it…all in the context of the life of Christ, as in John 14:6.

A passage on my heart as I write is John 21, the wrap-up chapter of John’s gospel. John’s gospel has rightly been called “the gospel of belief.“ It is not synoptic as in Matthew, Mark and Luke. John’s gospel is summarized in the last verse of his writing: “Jesus did many other things as well. If every one of them were written down, I suppose that even the whole world would not have room for the books that would be written.” So true, because…“God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life.” Every moment of Christ’s life on earth was to carry out this promise… His birth, life, teaching, death, resurrection and ascension back to the Father in heaven for all eternity. And because He lives, we too shall live!

John 21 deals with what I like to call “the original prayer breakfast.” This record in John 21 does a lot of things, but they all converge on the challenge to 1) love Jesus, and 2) love His sheep. If we love Jesus, we are to care for His sheep (the rest of us)! This was a charge to Peter. Note Peter‘s response to this charge! Verse 21 states Peter’s question, “What about him,” referring to John’s future even as Jesus had pointed out Peter‘s future…“Someone else will dress you and lead you where you do not want to go.” Verse 19: “Jesus said this to indicate the kind of death by which Peter would glorify God.”

I believe we all must come to grips with our passage from earthly life to forever life. It is one passage…the tunnel of death. Long or short, we do not know until we are in the tunnel… and then our knowledge is questionable at best. I have likened my present to being on the glide path to eternity. Indeed, as a passenger in a small plane knows so well, a landing can be topsy-turvy, wings tipping precariously, until safely on the ground.

As I have said before in this MEN newsletter, I have asked the Lord for many years to take friend wife first as I don’t want her to be alone. I didn’t have a clue what my role might be. As it turns out, my life-long partner had a diagnosis of leukemia five years ago; she has fallen badly multiple times in recent years; following each fall, she recovers even more slowly. Approximately three months ago, we almost lost her! Now she has been diagnosed with congestive heart failure. A questionable diagnosis and determination at best! What does it entail? I am indeed her primary caregiver.  I signed up for this almost 65 years ago. Times change…our commitments must not. It only requires follow-through, whatever the cost!

So, 2020 was an ever increasing, unusual year for us. For me too, as my medical team here in Colorado Springs told me a few months ago I have Parkinson’s disease, even though the onset was arriving very late in my life. Parkinson’s affects motor skills, not cognitive skills. Every step I take I am consciously seeking not to fall. I could go on and on. COVID 19 was not our major concern in 2020.

What’s the point? Life is a journey, and the last chapter will always be written, and we become aware “of it” (usually) after the fact. But if we say, “Why me?” or “What about him or her?” we totally miss the point, as Peter did asking, “What about him (John).” I pulled our children together recently, the youngest is 55, and described to them this “new” stage of life called “old age.” All of a sudden one arrives in the “old age forest” grasping for familiar, easy things which one has long taken for granted, to see, hear, or feel, in many cases. Or as I am prone to say, “one does not necessarily die graciously, suddenly or quickly.”

So, the challenge in the old age forest, (and trekker, if you are over 50 years of age you might want to be alerted to the final chapters) is how do we deal with it. One verse that the Spirit brings to my mind daily is Psalm 118:24! In fact, this verse is a gem in the context of all of David’s psalms, a psalm of praise to the saving and staying power of the Lord.

Knowing that “this is the day the Lord has made, and I am to rejoice and be glad in it,” each of us has our “marching orders:”

Some are to be special witnesses (John) and others, shepherds (Peter). We are all divine originals, but, by His grace, called to Himself to live out our three score and ten (or more in my case). I’ll be 87 in a few months.

As we pass through life, trekker, do we really receive Christ daily? All of him? Yes, we are forgiven at the cross! But have we really appropriated (been filled with) His Spirit and all of His fullness? What we can know of Christ surely is enough for eternity, but we are only scratching the surface of our understanding of Him, are we not?

William Barclay agrees with John: “Human authors are powerless to describe Christ and human books are inadequate to hold him.” Trekker, life is all about Jesus and our response to Him. Do we receive Him? Cling to Him, come what may? Are all our relationships grounded in Him? Let’s make it so and keep on keeping on till He takes us home to be with Himself forever! 

Dear Jesus, it’s all about you! 

Your child, 

Jim Meredith