My Grandpa Baker died on June 3.
We buried him on June 8.
His estate sale is done, and the remnants went to auction.
The keys to his duplex have been turned over.
Only a few details remain.
Everything can go back to normal now.
For about two months I made the most of my time in order to spend as much of it with him as I could. I crammed my workweek into less than four days so I could get to where he was by Thursday afternoon. But there are no more Thursday afternoons. I am no longer a caretaker. My time is left to me to do what I will with it.
There is time enough to afford an extra fifteen minutes in the morning to commute to work by bicycle, and and extra thirty in the evening to get back home again. There is enough time to do some chores I’ve put off, like cleaning out my storage unit. All that stuff I’ve been dragging around, saying I was going to sell it on Ebay? I’ve got most of it listed. My laundry is not just washed, it is also folded and put away. I even made venison stew for supper, which required a monumental commitment of time since a whopping nine ingredients were involved, and most of them required cutting up. Yes, now that one of those unavoidable sad and bad parts of life is over, everything is getting back to normal, and everything is good.
Except it isn’t. This world is still pretty rotten.
It’s funny how we look back on a year and say it was good or bad. From my perspective, 2009 was a good year – my nephew was born. ’10 was bad – Mom got sick. ’11 was a good year – another nephew was born! ’12 was pretty much awesome – my brother got married. But ’13 is shaping up to be a tough haul, and it’s only half over. People die, people are still sick, churches split, brother is set against brother, disasters strike, accidents happen, healthy people are killed in the course of their work, perversion abounds, and the list goes on. All of it is simply what happens in a broken world, in a world in which people sin because they are sinners, in a world in which creation groans under the curse. It’s messy and dirty and painful out there, but it is still better than we deserve, sinful sinning sinners that we are.
People want to comfort you in your pain. All of them mean very well, and their comforts usually take some form of one of the stock phrases hauled out for this purpose. One I heard was, “Well, everyone dies!” I thought, Not permanently! If you think death is permanent, your sense of time is rather short! A more common one is, “Well, he’s in a better place now.” And I wanted to reply, Only half of him is! We had to bury the other part! Finally, there is the ubiquitous “Well, he had a good long life.” By the point of this utterance, I’m almost bursting to shout, He still has!
It isn’t normal that we had to bury Grandpa. It isn’t normal that he has to wait. It isn’t normal that we suffer and die.
Do you want to know what normal is? You can see it, in a way. You can actually hear it. You can even taste it. Eternal life isn’t so much a place, as it is a Person. He comes to His people with the words “Drink of it, all of you; this cup is the new testament in My blood, which is shed for you for the forgiveness of sins.” He comes in the faithful reading and preaching of His Word. He comes in the absolution. He comes in ordinary water with the words “I baptize you in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.”
It’s just a foretaste, but it is still eternal. And it’s entirely normal, right now.
For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us. For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God. For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now. And not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. For in this hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what he sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience.
Romans 8:18-25, ESV
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This painting was on the wall of every house my Grandma and Grandpa Baker lived in during my lifetime. It now hangs here on my wall, which is really too small for it. It reminds me of them. It reminds me of the hymn in the previous post. And in that way it reminds me of my Comfort.