Midweekly Reality Check: Meditations on the Mountain
Archives I

April-May 2005

ONLY THE DEAD
by JD Wetterling
May 25, 2005

Greater love has no one than this,
that someone lays down his life for his friends.
John 15:16

 It’s been 87 of the bloodiest years in the annals of mankind since the war to end all wars ended, and the killing continues unabated.  When the dark cloud of potential planetary annihilation evaporated 16 years ago, a misguided American leadership made deep cuts in our military, ignored the rants of a cave-dwelling radical half-a-world away and emboldened the most heinous attack ever on American soil.  Two  more wars followed…so far.  Plato’s postulate still holds: “It is only the dead who have seen the end of war.”  In theological terms, the depravity of man is the only dogma documented by two millennia of human history.

That’s why Memorial Day should be the grandest American celebration of the year.  Of all the blessings of the greatest nation on earth, none is more worthy of undying appreciation by our citizenry than the patriotic heroes of every generation who willingly gave their all to defend their country.  That we are 229 years into the world’s longest running experiment in government by the people is proof positive that America’s war dead have not died in vain.  What a glorious legacy.  Even in this age when some of us bemoan the self-absorbed younger generation, we found no shortage of heroes to bring freedom to Afghanistan and Iraq and make the world a safer place.  President Reagan called such soldiers “America’s exclusive weapon.” 

My generation was called to fight and die for a shocking number of ungrateful citizens in our country’s most divisive war—Vietnam.  It was the only war in our history where our government abandoned an ally on the battlefield.  It’s fitting—divinely just—that the only war where our warriors were so reviled and our national leadership so wanting inspired the most profoundly moving monument to full-price patriotism ever to grace this land of the free—The Vietnam Veterans Memorial. 

Among the 58,200 venerated souls on that black granite wall are four of my fighter pilot friends.  My wingman, Robert “Vince” Willett, Jr. (panel 27W, line 103), crashed in a blinding fireball before my eyes in a hellish out-country post-midnight gunfight.  Lance LaGrange (panel 75W, line 037) augured in for reasons known only to God while attacking a target in the Central Highlands.  Lynn Hoffman (panel 51W, line 032) landed on a stormy night with bombs unexpended, could not get stopped on a wet runway, flipped over and slid through the perimeter minefield, triggering a grisly series of explosions.  Lawrence Whitford (panel 16W, line 21), a Misty Forward Air Controller, launched with Pat Carroll in a two-seater F-100F on a lousy weather day…into oblivion.  Greater love hath no man.

There is no earthly reason why I have not seen the end of war.  The facts indicate a gung-ho young fighter pilot, who, out of fear and fear of failure, tried hard to engrave his name for the ages on that black granite wall. 

As a rookie on a Sunday morning in the summer of ‘68, I dove down the gun barrels of an anti-aircraft artillery battery spitting more lead in my face than I thought I could fly through.  I frantically pulled the control stick well past the point where that F-100’s wings should have folded up around my ears.  And then rather than take my perilously overstressed airplane straight home and gingerly put it on the ground, I foolishly continued to attack the guns.  We left the gun battery a smoldering junkyard.  My flight leader, Dick French, received a Silver Star and I a Distinguished Flying Cross.  The jet took a month to fix.  Sometimes hero medals are awarded to fools who survive by God’s grace alone. (Details in next week’s blog.) 

The cross is the most popular symbol for heroism in the world, in honor of the most heroic act of selfless love ever witnessed—Christ’s death on the cross.  Mine still hangs on my office wall, reminding me who saved my life in the summer of ‘68, but more importantly, who saved my soul nearly 2000 years before I was born.

Although a vocal segment of our society strives to ban or redefine the term, I affirm our founding fathers’ faith in “divine Providence”—I’m a recipient of it.  Whether we acknowledge it or not, our nation is, too. So take a deep breath of the fresh air of liberty this day, then give thanks to God that by his providence you were born in the same country as my beloved brave friends, to whom I pay special tribute.  They and tens of thousands of heroes like them are the only ones who have seen the end of war in this fallen world.

CLAUS,
THE AGRARIAN ANACHRONISM
by JD Wetterling
May 18, 2005

…for he maketh his sun to shine on the evil and on the good
and sendeth rain on the just and the unjust
(Matthew 5:45b). KJV

    My beloved Blue Ridge Mountains are full of colorful characters.  When this suburban heaven real estate was explored by a committee from the Presbyterian Church in America with an eye to purchasing it (from the TV star, Jackie Gleason) for a retreat and conference center, one of the explorers recalls it was a “thriving industrial park.”  He said the committee found, in tramping around several hundred acres, “17 active moonshine stills.” 

But none of our neighbors, most of whom have gotten used to us in the intervening 27 years, are any more colorful than the flatland farmer who taught me the sinful art of creative cussing before I even knew what the words meant.

It was a spring morning in '53, one of those dead-still dawns on the farm in western Illinois when the human voice carries as if the fallow black earth, just awakening from winter hibernation, were an ocean on a mirror calm morning.  I was enroute to the barn to milk one of four cows, stumbling along in an ambulatory comatose condition, a state of grace achievable only by a reluctant pre-adolescent with an attitude, awakened at 6 a.m. to do a chore he hated.

A shouting, irate voice shook me out of my self-pity. “Get your @#*&\ !%/@ into that &%#@ )#@%**!”

A different angry voice responded, “E-E-E-E-A-A-A-W-W-W!”

Those deliciously devilish sounding words, delivered with a decibel level and passion that would strike envy in the heart of a traveling evangelist, emanated from the mouth of our neighbor, Claus, a German farmer. His big red gable-roofed barn was a half-mile to the northeast, sighting up the hypotenuse of a triangle formed by traveling east up the gravel road a quarter-mile, then north a like distance on a dirt road, part of that endless one mile grid system that overlays the Midwest’s vast flat, rich black gumbo.    The other angry sound was conveyed with equal passion, and, if it could be translated, probably equal impiety. It was one of Claus's two mules. In an age when no one farmed with horses any more, let alone mules, Claus was Henderson County's very own agrarian anachronism. His uniqueness didn’t stop there. He didn't believe in tractors, trucks, cars, that new-fangled electric box that came alive in the late afternoon—a television—or women, except for an old-maid sister he lived with in a neatly maintained white clapboard, two-story farmhouse. They say that, to his dying day, he never laid a hand on the controls of any of the above.

But, aside from his lumberjack language and aversion to progress and the opposite sex, he was smart, a good farmer, and a big-hearted neighbor. With no intent on his part, he was responsible for my early education in anatomy, blasphemy and the facts of life.

In those days farmers always helped one another in a labor intensive business that was totally dependant on God’s grace in the growing season for survival—combining oats, shucking corn, vaccinating and cutting hogs, driving cattle and baling hay. Some of my happiest memories are of warm summer days, sitting next to Claus among the men on the ground with back against the wall, on the shady side of the barn, waiting for the next wagonload of baled hay to arrive from the field.  Curiously, I distinctly recall his clean, unadorned manly smell, an uncommon thing on a hot summer day on the farm. That irresistibly risible raconteur’s huge repertoire of what polite folks called "off-color" stories was the source of all my prurient knowledge. I was not a part of the conversations, merely one of the little pitchers with big ears who took it all in with wonderment. I know not from whence cometh the authoritarian tones—his stories were always told in the third person—and I was totally bewildered by the concepts, but they  always provoked uproarious laughter among the men.

Claus had a baritone nasal delivery in a one-of-a-kind German dialect that rearranged syllabic emphasis and drug out the endings of words. His were the most colorful metaphors I have ever met, but I cannot repeat them around the folks I hang out with these days.  If his stories alone weren't reason enough to provoke knee slapping belly laughs, then his low gargling chuckle, followed by an inhalation that sounded like a misplayed trombone note, guaranteed it.

Claus had only two uniforms, a clean pair of bib overalls and a dirty pair. It was the standard work uniform for most farmers, but Clause wore them all the time everywhere. Both were worn over a long-sleeved blue work shirt, buttoned at the cuffs and collar on even the hottest day of the summer—the nonstandard part. His untrimmed nose hair gave the appearance, from a distance, of der Feuhrer’s mustache. Sitting beside him in the shade of the barn, on the rare occasions when he was not telling stories, and listening to him breathe was like listening to the wind in the willows.

He had a pair of equally untamed black bushy eyebrows through which he looked with bowed head in the presence of my saintly mother, beginning or ending each sentence with "Ma'am" while carefully avoiding the use of all his favorite adjectives.

If Mom would send me over to his house with a box of freshly picked strawberries, he'd say "Hallo Jerry," winding those words around his tongue and letting them roll out the side of his mouth. Then he'd send me home with as much sweet corn as I could carry in a gunny sack. If Mom delivered an apple pie, the next day he'd walk over with two of sister Ella's freshly baked rhubarb pies—the neighborly ratio was always at least two to one.

Many of Claus's comments on life became clichés in our community, like the observation he made on a hot summer day when he was stacking hay bales in the loft up near the tin roof:  “If hell is this hot I don't want to go.”  Then there was the doubt he expressed the summer the drought nearly wiped out the corn crop:  “They say it rains on the just and the unjust alike, but I don't believe it.”  His biblical allusions were curious, considering his shadow had never darkened a church door...to anyone’s knowledge.  I hope with all my heart it means he was reading the Bible at home .

The last time I saw Claus was at my father's wake, long after I'd grown up and left the farm to wander the world. But for salt-and-pepper hair, he looked the same after all those years—not an ounce of fat on his still-erect six-foot frame. His only concession to the aging process was a long-legged riding horse. His arrival at the old homestead was announced by the syncopated gait of four steel shoes crunching gravel in the driveway. He said exactly five words...and nobody laughed. I let him in the back door, the one that’s never locked and all friends use in the country. He put a covered dish of something on a table mounded high with donated food, strode up to Mother, head bowed, cap in hand with clean bibs and buttoned collar, staring with puddled eyes through that unruly thicket of eyebrows, and said with choked tones I shall never forget, “I've lost my best friend....” 

He turned around and walked out the door. I watched through the big picture window as he untied the reins of a beautiful sorrel gelding from the low branch of a pin oak in the side-yard, and swung into the saddle with all the grace and agility of a man one-half his seventy-odd years. Horse and rider—my unwitting mentor astride a bygone era—rode east and out of my life.

Claus finally made it into a church. My brother, John, who stayed on the farm, and five other men carried him in. John said there were as many muffled snickers as there were tears in that house of God, as a community mourned the passing and pondered the destiny of a lovable, probable pagan, and recalled the tales he told in the shady interludes of his life. 

Your Chief End,
Your Only Comfort
by JD Wetterling
May 11, 2005

…be transformed by the renewal of your mind…
(Psalm 12:2)

 Three hundred fifty-seven years ago this Friday—May 13, 1648—the book, Christianity’s FAQ’s, went on sale in England and Scotland, and is still in print.  It was the product of five years of labor by 150 of the most knowledgeable theologians to be found from the major protestant denominations of the day—an unprecedented effort to explain the message of the Bible—working under the aegis of the British Parliament at the peak of the greatest moral and spiritual age in England’s history.  At the start of each week, all participants swore an oath to present only work for the book that could explicitly be proven by reference to the Bible, and every sentence that made the final manuscript was debated and voted on by all members.  Church historians call it the “…most logical, most complete…most Biblical and noblest creed ever yet produced in Christendom.”  Today it is one of the doctrinal documents of a number of protestant denominations, whether or not the members in the pews are aware of it. 

You’ve never heard of it because I gave it a modernized computer-age title.  The proper title is the Westminster Larger and Shorter Catechisms, a series of Bible questions and answers, the shorter version designed for children, derived from their larger work, entitled, The Westminster Confession of Faith.  It turned my life right-side-up fifteen years ago, after first sitting on my library shelf gathering dust for five years.  It had been given to me when I was elected elder of a large church in a mainline protestant denomination, but no one told me I had to read it, and I don’t recall meeting another elder who admitted he had.  It was only when we moved to Tampa, Florida, and attended an inquirer’s class of a Presbyterian (PCA) church where it was required reading, that I cracked the cover.  It was startling—I knew little and understood less about theological things in those days.  My first response was, “No Way,” and, arrogant pseudo-intellectual that I was, I set to work examining the scriptures to disprove those ancient English and Scottish theologians.  And I learned, as many before me have…it is the only way.  God is not my co-pilot, as my friend, Bob Scott, World War II Ace, claimed in the title of his famous book.  God is my pilot (Q.11)!

Those who think God is a myth and truth is unknowable may snicker all they want at my politically incorrect, exclusive metanarrative, but I find great joy in defending my faith.[1] It’s the most important gift I have received—could ever receive—in my life.[2]  I cannot communicate it any better than the slave trader turned preacher, John Newton did in his classic hymn, Amazing Grace.  Nor will I ever tire of glorifying my Savior, Jesus Christ, who loved me so much he died for me 2000 years before I was born.  No one can steal me out of his hand.  I have a guarantee from the highest authority.[3]

A catechism is a road map, in Q&A form, that explains, but does not overrule, the good news of the whole Bible—scripture alone is the ultimate truth, and a catechism is merely an excellent aid to understanding God’s truth.  In addition to explaining who God is, the state of man, sin, the Lord’s prayer and the Ten Commandments, the catechism also tackles the hard parts of the Bible: Did God leave all mankind to perish in the estate of sin and misery? (Q. 20)  What is effectual calling? (Q. 30)  The Westminster Confession and Larger and Shorter Catechisms turned on lights, opened doors and put puzzle pieces together in my mind, filling in massive blank spots and clarifying supposed biblical contradictions in my theretofore casual Christianity.

The very first question of the catechism is as old as mankind:  “What is the chief end of man?”  In today’s idiom the question would be,  “What’s it all about, Alfie?” The answer is as short as the question:  “The chief end of man is to glorify God and enjoy him forever,” with three scripture references to support it.[4]  To unbelievers who enjoy their sinful ways, that reads like an oxymoron.  But enjoying anything forever, versus just the cosmic nanosecond of a human lifetime, is a great hook.  That very first answer in both catechisms captures the bottom line of the Bible—glorifying God and enjoying him eternally is our primary reason for existence. The remaining Q&A’s are the how-to, answering every query an inquisitive mind would ask about how we should live, even beyond death, in the unimaginable everlasting state of bliss that awaits God’s children in heaven. [5]

On a large table just outside the Assembly’s meeting room at Westminster Abby, another, even older catechism was available for easy reference by the Westminster “divines.” It was written by Zacharias Ursinus, a student of Martin Luther in 1559.  Unlike the Westminster Catechism, which has the tone of committee-derived scholarship, the Heidelberg Catechism reveals the godly heart of Ursinus so passionately that it survived intact the review of numerous theologians and met with widespread approval.  It asks a very similar first question in a different way: “What is your only comfort in life and death?"

The answer, complete with scripture proofs, in my view comprises some of the most heart-warming, assuring, conviction inducing, joyful words ever written outside the Bible.           

Q.  What is your only comfort in life and death?

A.  That I, with body and soul, both in life and death,[6] am not my own,[7]but belong unto my faithful savior Jesus Christ;[8]who with his precious blood[9] has fully satisfied for all my sins, and delivered me from all the power of the devil;[10] and so preserves me[11] that without the will of my heavenly Father not a hair falls from my head;[12] yea, that all things must be subservient to my salvation,[13] wherefore by His Holy Spirit He also assures me of eternal life,[14]and makes me heartily willing and ready, henceforth, to live unto Him.[15]

Like many aspects of Christianity, catechisms are out of favor today—some denominations and independent churches don’t even have them—but the biblical truths they point to are no less morally absolute.

Catechisms, like my words, don’t change hearts.  God’s Word and the Holy Spirit do that (Q. 89).  But for those who are steeped in what passes for reason in this postmodern world, catechisms are an invaluable aid to understanding the Bible, and that is why the book is still in print.  I urge you, dear reader, whether a seeker, new believer, or faithful follower of God rich in years, to study the Westminster Larger and Shorter Catechism and the Heidelberg Catechism along with the Bible.  All are in the public domain and are therefore free on the internet.  You can cut and paste them into a Word file and underline, highlight, add your own notes, ask your own questions, do your own research.  A good Bible commentary is also extremely helpful.  And here’s the sourcebook, the revealed Word of God from which it is all derived, the best translation, quickest, most user friendly online Bible that I have found, complete with New Testament audio.  These are all the tools you need, right at your fingertips, and the only cost is your time.  Do your soul an eternal favor (Q. 37 & 38)—try it.  Taste and see[16] and, God willing, you, too, may be …transformed by the renewal of your mind.[17]

ENDNOTES
 

[1] “Blessed are you when people hate you and when they exclude you and revile you and spurn your name as evil, on account of the Son of Man! 23 Rejoice in that day, and leap for joy, for behold, your reward is great in heaven; for so their fathers did to the prophets (Luke 6:22-23).

[2] For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast (Ephesians 2: 8-9).

[3] I give them eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand (John 10:28).

[4] So, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God (1 Cor. 10:31).

For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be glory forever. Amen (Romans 11:36).

25 Whom have I in heaven but you? And there is nothing on earth that I desire besides you.
26 My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.
27 For behold, those who are far from you shall perish; you put an end to everyone who is unfaithful to you.
28 But for me it is good to be near God; I have made the Lord God my refuge, that I may tell of all your works (Psalm 73:25-28).

[5] “What no eye has seen, nor ear heard,
nor the heart of man imagined,
what God has prepared for those who love him” (1 Cor. 2: 9).

[6] For none of us lives to himself, and none of us dies to himself. 8 If we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord. So then, whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord's. 9 For to this end Christ died and lived again, that he might be Lord both of the dead and of the living (Rom 14:7-9).

[7] Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own, 20 for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body (1 Cor 6:19-20).

 

[8] So let no one boast in men. For all things are yours, 22 whether Paul or Apollos or Cephas or the world or life or death or the present or the future—all are yours, 23 and you are Christ's, and Christ is God's  (1 Cor 3:21-23).

[9] knowing that you were ransomed from the futile ways inherited from your forefathers, not with perishable things such as silver or gold, 19 but with the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without blemish or spot. 20 He was foreknown before the foundation of the world but was made manifest in the last times for your sake, 21 who through him are believers in God, who raised him from the dead and gave him glory, so that your faith and hope are in God (1 Pet 1:18-21).

 

[10] Jesus answered them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, everyone who commits sin is a slave to sin. 35 The slave does not remain in the house forever; the son remains forever. 36 So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed (John 8:34-36).

[11] And this is the will of him who sent me, that I should lose nothing of all that he has given me, but raise it up on the last day. 40 For this is the will of my Father, that everyone who looks on the Son and believes in him should have eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day” (John 6:39-40).

My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me. 28 I give them eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand. 29 My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all, and no one is able to snatch them out of the Father's hand. 30 I and the Father are one” (John 10:27-30).

But the Lord is faithful. He will establish you and guard you against the evil one (II Th 3:3).

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, 4 to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you, 5 who by God's power are being guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time (1 Pet 1:3-5).

[12] Are not two sparrows sold for a penny?  And not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your Father. 30 But even the hairs of your head are all numbered. 31 Fear not, therefore; you are of more value than many sparrows (Matthew 10: 29-31).

You will be delivered up even by parents and brothers and relatives and friends, and some of you they will put to death. 17 You will be hated by all for my name's sake. 18 But not a hair of your head will perish (Luke 21: 16-18).

[13] And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose (Romans 8:28).

[14] For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the Spirit of adoption as sons, by whom we cry, “Abba! Father!” 16 The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God (Romans 8:15-6).

And it is God who establishes us with you in Christ, and has anointed us, 22 and who has also put his seal on us and given us his Spirit in our hearts as a guarantee (2 Cor. 1:21-22).

He who has prepared us for this very thing is God, who has given us the Spirit as a guarantee (2 Cor. 5:5).

In him you also, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and believed in him, were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit, 14 who is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it, to the praise of his glory (Eph. 1:13-14).

[15] For all who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God (Rom 8:14).

[16] Taste and see that the LORD is good (Psalm 34:1).

[17] Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect (Romans 12:2).

THANKS, MOM
  by JD Wetterling 
May 4, 2005

A wife of noble character who can find?
She is worth far more than rubies
(Proverbs 31:10).
She gets up while it is still dark;
she provides food for her family…(:15)
Her children arise and call her blessed… (:28a).
“many women do noble things,
but you surpass them all” (:29)
…a woman who fears the LORD
is to be praised ( :30b)

 “Did I wake you?”

With that soft-spoken, considerate question, she faced death with the serenity of an eighty-two-year-old saint.  It was just before dawn, January 30, 1999. 

“Would you please come take me to the hospital?  I think I’m having a heart attack.” She was as calm as if she were inviting me to breakfast.

I had been up awhile, had finished my morning devotionals and, as usual, was drinking coffee at my computer.  I ran to my truck, coffee cup in hand and raced over to Mom’s condo not a mile away.  The coffee cup flew out of its holder on the first turn—thankfully a left-hand turn—but I hardly noticed it.  I was trying to decide whether to call the ambulance when I got there, always the right thing to do, or take her myself in the truck, now with a brown puddle on the passenger side floor.  The hospital was so close I could have her there before the ambulance could arrive at her place.

Mom solved that dilemma by walking out the door all dressed up, still calm and collected, when I arrived.  We took her car and sped to the hospital.  I must have looked a little panic-stricken.  Mom turned to me and said, “Don't worry about me. I’ve had a wonderful life.”  We arrived at the Emergency Room just in time—things got worse rather quickly.  The next day our family gathered around her bed in ICU. We recited all the underlined scripture passages in her well-worn Bible and sang hymns she knew by heart but could only mouth with all those tubes attached. Half-a-day later, following some of the best of many great hours spent with Mother, she joined the heavenly choir.  

Every Mother's Day and every day in between, as long as I have breath, I will give thanks to God for the woman who is responsible for everything I am or hope to be. She led me to the Lord, taught me how to pray, sing, be a true friend, a witness, and, perhaps the greatest lesson of all, she taught me how to die in the peace that passes all understanding. 

Mom was a Proverbs 31 farmer's wife. She had a song always in her heart and nearly always on her lips.  All my life with Mom, if there was lull in the conversation, I’d hear a hymn being hummed.  And her work ethic was unmatched by anyone I know.  She maintained a drafty old farmhouse absent indoor plumbing and cooked 21 meals a week for six hungry people. She tended a large garden and flock of chickens, push-mowed an acre of lawn, and interrupted her teaching career to raise four children with abundant love. I do not recall, in my entire youth, ever seeing Mom sitting around doing nothing at any hour of the day or night.  In the evening, while Dad read Wallace’s Farmer and I drew pictures on the floor behind his easy chair, Mom hummed or sang her favorite hymns as a stack of folded, ironed clothes grew from the linoleum to the height of her ironing board by my bedtime.  Then she sat at the foot of the stairs darning socks as we four kids trooped up to bed and said our prayers in unison loud enough for her to hear.

As a widow she spent her last nineteen winters on the Gulfcoast of Florida in a condo near my family, migrating from Illinois on the first of November. She always arrived cheerful as a mockingbird at dawn, and the sun shone brighter for the rest of the season.

Sure, it was a bit of a bother for my wife or me to take time out of our schedules to fly up to Illinois and drive her down to Florida so she could have her car with her. But it didn’t begin to equate to the bother I was to her for the first eighteen years of my life. It began when I demanded to be born in the middle of the night and the hospital was twenty miles of mostly gravel roads from home. I am sure it was a terrible bother when she sat up with me when I cried in the night from an allergy that drove the doctors, Mom, and me crazy until they figured out it was the chicken feathers in my pillow. Getting a haircut on the back porch from Mom with her mechanical, semi-sharp clippers was a bother and a pain for both of us as I provided the dissonant vocals.  I was fifteen years old before I experienced the joys of a barbershop haircut, and it’s still one of the highlights of my social life.

God blessed Mom with many other gifts. She could bring an ax to bear on a chicken's neck with finesse, drive a team of horses, slop the hogs or milk the cows when Dad worked late in the fields. Those same hands played the piano in accompaniment to her beautiful soprano voice.  She could wield an elm switch across my behind like a Puritan schoolmarm, or cheer louder than any teenager in the stands when my brother or I scored a touchdown. And she got more Christmas cards than anyone I know, the fruit of selfless friendship.  In her seasonal Florida sojourns, she learned to play card games she didn’t even like, just to be neighborly.

Sunday was her favorite day because singing God's praise was her passion. With a college degree in music, she directed the church choir all her working life, leaving Dad with his monotone down in the hard, wooden pews, riding herd on four small squirming sinners.  No one in Henderson County was properly married or buried unless blessed by Mother’s solos. From her first solo gig at age four until six weeks before she died, Alberta's ageless vocal cords were in demand for public gatherings.  She taught hundreds more the joy of music.  Two generations of Illinois farm folks owe her for a great first grade education—her first and third career after raising a family.  At her wake I heard scores of tearful testimonies to her impact on lives young and old.

By Grace alone I'm adjusting to life without her hugs, yet my soul aches on Mother's Day. I have a recording of her singing her five favorite hymns that in time will be a wonderful tribute on this special day, but I need more than six Mother’s Days to pass before I'm sufficiently sanctified to handle music from heaven on my home stereo.  At 5:07 a.m. last Friday, the morning after I rewrote this oft told story for this blog, I was jolted wide-awake by her calling my name.  I’m not a mystic, but if it was just a vivid dream, I remember nothing else.  It was at least a dramatic reminder that her godly influence on my life is undiminished six years after she left this world.

I’m a blessed son.  Thanks, Mom. 

Thank you, LORD, for such a saintly Mom.

MY BROTHER
BY BIRTH AND REBIRTH
by JD Wetterling
April 27, 2005

He is a dear brother, a faithful minister
and fellow servant in the Lord.
(Colossians 4:7b)

 We've always been close. We even shared a bed back when we were still wearing pajamas with feet in them. It was a rollaway bed in the second story bedroom of a drafty old Midwestern farmhouse. It felt like a hammock. Many mornings I awoke on the opposite side of the bed I went to sleep on. It took a few extra years to housebreak my baby brother, and some cold winter nights he provided the sole source of warmth in that bed. Few can claim the camaraderie of sleeping in a cold bed in the same puddle with a bed-wetting sibling.

Except for our college years when John bulked up to play football, we've been the same size, even though I have a sixteen-month head start on him. Our one-eyed grandfather never could tell us apart, so he just hyphenated both our names whenever he called either one of us: Jerry-John.

We also shared a passion for sports—a genetic thing in our family. In baseball I was the pitcher and he was a fearless catcher. He had a habit of squatting down too close to the batter, causing his mitt to interfere with the swing of the bat.

One summer night in a Pony League game he came within an inch of making me a vegetable. My control had deserted me so I was playing third base. With a runner on second base, the batter laid down a bunt that died three feet in front of the plate. Like his namesake, Mr. Bench, brother John leaped to his feet, tossed off his mask, barehanded the ball and wound up as he looked at first base. Sensing the play was away from me, I turned my attention to the flying spikes headed toward my kneecaps. The runner arrived in a cloud of dust, but before I could congratulate myself on avoiding bloodshed, something stung my left earlobe. It was a ninety mile-an-hour fastball headed toward left field from home plate. We won anyway, but we argued long into the night about who was to blame (we had bunk beds by then). I know I was at fault but it was years before I told him so. 

In high school football I was the quarterback as a Senior and John was the starting halfback as a Sophomore. It was one of the peaks of parenthood for Dad and Mom.  Dad had played football at the University of Iowa in the depression, until the money ran out, and he could quote every football statistic beginning with Bronco Nagurski's rushing yardage. Mom’s hysterical soprano voice carried across the field better than the loudest cheerleader on either side.

In the last game of the ’60 season I nearly died again—this time for my brother. The conference championship was on the line and we were the underdog playing a school twice our size. On the first play from scrimmage, on our own twenty-five yard line, I took the snap from center, took two steps to my right, and smacked the ball into John’s gut as he charged straight ahead between right guard and right tackle. I continued down the line, faked a handoff to the fullback slanting off-tackle, then faked a bootleg on toward right end. I turned around just in time to see John bounce off a wall of big corn-fed country boys. Still on his feet, he headed my way. We turned the corner and, amazingly, the field ahead of us was clear.

John veered to the right of me and a step behind and we sped toward the end zone, seventy-five yards away. Three defensive backs slanted across the field to cut us off. They had the angle. The student body was on its feet screaming, but rising above it all, as we raced past the fifty-yard line, were Mom's cheers.

“Come o-o-o-o-n-n-n, Jerry. Come o-o-o-o-n-n-n, Johnny.”  And then I heard a sound like a cat makes when you step on his tail.

I gauged the closure rate of the three defenders, running nearly shoulder-to-shoulder, and threw myself full length at their knees. In those days only sissies wore kidney pads, and real men still didn't wear facemasks. It was like being run over by a giant roto-tiller. As I lay face down in the turf, trying to will my pain-wracked body up off the ground, I could hear the play-by-play announcer yelling over the loudspeaker, “He's going all the way, and big brother threw the block for him.”  Then I heard that cat again, and the crowd went crazy.

I staggered to my feet and stumbled toward the bench. An ecstatic brother caught me from behind in a bear hug. I saw Dad standing on the sidelines. An unlit, six-cent Emerson cigar angled out of his half-smile. Our eyes met. There was just the slightest head nod—high praise from my old man, and we both knew it.

We won.

Baby brother went on to play small college football and I went to a big university and envied his collegiate gridiron glory.  Then, about ten years later, as he was driving a big combine in the field of our farm, he felt it begin to tip over and he started to jump off.  Somehow his head cleared in the nick of time and he got the big machine stopped.  It was insulin shock from diabetes, and he’s been injecting himself daily ever since. 

It was twenty-seven football seasons after our big night that we faced the biggest battle, only this time I couldn't block for brother John and Dad had crossed the goal line of life. John looked like the healthiest farmer in the county and was in the middle of his morning workout when he felt chest pains. A week later, on the night before his scheduled heart surgery, we both were sitting, casually dressed, in his hospital room when the nurse walked in with a tray of pain-inflicting tools.

“Which one of you is the patient?” she asked. Seven words have never before or since gotten my attention quite like that, but that's a story for another time.

The next morning John was on the operating table and the only interference I could run for him was intercessory prayer. In the middle of his angiogram his heart stopped. What happened next is what popular literature calls an out-of-body experience. John and I call it, in no uncertain terms, a wake-up call from God. The doctors applied the high-voltage paddles to his chest and a few minutes later I got to see him. I will forever remember the look of his face—he glowed like Moses after being in the presence of God on Mt. Sinai. I shivered, not from the cold of the Intensive Care Unit, as he told me, in a halting, husky voice, what he had just experienced. 

A few days later his by-pass surgery was successful.

Then, with his diabetes and heart history he had a new problem: It took what profit there was from farming to pay his health insurance premiums, so he rented out the farm and took a job as a janitor in the local school district to get on a company health plan.  Financially it solved his problem, but it was quite a psychological adjustment for a proud farmer, a member of the aristocracy in an agrarian culture, to be seen by other farmer’s children with a broom in his hand.  God in his grace humbles those whom he means to exalt. Brother John became a beloved friend and father figure to hundreds of kids, too many of whom had no father at home.

Fifteen years after that, just last year, he was diagnosed with Hepatitis C, a disease that had laid dormant in his body since he received a tainted blood transfusion during his heart surgery.  He struggled through six months of chemotherapy-type injections…successfully, and never once said, “Why me, Lord,” never stopped trusting in, witnessing to and singing the praises of the great God who brought him through all his trials.       

Oliver Wendell Holmes said, “Most men die with their music still inside.”  That won't be the case with my brother. His days are now filled with music leader duties, lay ministry and shepherding as an elder in his church.  Farming and custodial chores are just a sidelight.

I have often asked myself why my godly brother has suffered so many more slings and arrows than I, and been used so mightily by God through it all.  I think it’s because his shoulders are so much broader than mine.  Paul told the Corinthians, “And God is faithful; he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear.”[1]  And I have always believed that those whom God would use to do great things for his kingdom he first burnishes in the crucible of adversity.[2]  A warrior must first be toughened before he can do spiritual battle for the King of Kings.  My brother is tough—embracing him is like hugging a tree.

Our lives have taken such different paths since the gridiron glory days of our youth.  I have traveled the world while he has bloomed where he was planted, spending nearly all his life within fifty miles of his birthplace.  But we will be together again one day, in a pain-free healthiness and eternal joy beyond our comprehension, with our older brother, the “firstborn among many brothers,”[3] our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.         

This is not a eulogy, it's just that Wetterling men aren't very good at baring their souls to one another in person—that's a genetic thing, too, I guess—and I wanted him and the world to know how much I love him, and how much we both love the Lord, while we're both still in the game.

ENDNOTES

[1] 1 Corinthians 10:13a
[2] If you faint in the day of adversity, your strength is small. Proverbs 24:10
[3] For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. Romans 8:29

SPRINGTIME
ON MEDITATION MOUNTAIN
by JD Wetterling
April 20, 2005

 O LORD, our Lord, how majestic is your name
in all the earth.
(Psalm 8:9)

 I spent the first third of my life longing for perpetual summer, the middle third living in it, and am now back among four moderate seasons—the best kind.  Each season is pure joy at its best, entirely tolerable at its worst, and all are so beautifully, metaphorically Biblical.  I love living close to nature in this wilderness cathedral, with its miraculous cycle of birth, death and rebirth.  The spectacular beauty of all things new in the spring, the riotous, near-rain-forest growing season of the summer, and the glorious multi-colors of aged autumn leaves, followed by death and then rebirth, is an annual catechism of God’s grace.
     Just as dawn is the highlight of my day—I miss nary a one—spring is the highlight of my year.  I feel born again with every dawn, regenerated with every spring.  Twenty of the twenty-five different kinds of trees within 25 yards of my front door are busting their buds as I write this, the other five are evergreen.  The first dozen or so of 200 resident wildflowers, (found, photographed and catalogued at Ridge Haven so far by Karen, my bride of nearly forty years), are dazzling to my eyes as I hike to my favorite mountaintop.  The topo map labels it Frozen Mountain, but I call it Meditation Mountain, from whence cometh my help, [i] and I climb it regularly, praying with my eyes open as I ascend.  The first part of proper prayer is adoration, and I find it effortless amid the spectacular spring resurrection taking place all around me on this hallowed ground. The hike takes a little more work—it’s a 600-foot climb in a mile-and-a-half, an invigorating uphill outbound, a joyous downhill homebound, and it has the added benefit of keeping me at my varsity playing weight.      

I have an enduring fascination with the view from a mountaintop.  I think perhaps it has to do with a born-again desire to see the world through God’s eyes, or at least as I envision him seeing it.  But it’s also related to an earlier memorable time in my life when I saw a great deal of the world from above, through the bubble canopy of an F-100. The panoramic snapshots in my grey matter file that are closest to the front of the memory drawer are all photos from above:  Athens from 30,000 feet, the Swiss Alps and Mt. Etna emitting a swirling steam cloud on a clear day, the Azores and Midway way below, all alone in a vast expanse of water. 

What I see from my mountaintop these days most closely approximates some close-up photos from my file that few besides fighter pilots are blessed to see:  The forlorn, haunting hills of Scotland from just above the heather, the Italian Alps and the Anatolian Mountains of Turkey from down amongst the peaks, and the jagged karst and triple canopied mountains of Laos, wherein lies my soul-brother wingman with his F-100, in a grave known only to God.  These things and a hundred other things you have not dreamed of pass through my mind as I thank Him for my bountiful blessings and press my petitions on the mountaintop.

The sweeping vistas of majestic mountainsides in their vernal transformation, from the mauve of dense denuded trees and deep green of evergreens into a thousand shades of new green, shout at me, “I AM.”  Accenting the macro-view of this divine work of art in perpetual progress are white splashes of serviceberry and dogwood blossoms, and the opaque red of a billion maple buds, all on a crystalline cobalt canvas not yet permeated with the famous smoky blue of a Blue Ridge summer.  I'm overwhelmed with gratitude that I have been given eyes to see God's glory over so much of this abundant earth. [ii]

The micro-view is of bright yellow and blue and purple and red wildflowers at my feet, some no bigger than a squirrel’s ear, poking out from a mottled brown bed of last year’s leaves.  I find more eye-watering, intricate beauty in a single tiny wildflower than in the most massive architectural masterpiece ever constructed by the hand of man.  Jonathan Edwards, on his walks in the New England woods, was often moved to tears by the beauty of a wildflower.  O Lord, what I would give to climb Meditation Mountain with Jonathan Edwards.  I think you’d see two grown men weeping with grateful joy.  

Occasionally a turkey is startled to flight at my intrusion into his world, sounding like a helicopter rising from the underbrush.  Aside from that it is profoundly quiet on Meditation Mountain, no muffled whine of spinning turbine blades, no meadowlarks or red-winged blackbirds trilling the day away as in my flatland youth.  Perhaps it has to do with predator birds lurking in the dense woods.  At dawn and dusk the hills are alive with avian arias of praise—ecstatic cardinals and titmice announce the dawn and the soul-stirring yodel of wood thrushes at vespers closes the day—but midday the birds go about their business in silence. If there is any wind at all, it is just enough that I hear angels’ wings in the treetops.  Silence satisfies my soul, for reasons the Psalmist makes abundantly clear:  Be still and know that I am God. [iii]

It reminds me, too, of the most alone and intimate time I ever spent with my Creator, high above the earth in an F-100, flying single ship—a rare thing for a fighter pilot—between Taiwan and the Philippines. There was nothing but 360 degrees of sky and water, just as the world was at the end of the second day of creation.  The only colors were two shades of blue, illuminated by a blinding fireball. The dials of my navigation instruments, with nothing to lock on to, were slowly turning…looking…searching for something to home on, accentuating my aloneness as I raced across the wide waters.  Those who do not know the Lord are like that, racing toward a catastrophic end,  searching…searching for they know not what, absent the Divine Lodestar.  Praise be to God I have seen the star in the east [iv] and worship the Savior it announced, [v] and am comforted by the Holy Spirit he sent [vi] to graciously reside in the tumbledown shack of my soul. 

These blessed spring days I feel least alone when I am alone with God on Meditation Mountain, rejoicing in his magnificent handiwork and giving thanks for his unmerited favor.  He hears my pleas, restores my soul and sustains me with his mountain-cooled breath of life eternal.  It amazes me that the Holy God of the Universe could love this sinner so much.  With gravity on my side, I fly down off Meditation Mountain, happy as a Mockingbird at dawn.  No one can take away my joy, [vii] because, unlike the trees and wildflowers on Meditation Mountain, I’ve been promised just one cycle in my growing season, with vivid annual reminders of my resurrection to come.  My next spring will be an eternal one, in my Savior’s presence, with bliss beyond the meaning of words, [viii] in a place made new forever.   

ENDNOTES

Photo #1: new green of dogwood, new red of maple and old evergreen on crystalline cobalt, by The Master Artist.

Photo #2: dogwood blossoms, by the King of Kings.  Click on the thumbnails for a big picture.

[i] Psalm 121:1

[ii] Psalm 57:5

[iii] Psalm 46:10a

[iv] Matthew 2:2

[v] Luke 2:11

[vi] John 15:26

[vii] John 16:22b

[viii] I Corinthians 2:9
 

FOR CHRISTIANS ONLY: 
HOW LONG…?
by JD Wetterling
April 13, 2005

O men, how long shall my honor be turned into shame? (Psalm 4:2)

 Oh Lord, with sorrow and with shame,
We meekly would confess
How little we, who bear thy name,
Thy mind and ways express.[i]

The blogosphere is a great invention, on balance, and it’s making a positive impact on the world, but it surely is the wild west of 21^st century communication.  Lately I’ve been reading some Christian blogs, blog  responses, commentary, and open threads that make me cringe, and I'm not referring to those periodic pesky trolls.  It seems as if hate and rage have never been more popular, even among those of us who have been commanded to love one another.[ii] It appears that many have been taking lessons in human relations from attention-seeking terrorists, who were the first to realize how well rage plays in the media's mainstream.  If we spend prime time with the wicked, we feel their influence.  Among Christians, it is too often exacerbated by a paucity of humility in the midst of debate, the flip side of faith that forgets the definition of grace by which it comes.  One of my favorite Christian weblogs recently initiated an open thread with the disturbing plea, “Be nice.”  Even more disturbing, another Christian blogger I admire has suffered major battle damage from friendly fire.  And most condemning of all, a hugely popular secular blogger recently bemoaned a spate of hate mail from Christians. 

If we would be soul winners, a Biblical mandate for God’s elect, what we say and do on Monday through Saturday must match our Sunday morning manner.  If we are to demonstrate daily the reality of the gospel, we should start with a Sunday saved-by-grace smile and a tamed tongue.  

For a time in my youth my father sat on the local school board.  His “lickin’s” for my transgressions were worse than when he was just another farmer in the community.  His unsparing rod of choice was the closest approximation within reach when required, and he was very creative.  He never let me forget, whether he was applying the fear of God to this incorrigible kid’s backside or just warning me as I walked out the door, that the son of the Chairman of the School Board was being held to a higher standard.  Does not our Father in heaven, in whose image my father was made, do the same? Who would be drawn to the God we worship if we did not joyfully demonstrate the higher standards we inherit as his adopted children?   

Part of the problem is our nature.  Is it not intuitively obvious to the most casual observer, when analyzing any personality but ourselves, that human nature is basically bad?  Take an objective look at your kids or grandkids.  A Presbyterian friend and father of three lively boys says that anyone who does not believe in the depravity of man never had kids.  I say, “Amen.”

It takes a regenerated heart and a lot of grace to admit the same about oneself, as the Apostle Paul did:  “For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing….  What a wretched man I am.”[iii]  Actually, the Psalmist said it first:  “There is no one who does good, not even one.”[iv]  John Calvin emphasized this in his magnum opus, The Institutes of the Christian Religion, and even pagans and liberal Christians who think his theology is wrong prove him right daily.

The New Testament writer, James, has a sobering warning that applies to internet communicators.  In 1:26 he says, “If anyone thinks he is religious and does not bridle his tongue but deceives his heart, this person’s religion is worthless.” My fingers on the keyboard are an extension of my tongue, and when I get wound up they fly out of control even easier than my tongue, deceiving my own heart.  Sitting behind the protective veil of my computer screen I cannot see your nonverbal cries of pain, and I can say things to you I’d never have the nerve to say in person.  In the guise of righteous indignation I can vent and you can’t lay a hand on me from that distance.  Then the geometric progression of the internet lets my lousy witness circle the earth at the speed of electrons, demonstrating "my religion is worthless."  A computer is a megaphone all the world can hear.  If James were alive today he might rewrite 3:6 as follows:  Fingers on the keyboard are a fire, a world of unrighteousness when angry mind mates with machine.   

R. C. Sproul, Jr. may not have the towering intellect of his father, but he has a greater literary gift, in my view. He recently stated the Christian’s spiritual war plan about as well as it can be stated:  “The path to winning the culture war, the war out there, is to win the sanctification war, the war in here.  We will change the world only as we, by the power of His Spirit, change ourselves.”[v] When will we start gratefully treating others with even a fraction of the grace that God has showered on us?  R. C., Jr., has the answer there, too—when we change ourselves “by the power of His Spirit.”  Have you wounded your spouse or a friend with your razor tongue lately; or taken devilish glee in your brilliant literary dissection of a Christian blogger with a differing point of view; or demonically smoked the open thread field for Christ with your theological sophistry?  Repentance still leads to forgiveness for those who love the Lord.  And if you don’t feel repentant, maybe the Spirit doesn’t reside in your soul.

Solomon’s practical wisdom for living offers some divine guidance.  He said in Proverbs 7:3, “…keep my commandments and live…bind them on your fingers.”  That advice seems even more relevant now that computer keyboards are a proxy for the human tongue.  If you’re a lousy typist like me, you spend a lot of time looking at your fingers.  (When I was in high school, only sissies took typing class; real men-in-training, in their macho myopia, saw no need for secretarial skills.)  Matthew Henry interprets the proverb to mean wearing God’s commandments as a wedding ring, a badge of “thy espousals to God,” as an honor God has put on you, and an “ensign of thy dignity” as his child, a “constant memorandum to thee of thy duty.”  A potent metaphor!  Try remembering that and trashing your Christian friends as you type.  If that doesn’t paralyze your fingers, then your sin is worse than you assume.  A self-deluded heart saves the devil a lot of work.   

    Here’s the best antidote for an acerbic tongue and complicit fingers:  Bathe them in the pure living waters of Amazing Grace through penitential prayer.[vi]  Would you please pray with me?  O Lord, my thoughts are sinful all the time, and when my words and deeds are not, my motives are.  I desperately need your forgiveness every moment…and your constant restraining hand, or I am ruined.  Teach me to curb my tongue and put my hands in my pockets when I feel self-righteous, and to forgive as easily and often as you have forgiven me.  May I never forget that revenge is yours, not mine.  By the power of the Holy Spirit, make me a winsome witness for your Glory.  In Christ, my Savior’s name I plead, Amen.
 

The Ultimate Reality Check
by JD Wetterling
April 6, 2005

…his word is in my heart like a fire…I am weary of holding it in; indeed I cannot. (Jeremiah 20:9b)

Welcome to Midweekly Reality Check: Meditations on the Mountain.  It’s where I live and work, praise the Lord, not just something I climb like an aging hippy when I want to meditate.  I’ve had an uncommon life with blessings far beyond my deserving, and now I have the time and inspiration to emulate the psalmist, to ponder and proclaim, with passion and plain English, all that a gracious God has done for me.[1]  That will include, among other things[2] , a witness to the bountiful showers of God’s grace in my growing season (in progress), with vignettes of the angels who cultivated me: From a heartland farm through the Orient aflame to the Old World on nuke alert in a Cold War, at the tip of a high-speed spear—a single-seat jet fighter; from the metropolitan madness of post-modern America and Europe via Florida’s slothful Suncoast to the Delectable Mountains of the Blue Ridge; from birth to rebirth enroute to Glory beyond; from incorrigible country kid by way of Top Gun and urban overachiever to mellow mountain man.  I’m  a blessed soul, utterly u