Still Here

 April 11, 2023

“What is your favorite Easter memory?” My son Nathan asked this question at our pastor’s prayer group this morning. Some mentioned family experiences, others of Easter preaching, a couple spoke of people who came to Christ or were baptized on a particular Easter Sunday. Nate said simply, “I’m still here.”

A week before last Easter, we weren’t sure he would be. I was in Cuba on a mission trip and to attend my first Cuban wedding when I got an urgent call on Wednesday of Holy Week. It was Linda. “Nate has been taken to the hospital with a brain bleed,” she said through her tears. I was thunderstruck. I told my hosts what had happened, called our mission leaders so they could pray, and spent the rest of the evening trying to, but not finding the words to pray. To this day, I am thankful for St. Paul’s words that tell us, “the Spirit…helps in our weaknesses. For we do not know what we should pray for as we ought, but the Spirit Himself makes intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered” (Romans 8:26). Wordless prayers are still prayers.

My team leaders arranged an emergency flight home, and the next evening I was standing by Nate’s hospital bed listening to him tell of being able to witness to the nurses the night before. He was home later that week.

It’s been a whirlwind year. He’s received treatment for the tumors inside his brain, two of which have disappeared, and through it all, we’ve all experienced in a deeper way the wonder of our salvation. From last year when we didn’t know if we would have another Easter together, to Sunday when he and his youngest daughter sang, “Our sins they were many, his mercy is more.” It surely is, and because it is, the reality of eternal life is more to me than a mere doctrine written on pages of a book. 

St. Paul said it: “If in this life only we have hope, we are of all men most miserable” (1 Corinthians 15:19). Christ is risen! He is risen indeed! Nate is still here, and every moment we have is holy, for life is sacred, both now and eternally.