Days to Remember: 2. A Year Ago Today

"Grandpa is no longer with us."

With those words my daughter passed on the news that made this, for me, a memorial day. Who would have thought, when I was growing up, that I would hear the announcement of my Dad's death on a telephone speaker in my car?  Life moves on, and yet it doesn't.  That announcement boils down to the same bereavement whether it is reported on a car telephone or, as in former years, sent by telegraph or by a horse-riding messenger.

"Grandpa is no longer with us"

It also represents a brilliant commonality in the story of humankind.  It is hard not to be scathingly critical of militant atheists as they reduce death to evolution, to be sadly sympathetic toward religionists who have no true grounds for hope and to be brightly hopeful in the comfort that the Christian message brings by which death is a defeated enemy.  Yet for all of us alike death means someone is no longer with us.  If my Dad and I had been militant atheists our conversations in the past year would similarly have been nil.

"Grandpa is no longer with us"

The great privilege of the Christian, however, is that when people are taken from us we have those who mourn with us.  This is something more spiritual and profound than social sympathy and it is birthed in the nature of God and the influence of the Holy Spirit.  No Christian who is part of a Church faces death alone.  It is the joy of Church that there are always people who remain with us.

"Grandpa is no longer with us"

It stands out as an exact contrast to the end of the Gospel.  Never, ever, will that simple phrase be true of the Lord Jesus who ended up saying, "and Lo I am with you always, even to the end of the age"   My Dad was great.  My Saviour is greater still and by far.

My Dad's Last Sermon Part 6: I will uphold thee

Even that isn’t all!  He goes on to say, “I will uphold thee with the right hand of my righteousness”.  We come to that place where we are not as steady as we once were.  We have to resort to walking sticks, walking aids, all sorts of things to make sure we don’t fall – something to hold us up.

We need that physically but, you see, spiritually we will not fall if our trust is in our God. He is able to keep us from falling.  “I will uphold thee,” he says, “with the right hand of my righteousness”.  We remember that Old Testament story about Moses.  Strong as he was he found he needed to be upheld.  When the Amalekites attacked the Children of Israel (we read the account in Exodus chapter 17) we read how Moses lifted up his hands.  When he lifted up his hands Israel prevailed.  When he dropped his hands then the Amalekites prevailed. So something had to be done.  We read in verse 12 that they took a stone and sat Moses on a stone.  Then Aaron and Hur came and held up his hands to ensure that the Amalekites were defeated and Israel triumphed.

But there’s someone greater than Aaron and Hur in this verse.  It’s the almighty God with his all-powerful hand and he says, “I will uphold thee”.  What a blessed thing it is, as we step out into 2013, that the almighty God, the creator of the ends of the earth, he says to us, “There’s no need to be fearful.  If you think you’re going to stumble, if you feel perhaps the pressure spiritually, you know that I won’t forsake you.  I will be with you and I will uphold you with the right hand of my righteousness.”

William Williams, that well-known Welsh hymn writer, in our closing hymn that we are about to sing, wrote,

I am weak but Thou art mighty;

Hold me with Thy powerful hand.

I know if we can make that our prayer as we enter 2013 then we shan’t go far wrong.  We shall know that, by God’s grace, we shall be upheld.  So may the Lord hold us with his all-powerful hand.

My Dad's Last Sermon: Part 5: I will help thee

So then, we rejoice in the fact that though we endure weakness like anyone else, yet we have an inner source of strength that the world knows nothing about when our trust is in our God, in our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.

But that’s not the end of it all, is it?  The power that God promises here is not just to strengthen.  He goes on to say, “Yea, I will help thee; Yea, I will uphold thee with the right hand of my righteousness.”

The commentator Alex Motyer, as he expounds this verse, writes, 'The Lord promises a mounting tide of assistance.'  Not only does God say, “I will strengthen thee”,  he says, “Yea I will help thee, yea I will uphold thee with the right hand of my righteousness.”

“I will help thee”.  There’s a contrast here between the people of God and the heathen people in the nations of the world.  If we look back to those earlier verses when we saw that the isles saw it and feared (verse 5) we go on to read, ‘They helped each one his neighbour and every one his brother saying, “Be of good courage”. So the carpenter encouraged the goldsmith and he that smootheth with the hammer him that smote the anvil, saying, It is ready for the sodering: and he fastened it with nails, that it should not be moved.”  Now this is almost a kind of sarcastic move on the part of the prophet.  You see these heathen nations, when they saw the enemy armies advancing they were panicking and saying, “What shall we do?”  “Oh,” they said, “we’d better make some more gods, better make some more idols and they will protect us.”  And so they were busy helping one another to make more idols and thinking that somehow or another that would put off the enemy.  What folly that was!

The Lord is saying to his people, “You need not join these other nations in panicking and trying to make gods to protect you.  You have a God you will already help you: I will help thee”.  How thankful we are for our helpers where we live but we have an almighty helper, an almighty carer, one who cares for us in all our distresses.

Those of you who are familiar with The Pilgrim’s Progress will remember that very early on in his journey Christian, after he left the City of Destruction and was bound for the Heavenly City he fell into the Slough of Despond.  He’d suddenly become very despondent and very depressed.  We read a very beautiful thing about that when Christian appeared to be sinking in that Slough of Despond.  Someone called Help came along and pulled him out.

“I will help thee”, says the Lord.

He knows all about our proneness to be despondent, to be depressed.  When such feelings come, he is there at hand.  He is ready to come alongside us.  He’s ready to say, “I will help thee” So we need not fear that when we are physically strong enough we get despondent in our minds.  Our God is there.  He not only says, “I will strengthen thee”.  He says, “I will help thee”.

My Dad's Last Sermon: Part 4: I will strengthen thee

But we thank God that his presence is not a passive presence.  It’s an active presence.  And in addition to promising his presence he now promises his power.  He says, “Fear thou not for I am with thee.  Be not dismayed for I am thy God.  I will strengthen thee”.  He promises them power, power to strengthen them.

Now remember that the people to whom this prophecy was aimed were people that had been in captivity.  Obviously 70 years of captivity had considerably weakened them.  They didn’t feel like a fighting force at all.  But that didn’t matter because the Lord was able to strengthen them in their weakness.  You remember the words we read at the end of Chapter 40, in verse 29, concerning our God; ‘He giveth power to the faint and to them that have no might he increaseth strength.’

You see, there is no shortage of strength on God’s part.  He is the everlasting God, creator of the ends of the earth.  He fainteth not, neither is weary.  Therefore he is able to give power to the faint and to them that have no might he increaseth strength.

Now it goes without saying that for many of us here we do not have the strength that we had just a few years ago.  We recognise that our physical strength has been declining.  Well, if we’re honest, we wonder what we shall be like in December 2013, in a year’s time.  We feel weaker now than a year ago, what will we feel like after another year?  Perhaps that fills us with just a little bit of dread and wonder.  Well, it need not do because although we may decline in our physical strength and feel our increasing physical weakness, we can hear our God saying he gives power to the faint and to them that have no might he increaseth strength.

The apostle Paul experienced this personally, didn’t he?  Remember the verses we read in the beginning of our worship.  Paul had been suffering with a thorn in the flesh.  We don’t quite know what that was but it was evidently some kind of spiritual weakness and Paul was so distressed by this that he besought the Lord to remove it.  Three times he prayed that the Lord would take it away, but the Lord didn’t.  Instead he answered Paul with those words, “My grace is sufficient for thee; my strength is made perfect in weakness.”  Therefore Paul was able to rejoice and go on to say, “When I am weak, then am I strong”.  He knew that though he was weak outwardly, he could be strong inwardly, filled with might by God’s Spirit in the inner man.

That can be our experience, dear friends, in 2013.  We may, and will probably, feel our increasing physical weaknesses but we need not become spiritually weak.  As we keep close to the Lord, as we trust in him and believe his Word, he will empower us by the indwelling Holy Spirit so that we shall be empowered inwardly though we are weakened physically and outwardly.

My Dad's Last Sermon: Part 3 Be not dismayed

But he goes on to say something else:  “Be not dismayed for I am thy God”.  I understand that word dismayed really means panicking, looking this way and that, being desperate, not knowing which way to turn.  In the earlier verses we find that was the attitude of the pagan nations in the face of the advancing armies of Persia.  They were panicking and not knowing which way to turn.  But for the Lord’s people he said, “There’s no need to do that.  Be not dismayed for I am thy God.”  He reminded them of his covenant with them through Abraham and we have an even greater covenant through our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.  The apostle Paul says in Galatians, “if we are Christ’s then are we Abraham’s seed.”  In other words, those promises made to Abraham about God being with his people hold good for us as much as for any Jew descended from Abraham.

So, we thank God that we do not need to be dismayed.  Those words would have had a familiar ring to many Jews who were familiar with their history because they’re very similar to the words that God spoke to Joshua when Joshua led God’s people into the Promised Land.  In Joshua chapter 1, verse 9 we find that God said to Joshua, “Be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed for I, the Lord thy God, am with thee withersoever thou goest.” 

My Dad's Last Sermon: Part 2: I am with thee

We notice the antidote to fear.

That is, the promise of God’s presence.  He says, “Fear thou not for I am with thee.” He promises, then, his presence.  Now down through the ages Israel had received assurances of God’s presence with them.  They had received an assurance back in the wilderness when Moses, under the direction of God, had erected the tabernacle.  In Exodus 40, verse 34 we read how that tabernacle was filled with the glory of the Lord, with the cloud, so that Moses himself could not go into the tabernacle such was the presence of the Lord there among them.  He made it evident that we was present with them.

A similar thing happened at the erection of the temple by King Solomon.  In II Chronicles we read that once the temple was completed the temple was so filled with the cloud that the priests and the Levites could not enter. The presence of the Lord was very evident.

But we can understand some of the people of Israel saying, “That was all in the past.  There’s no tabernacle now; there’s no temple now.”  King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon had destroyed it 70 years earlier.  Yet the promise of God is still the same! “Fear thou not for I am with thee”.  His presence didn’t depend on there being a tabernacle or a temple.  He promised to be present with his people who trusted in him.

That message is carried over into the New Testament.  We remember that Stephen, speaking to the Jews of his day said, “The Most High dwelleth not in temples made with hands.”  Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ in Matthew 18, verse 20 said, “Where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst.”  What an encouragement that is to the Church of Jesus Christ.  Sometimes we feel sad when we see decline in the Church; churches that were once full of people now greatly reduced in their congregations.  Even here we’ve had to admit that our services are not as well attended as they were.  There has been decline and we greatly regret that.  But however great the decline we do not need to fear that our Lord will forsake us.  He has said, “Fear thou not for I am with thee.”  So as we move into 2013 we have the promise of his presence.

This promise of course holds good not just for the church – it hold good for individual believers.  We think of those who’ve had a loved one and they’ve been together many long years.  My wife and I were celebrating our 56^th wedding anniversary yesterday and that’s a long time.  But we recognise the time will come when the Lord will call and there will not be two but one.  Whenever that comes, or if it has come to any of us, we can praise God that he is with us.  If a loved one has been taken away we can say, “I am not alone for God has said, Fear thou not for I am with thee.””  That promise holds good no matter how much we may miss someone who has been with us over the years.  So the Lord promises his presence.

My Dad's Last Sermon Part 1: Fear Not

On the last Sunday of last year, in a state of growing weakness, my Dad laid down the ministry role he had been taking for a number of years in his local fellowship.  He could not have known for sure that this would have been his last sermon but he would have strongly suspected it might be.

It will almost certainly be the only one of his sermons to find its way into the ocean of preached stuff on the web.  It is a Biblical and prophetic testimony to the way a Christian approaches a year in which he expects to suffer limitations in this world or possibly leave it altogether.  It has blessed me and others and I hope it blesses you.

 

 

We turn to perhaps one of the best known verses in the Bible, Isaiah chapter 41 and verse 10.  I could think of no other verse of Scripture more appropriate as we step out from an old year into a new year.

Fear thou not, for I am with thee; be not dismayed for I am thy God. I will strengthen thee, yea I will help the, yea I will uphold thee with the right hand of my righteousness.

These word, ‘Fear not’, seem to be favourite words of the Lord which the prophet Isaiah uses. We find them at least three times in this chapter: here in verse 10, again in verse 13 and again in verse 14.

All of us tend to have a fear of the unknown.  We cannot really possibly know what the future will hold.  We cannot possibly know with our own human intellect what 2013 will be for us because we cannot see the way ahead that far.  Indeed, we don’t always know what a day will bring forth.  But the words here are spoken by a God who knows the whole future.  He knows not just the year ahead, he knows centuries ahead.  Indeed, he knows the whole of history because he is the Lord of all.  And therefore he is able to still our fears about the future.

In the context of this chapter these words have a special significance because it was a time of tension in the Middle East.  There’s constantly been tension in that part of the world, hasn’t there? There still is today.  And at this particular time that the prophet was prophesying he was prophesying at a period of great tension when the mighty empire of Medo-Persia was ravaging the nations and destroying kingdoms.  This was causing great fear and panic.  We notice in verse 5 the isles saw it and feared. They saw the advancing Persian armies and wondered what the outcome of it was going to be and so they were in great terror and fear.

 Well, the prophet stills the fears of the Lord’s people in our text.  He says, “The nations may be panicking, the nations may be afraid but for you, the Lord’s people, the word is – Fear not.”

The period that Isaiah was prophesying about was the reign of Cyrus, King of Persia.  He says in verse 2, “Who raised up the righteous man from the East”.  We might say, “Who was the righteous man from the East?”  Well, if were to read on to the beginning of chapter 45 we would see that that man is named and it is Cyrus the King of Persia.  That in itself is a most remarkable prophecy because Cyrus wasn’t born when Isaiah was prophesying, there was at least a century and a half to go before Cyrus appeared on the scene.  Yet inspired by the Holy Spirit he was able to predict the man who would come.  It shows that our God, he knows the whole future.  There’s nothing hid from Him.

The reason why he was able to give the people of Israel this assurance was that, although Cyrus was ruthless in his treatment of the nations (he destroyed that wicked nation Babylon and other nations beside), yet he showed great compassion toward the people of Israel.  If you were to turn over to the opening verses of the Book of Ezra you would find that this King Cyrus gave a decree that the people of Israel who had been held captive in Babylon would now be free to return to their own country and to rebuild the temple of God. The king that was striking fear into the heathen nations was going to bring liberty to the people of God. That was why God was able to say through Isaiah, “Fear thou not, for I am with thee”.

How thankful we are that we have a God who knows the future.  Everything is clear and plain to him and if we trust his word we know that we needn’t be afraid about the future.  The future is all in his hands.

A Son's Tribute - Peace

The last hymn in my dad's Thanksgiving Service was amazingly opposite in origin to In heavenly Love Abiding, with which his service began.  Far from being written as calm poetry, this hymn was penned in the midst of almost unspeakable tragedy.

It stands as a beacon to all of us who pass through vales of suffering that a confident faith in Jesus is utterly transformational and offers the brightest of hope in the most overwhelming sadness.  Let us be clear - my dad knew little such deep personal sadness as Spafford's but he shared in that of others and did not enjoy the experience of a month dying in hospital in accelerating weakness.

But hey, where, indeed, O death is your sting?  All death has done when it has done all is usher a soul to his previously purchased-by-Jesus home.

 

 

 

A Son's Tribute - Holding Hands

My Mum and Dad often held hands.  Not just at the beginning of their courtship but right through to their Golden Wedding Anniversary and several years beyond.  People sometimes remarked about it, for plenty of married couples don't hold hands much anymore.

 

Perhaps the most significant thing is this though: they were holding hands at the end of their marriage.

 

Just about everyone holds hands at the beginning.  As the old Prayer Book has it -

 

Then shall they give their troth to each other in this manner. The Minister, receiving the Woman at her father's or friend's hands, shall cause the Man with his right hand to take the Woman by her right hand, and to say after him as followeth.

 

Even a humanist celebrant in the Registry Office will instruct similarly.

 

There are no such instructions for the end of a Marriage though.  Many marriages in my parents' lifetimes have ended with a shout, an angry letter, a slammed door or at the very best a formal handshake as the solicitors finish their mediation of a tolerable settlement.

 

As my Dad lay dying, thus ending his marriage as he vowed he would - 'til death do us part - my Mum was kindly brought to his bedside and there, at the moment of his death (and the death of the marriage) she was holing his hand.

 

Of course it is fanciful to imagine that such a beautiful ending can always be secured in a world of sudden accidents and striking illnesses.  But for all of us who have made those vows as we held hands on our Wedding Day it is far less fanciful to hold to the determination that at least we should want to hold hands when our marriage ends. That was what the vow meant, wasn't it?



A Son's Tribute - Speaking the Truth in Love

The motto of the Wickliffe preachers was 'Speaking the truth in love' (Ephesians 4:15)

 

This was the text taken as the theme of my Dad's thanksgiving service.  It's appropriateness was not simply that of the motto itself, it was that he lived out this text.  My Dad's gift to all who knew him was to demonstrate that Love does not have to be diminished by standing for the Truth and that the Truth does not have to be compromised by living a gracious life of Love, including (perhaps especially) in our speaking.

 

This is a combination that seems to elude almost everyone, including very many followers of Christ (who alone is the Truth and the greatest expression of Love).  And the first place it eludes people is in their speaking by which the Truth is doubted or denied or it is asserted without the kind of gracious humility that Love demands.

 

A Son's Tribute - Last Gasp

We chose this hymn for my Dad's service.

On my Birth Certificate he described his occupation as evangelist.

It fell to me of course to describe his occupation on his Death Certificate.  Evangelist, I said to the Registrar.

She looked at his age in his mid-eighties.  "That's retired?", she suggested.

I hesitated.  He had been in hospital only once in his life really, those last weeks.  He had told the doctor that he was not afraid to die because he was a Christian and trusting in the Lord, one of the nurses who passed his Bible over to him to read each day had been given it to read for themselves.  Perhaps he was an evangelist still.

 

Then again, I thought, this is a Death Certificate.  He may have been evangelising until his final breath but there was a final breath.  There are no evangelists in the presence of Jesus.  Only retired ones.  Evangelist (retired) then.

A Son's Tribute - Open air preaching

 

 

My Dad was blessed with an amazingly clear voice.  He was also blessed with a Merseyside sense of humour.

 

God used these qualities to useful effect when he preached in the open air.  I have done this very rarely and that is something I will probably always regret as preaching to the converted or nearly converted is significantly removed from New Testament preaching.  I think I heard my Dad preach in the open air at least as often as I heard him in religious meetings.  But the open air was more fun and more frightening.

 

Certainly this was where I first encountered hecklers.  But of course to an open air preacher hecklers are the equivalent (only more entertaining) of a church preacher's Powerpoint slides.  They punctuate the monologue and make it more interesting.  Open air preachers love hecklers and even drunken ones are useful - Southend seafront was especially good for that sort!
 

I suppose that being around open air preaching was one of my first experiences of the way that all things work together for good.  On the face of it there was a problem of contentious opposition, in reality the problem was a blessing. So many of Jesus's greatest stories were the result of awkward questions.

Open air preaching started to lose its value as the nation became more politely apathetic.  The gift of the New Atheists and all those antagonists that attack the Bible for moral reasons is a gift to be treasured, though with grace - which my Dad always exhibited.

A Son's Tribute - Enduring

As my Dad lay in hospital for the last month of his life the only book he had with him was his Bible.  He was very sensible.  It was the Word that would outlast him in the most emphatic of ways - for ever.  So at his Thanksgiving Service we read . . .

 

¹Comfort ye, comfort ye my people, saith your God.

² Speak ye comfortably to Jerusalem, and cry unto her, that her warfare is accomplished, that her iniquity is pardoned: for she hath received of the Lord's hand double for all her sins.

³ The voice of him that crieth in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert a highway for our God.

⁴ Every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be made low: and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough places plain:

⁵ And the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together: for the mouth of the Lord hath spoken it.

⁶ The voice said, Cry. And he said, What shall I cry? All flesh is grass, and all the goodliness thereof is as the flower of the field:

⁷ The grass withereth, the flower fadeth: because the spirit of the Lord bloweth upon it: surely the people is grass.

⁸ The grass withereth, the flower fadeth: but the word of our God shall stand for ever.

 

This Old Testament reading appears, at casual reading, to be a strange combination of comfort and brutal truth.  After all, what real comfort is their that God has forgiven us (2) when we are all on the way out anyway (7)?  All that lasts is the echoing voice of the Divine (8).

 

It all hinges on what the Word of the Lord actually says.

 

If the enduring Word of the Lord had said, "Good Riddance" we could hardly blame him.  But the Word that outlasts our little earthly life-slot speaks instead of eternal salvation.  We also read . . .

 

¹And I saw a new heaven and a new earth: for the first heaven and the first earth were passed away; and there was no more sea.

² And I John saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.

³ And I heard a great voice out of heaven saying, Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and he will dwell with them, and they shall be his people, and God himself shall be with them, and be their God.

 

The Word that lasts is the Word that brings the greatest comfort of all.

 

 

 

 

 

A Son's Tribute - Caravans

Although this picture comes from a generation earlier, it depicts the kind of setting in which my Dad began Christian ministry as a Wickliffe Preacher.  Three young men, a caravan plastered with big texts and a drive from village to village and including market towns and occasionally urban centres with missions to teach the children about the Gospel.

Today's children see many more words than these.  Why, as I write this they are busy tweeting them to one another, looking at them on endless websites and generally being bombarded by the messengers of the global village.

 

We smile at the change.

 

The quality of the media is vastly different but the message carried is vastly inferior.  Windows 8 has introduced no new input that improves on THIS IS A FAITHFUL SAYING THAT CHRIST JESUS CAME INTO THE WORLD TO SAVE SINNERS.

 

Sure, we can save documents, blogs, digital images, spreadsheets and the like.  But is there a new, improved way to save sinners?

 

One way to look at this in the 21st century is to say that we no longer interpret behaviours as sin.  That is to miss the point.  Sin is not the human way of looking at human behaviour, it is the revealed divine way.  Like the arrested bloke's, "Get yer 'ands off me. I ain't done nuthin' wrong." this self-described innocence needs some higher corroboration.  The Bible makes it clear enough that we cannot change the way God looks at our sin.  The Gospel declares that God has.  He has sent a saving Messiah - Christ Jesus came to save.

 

Throughout his life my dad lived with people gently observing him as pleasantly quaint and earnestly unnecessary.   It is the evangelist's lot.  But they were wrong.  He was witnessing to the only solution to the only long term problem we humans face.

 

 

 



A Son's Tribute - War

This picture comes in the BBC history section with the heading 'When Ken Dodd learned Welsh'.

 

We do not choose the when and where of our birth and my Dad was born in a most unfortunate situation from the point of view of Secondary education.  At about the age that we were exercised about 'which school is best', Ken Dodd, my Dad and thousands of others were evacuated from Merseyside to the perceived safety of Wales.

 

This may or may not have been a good idea by the Government though it had the obvious difficulty of breaking up the family.  Families still break up today of course for different reasons.  I was very blessed to be part of a family that was not broken up and this is another reason to be grateful to God for my Dad.  I have met plenty of people whose lives can recover the sense of stability that I enjoyed as a normality.

 

Governments do affect us.  The death of Margaret Thatcher has brought this starkly to light.  The wartime Government is regarded as heroic (presumably, as in the manner of a successful football manager, because it won).

 

It wasn't so heroic for my Dad though.  Having sent him to Wales away from danger but also family it decided it was safe to return after all.  So back he came to his home round the corner from a great shipyard - just in time for the actual blitz.  His teenage equivalent of my football on Saturdays was climbing around bomb craters in the middle of Merseyside.

 

We do well to trust in another Power than that of the State.

A Son's Tribute - In Heavenly Love Abiding

This hymn has figured in our family's life events over the years and my Dad's Thanksgiving Service begins with it.

 

It is tempting to think of this as an old person's hymn -

 

In heavenly love abiding,
No change my heart shall fear;
And safe is such confiding,
For nothing changes here.
The storm may roar without me,
My heart may low be laid;
But God is round about me,
And can I be dismayed?

 

When Anna Waring wrote it she was, in fact, 27 years old.

 

What awful circumstances had led her to write this poetry of devotion?  What hurts and harms had given her such depth of consciousness about God's providential love?  None actually.  Or at least as far as we can know from her story.  She learned what she learned not by the University of Experience but by the glory of Scripture.

 

Our family - and not least my Dad who spent but four weeks in hospital (his last four weeks) - has not been visited by the unending tragedies that afflict some.  To get depth we must get it from our knowledge of God.  Yet in this way, my Dad was able to enter on his last days as if a veteran of hospitalisation, for although he was unfamiliar with the environment he was very familiar with the abiding love of God.  And he found that there.

A Son's Tribute - Introduction

It was at this time that my Dad passed into glory.

In his honour my blogs this month will be about him.  His walk with God, his service of Christ and His church and his evident fullness of the Holy Spirit qualify him for more blog pages than my life can ever deserve but for this day on which he died to this world it is enough to say that I am proud to have been his son both by blood and by his spiritual example.  The former may last me a few more years of earthly life, the latter will benefit me eternally.