Welcome to Standing in the Gates

No. While we are often encouraged to see it this way, the truth is that Social Security is a wealth transfer program, an entitlement program.  Money is taken from one person, and then given to another. To help us understand this it might be wise to go back to the beginning.

Social Security was a creation of FDR’s New Deal. On the income side it began with a payroll tax on employers, which was in turn matched by employees.  This money, however, was not set aside, invested, hidden under a mattress. No, it went right into the out-go side. A farmer can’t harvest his crop until after he grows it. With Social Security the aged harvested what they did not plant. My grandparent’s taxes, went, after Washington’s administrative cut, to checks written for their ancestors. The promise to them wasn’t that they would receive their savings back when they reached the appropriate age. Instead the federal government promised to tax the next generation, ad infinitum.

Washington showed its true colors when it, during the many years that it spent more money that it brought in, kept a budget for Social Security apart from the federal budget. When Social Security, because of the baby boom, began to run a surplus, Social Security’s income was brought into the federal budget. (Keep this in mind the next time someone suggests that for several years President Clinton ran a surplus. He did, in a manner of speaking. More money came in for several years than went out.  The promises to pay, however, far exceeded what was brought in. This would be as if I spent $5,000 on new furniture, while bringing in $3000. If my payments were delayed a year, and I spent only $2500 on my other expenses that month I could, though I shouldn’t, claim a surplus.)

That great big aardvark-in-a-python baby-boom bubble, however, is coming home to roost, as that generation approaches retirement. The cash they put in went to their parents, and to the annual budget. Washington did put IOU’s into a bank somewhere. Trouble is, what Washington means by IOU is, I Own You. That is, it is a promise to tax other people. Remember Washington has nothing that it did not first take from someone else.

Social Security has run headlong into three demographic walls. First is the baby boom already mentioned. Second is the pleasant reality that people are living much longer than they once did.  And thus, as in a Ponzi scheme, most Social Security recipients receive much more than they put in. Third, not needing actual children to care for them, thanks to the federal government, families radically decreased in size. And so we have fewer people paying for the needs of more people. Bankruptcy is inevitable.

What do we do? If push came to shove I would argue that we cannot accept Social Security. It is asking the state to take the wealth of others for our own gain. On the other hand, people were lead to believe, wrongly, that this was an old age insurance program. So I have no fervent beef with older people who depend on Social Security. I wish it were not so, but the greater wrong-doer here is the federal government.

If you are relatively young, however, you will not have to wrestle with the moral dilemma over whether to take Social Security. It won’t be there for you. When politicians insist that they will protect Social Security what they really mean is, “We’re going to keep taking your money, but we won’t have any to pay out to you.” No one ever wants to be in a position where they must trust Washington for anything. It is no insurance program. It’s a shakedown. Plan on being taken, but do not plan to receive. The Bible calls this going the extra mile, turning the other cheek. It’s what homeschoolers do every year, paying school taxes for schools they don’t use. The God of heaven and earth sees. And He, not Washington, it is who gives us our daily bread.

The story is told of the man who was rescued from a desert island twenty years after being shipwrecked. As he proudly showed his rescuers around the island they came to three grass huts. Our Robinson Crusoe pointed out that one of the huts was his home, and the other his church. When asked what the third hut was he replied, with a note of disdain, “That’s where I used to go to church.”

We can’t get along, and the reason is simple enough- we are sinners.  Now let’s break that simple answer down a bit, working back to front. What do we mean by sinners? I don’t, of course, mean unsaved. Of course believers, in the eyes of God, are just. That’s what we mean by “justified,” to be declared just. But Luther himself affirmed that Christians are simul justis et peccator, at the same time just and sinner. That sin causes us to believe things that are false. It means we have appetites and desires that are dishonorable. It impacts what we think, feel, say and do.

“Are” of course, reminds us that this is presently true of us. Sin is not behind us yet. We still struggle with it. A day is coming when we will no longer be sinners, but for now, while here, we are.

But what do I mean by “we?” Because we are sinners we are tempted to conclude that the reason we can’t get along is because people are sinners, and by people we mean, other people. “I” could get along with “you” if you would stop doing what you are doing.  This process, stay with me as we get grammatical here, happens in the plural as well. That is, “we” could get along with “you” plural if “you” plural would quit doing what “you” plural are doing.

Now the truth is that the other guys, whether we are talking to or about them, are sinners. There are heretics in the land, wild elephants let loose in God’s vineyard.  There are also sheep who think it wiser to calm the elephants down, rather than drive them out of the vineyard.  To be more clear, one reason “we” can’t get along is because sometimes we’re not we together. Wheat doesn’t and can’t get along with tares. To profess the name of Christ is not to possess the name of Christ. Because they are sinners, wisdom means recognizing that. It means some appropriate level of skepticism, some fruitful usage of shibboleths.

But we must not lose sight of the hard truth that I am a part of we. I too am a sinner. I need to be skeptical most of all about myself, and my motives.  My moral indignation over your error, or your refusal to confront evil just may be a smokescreen to keep me from having to confront my own evil. A necessary consequent of “We are sinners” is “I am a sinner.” And as a sinner my desire is, if I must confess my sinfulness, to forget that confession as quickly and as deeply as I can.

There is a right perspective on the Elephant Room 2. I’m happy to confess that host, questioner and answerer all badly dropped the ball. The problem is that I’m happy to confess this is because it distracts from all the balls falling on my own feet. Because they are sinners, we need to call out sin. Because I am a sinner, I must always confess my own sin, to be on guard against proclaiming before our Lord, “I thank you Lord that I am not like other men. I roundly condemn heresy wherever I see it, and in turn condemn those who won’t condemn heresy. I read all the orthodox blogs. And tithe only to the purest coalitions.” Instead, may we, those who name the name of Christ, along with the Father and the Holy Spirit, cry out, “Lord, be merciful to us, sinners.”

As a rule, men are relational dolts. From an early age girls develop sophisticated communications arrays, whereby they are able to simultaneously translate what anyone says, whether with words, expression or body language, into what they actually mean. They know from birth that when a genteel southern woman tells them, “Well bless your heart” that war has been declared. Men, on the other hand, are tone deaf and body language blind.

Women in turn understand the intricacies of social interaction. They don’t have to be told to write thank you notes; they compose them on the way home from a dinner with friends. They don’t have to be told to send out birth announcements- they start filling them out while in labor. Men, on the other hand, bring their favorite beer to a buddy’s barbecue not as a “host gift” but to make sure there is enough. We watch SportsCenter during labor.

Which is why, perhaps, western culture has constructed one day a year for us, to make it simple. We know our marching orders- a card, flowers or candy, perhaps a gift and a nice romantic dinner for two. We can do that, once, or twice, or four times a year- birthday, Mother’s Day, and the hardest one, our anniversary. When we succeed on these days we tell our wives that we really are trying. We really do love them, and want them to know. We’re fighting our man weaknesses as best as we are able.

What we ought to be doing, however, is fighting her woman weaknesses. The Bible calls us to dwell with our wives with understanding (I Peter 3:7).  Women, by and large, crave security. They are given to relational worry. When husbands and wives fight, often the husband is merely annoyed, while the wife fears the end is near.  Peter doesn’t call us to turn our wives into men, but calls men to see it from her point of view. We fight her fears by putting her at ease.

A godly husband, then is not one who four times a year takes up the aggravating task of trying to be relational, in order to keep his wife from getting grumpy. Instead a godly husband is tasked with the constant call of communicating his love and commitment to his wife. This is not a few days a year, but every day. Too often husbands get frustrated, even offended by this hard reality.  “Doesn’t she think I’m a man of my word? I promised ‘Until death do us part’ and I meant it.”

Such reasoning shows our relational weakness. She doesn’t want to know that she can count on you to grimly see your vow through to the end. She wants to know that you would make it all over again today, and tomorrow, and the day after that. She doesn’t want to know that you will stay with her, but that you want to stay with her.

A year ago on Valentine’s Day I bought my wife a nice gift, and we shared a nice meal together.  There were not candles on a linen covered table. There was no table. Denise was in a hospital bed, having been diagnosed with leukemia just days before.  Chemotherapy had already begun to erode her appetite for food. Assurance, however, she still desired.  She apologized for our surroundings for our celebration. What I heard was “Please tell me we will be okay.” I replied, “Our location is this- we are in the loving hands of our heavenly Father, who will never leave us nor forsake us. And I, by His grace, will joyfully walk with you every step of the way. There is no place I would rather be than right beside you.”

My counsel for you today is to get the flowers. Enjoy a nice meal together. But tomorrow stop, hold her chin, look her in the eye and tell her, “I give thanks to God for you. I would marry you all over again. You are a joy in my life.” And then, the day after that, do it again. Repeat.

Whether its source is old-fashioned American individualism, new-fangled notions of libertarian social theory, or the pietistic error of sealing the gospel off from positive social change and sealing our sins off from negative social change, we have, as a culture and a church come to the dubious conclusion that what goes on behind closed doors is nobody’s business, and affects only those behind the doors.  We, as a culture and a church think when we take our pants off with someone not our spouse, as long as everyone is there voluntarily, the worst thing that can happen is that God might get miffed at us. And He, of course, is rather famous for having a rather forgiving nature.

Six innocent men went to their death at Ai because a different man, Achan, took for himself booty from Jericho. Who would know, I suspect, Achan wondered. Why would we think sexual immorality is any different? “Husbands and wives stray. What’s the big deal? Happens all the time. “ It does indeed happen all the time. And when it does bombs explode in the homes of little children.  Hearts are scarred. Fear replaces the departing spouse. These children grow up thinking the deepest betrayal possible to be normal, acceptable, just a part of life. That there is nothing they can depend on. They grow up believing that mommy, or daddy loved their sexual appetites more than they loved them. And they believe rightly.

It could, of course be worse. One need not be married to witness the extent of the destruction that follows in the path of sexual immorality.  Simply visit the inner city. There boys without fathers grow up to too often become criminals. They likewise become baby-daddys, creating still more fatherless children. There girls, never having the loving nurture of a father, too often, seek comfort and connection in fornication. And we, if we are concerned at all, are concerned about the economic disadvantages of all things. We think condoms are the solution.

It could be, indeed it is, worse still. Men and women, not married to one another, rollick. Believing their behavior affects only them, they are in turn flabbergasted when another person enters the equation. Here though the child does not end up growing up in a single parent home. No, here the result is murder. 

Go and stand outside your local abortion mill. You are unlikely to meet there the poor, bewildered girl whose parents threatened to kick her out of the home and who was lied to, told that all she had inside her was undifferentiated cells. No, what you will meet there is someone angry that anyone would dare discourage her from murdering her shame. Babies both come from sleeping around, and get in the way of sleeping around. So they must be dispatched. Nothing must be allowed to stand in the way of our desires.

 You cannot separate the great evil of abortion from the raging fornication that defines us as a people.  Thus more birth control is not the answer. You cannot bring the fire of lust to your bosom without knowing that not only will you be burned, but that the same fire will consume your own home. You cannot witness the flames of Moloch that burn the unborn and forget it all starts with a spark, of illicit desire.

Sexual folly gives birth not just to our own deaths (Proverbs 7: 21-27), but to the deaths of the innocent. Our groping hands are not mere private moral stains. They are instead covered with the blood of our own children. Our cultural obsession with sex isn’t a social problem. It is the war machine that creates the wretched daily stench of thousands of dead bodies, buried in dumpsters. God give us the grace to repent.

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The Apostle Paul writes to the church at Corinth “Do not be bound together with unbelievers; for what partnership have righteousness and lawlessness, or what fellowship has light with darkness?” (II Corinthians 6:14). The text at least ought to raise the question in our minds. Would Paul’s admonition here preclude close, personal friendships with those outside the kingdom? To answer properly we need only to answer this question- is such a friendship being bound together? Is it a partnership? Is it fellowship?

This text, for instance, clearly forbids believers from marrying outside the faith. There is no human relationship more tightly bound than husband and wife. I would suggest in turn that this text does not preclude us from doing ordinary business with unbelievers. I am not bound together with my internet service provider. I am not in partnership with the local newspaper. I am not in fellowship with the dairy farmer who provides my family with milk. Where it gets tricky is in between these two extremes. Can a Christian doctor share a practice with a non-Christian? And can we have close personal friendships with those outside the faith?

Though it’s not terribly dramatic, the answer, as usual, lies in wisdom. Nearly seventeen years ago, on the day I wed my dear wife, the man standing next to me was not a Christian. When we first became friends in college he professed to be a Christian. After college he left that profession behind. Our friendship continued and it continues to this day. I think of this man often, and even prayed for him and his family yesterday during corporate worship, that God would be pleased to grant him new life. We speak on the phone a few times each year, catching up on the news, and remembering our times together in the past. On the one hand, this relationship is “close.” On the other, it is not.

My life, day to day, is not caught up in his. My focus, day to day, is on the lives of my wife, my children, and the saints at my church. I have neighbors that are “friends” that are outside the faith, neighbors that I likewise pray for. There is nothing wrong with such friendships, as long as they are loose. But my soul can only commune with those whose souls commune with our Lord. Whatever we might have in common, in terms of the image of God, with unbelievers, we are defined by our faith.

Each Lord’s Day we remember that on that day we gather with all the saints around the world, the church militant. We remember that we are all lifted up into the heavenly places, to the New Jerusalem where we meet our Lord, and join together with the souls of just men made perfect (Hebrews 12: 22-24.) We remember that we join together with the church triumphant. We remember that we are one body, because we confess one faith. Our loyalty, our hesed, or covenant love, is for those within the body. We are indeed free to reach out to those outside the kingdom, remembering that such once were we. We are not free, however, to juggle our loyalties.

My beautiful wife loved nothing more than to beautify.  She devoted herself to creating a beautiful home. She planted flowers, bushes and trees outside. Inside she hung, placed, painted and etched.  Even when she was not well, this was where her heart was. Over the course of the last nine months of her life, most of it spent in sundry hospitals, she watched, I suspect, more Home and Garden Television than all of HGTV’s executives combined.

Her pursuit of beauty, however, did not have its end in a pretty house, but in a godly home.  She worked to beautify me, and our children.  This morning while I shaved I looked to the shelf she placed between our sinks. There she had placed two small plaques. One reads- “Cast all your anxiety on him because He cares for you” (I Peter 5:7). The other reads, “The Lord is good to those whose hope is in Him, to the one who seeks Him” (Lamentations 3:25). I cried in gratitude to hear her voice, and to hear His gospel.

As the tears dried, and I began to mentally work on this brief piece, I thought about the simplicity of it all. My eyes passed over God’s Word, and everything changed. I thought in turn about what usually enters not just my eye gate, but ear gate. Like most Christians I live in a decadent culture, and consume far too much of its “wisdom.” My eyes are filled with images made in Hollywood, my ears filled with the wisdom of Nashville. My soul is a veritable sluice gate through which pours more filth than my ancestors could have dreamed of.  It should not surprise me then that I don’t speak with the wisdom, the grace, the discretion, the honor with which my ancestors spoke.

Nor should it surprise me that my wife spoke into my life such graces. She adorned her home with God’s Word, and so adorned her life with the words of life.  A godly woman builds up her house. She did not know, when she placed those plaques on the shelf, that one day I would be anxious about living without her. She did not know that the loss of her light would dim my hopes. She did not intend to whisper to me this morning from a better country. But she did. She whispered the gospel to me.

The next time you are alone in your car, turn on the oldies station. Sing along with as many songs as you can. Then turn off the radio, and begin to sing the Psalms.  Then ask yourself what I ask, having failed the test so miserably- who has the words of eternal life, the Beatles, or Jesus?

Uptight evangelicals, which might just be a synonym for fundamentalists, are quick to decry the baleful influence of the broader culture. It’s all too terribly true. Better, however, that we should celebrate the influence of God’s Word.  Treasure in, treasure out. Hope in Him. He cares for you.

In the great war launched in Genesis 3 between the seed of the woman and the seed of the serpent there are two other great battles. On one side of the battlefield stands the enemy. The seed of the serpent hate God, would kill Him if they could. They hate His people, and all that they stand for. But they have a battle waging inside themselves because, for all their sin, all their fallenness and depravity they still bear the remains of the image of God. Their great dilemma is that because they are made in God’s image they want to live in a world that makes sense, that is understandable, and coherent. Because, however, the objective reality is that they are under God’s wrath, they must construct a world with no God, or at least, no judgment.  It is impossible, irrational.

The other great battle is the mirror of this one. We are the seed of the woman, reborn, remade, reflecting the image of the Son, the express image of His glory. But we still sin.  We have an old man with which to do battle. We want to serve God, to manifest His reign, to become like Jesus. But, we also want to be loved, to be respected, and, perhaps most dangerous of all, to be normal. Which weakness the devil is rather adept at exploiting.

Consider, as an example, politics.  Because Jesus is our King, because He has set us free, we don’t, generally speaking, want bloated government. Because we aspire to honesty, we want a government of law, that will stay within its Constitutional bounds. Because we honor our fathers in the faith who labored through such issues with great care, we understand that just war is defensive war. Trouble is, the broader culture has veered so far from these basic ideals that to espouse them is not to be considered wrong, but to be considered unsophisticated, ignorant, crazy, unreasonable.

And so we retreat. We back down. We begin to scout out a new line of defense. We move leftward. Oh we’re careful to steer clear of the convictions of the seed of the serpent. We don’t go over to the dark side. We just get close enough that they won’t laugh at us.  We do all that we can to maintain loyalty to Christ, while looking sane to the world. And we fail.

Entitlement programs, all of them, even the ones we like, are unconstitutional, unbiblical and indefensible.  We cannot defend stealing from our neighbors and burdening our children with crushing debt for these programs, while politely arguing that we shouldn’t for those programs.  Preventative assassinations, bombings and wars are also unconstitutional, unbiblical and indefensible. We cannot defend spending billions of dollars and thousands of lives for this strategic objective, but object to doing the same for that strategic objective. Abortions, all of them, even the ones that hide our shame, keep the numbers down among the underprivileged, or take down the human result of rape or incest are unconstitutional, unbiblical and indefensible. We cannot support candidates or legislation that seek to slow, limit, regulate murder.

My point, ultimately, isn’t about politics, but about our unbelief, our fear. We are willing to confess Christ before men, as long as the Christ we confess is palatable, normal, reasonable. We are willing to be Abraham’s kin, as long as we can pitch our tents close to Sodom. I fear, however, that while we think we are Lots, the truth is we are Lost.

We live in a post-Christian west. It will become Christian again not when we can gently reason the world back home, but when we are again willing to be fed to the beasts in their stadia.  Our faith is eminently rational. It is not in the least reasonable. 

I began asking this question myself long before Tim Tebow was even born. I was a little boy, deeply committed to the Pittsburgh Steelers. I remember praying that they would beat the Oakland Raiders in an upcoming playoff game. When my prayer ended fear set in- what if there were a little boy just like me, somewhere in Oakland, praying that the Raiders would beat the Steelers? My father comforted me by explaining that no real Christian would ever pray for the Raiders.

The truth is God does decide, and He does care. He not only decides who will win the Super Bowl, He decides who will win the game of hearts I play with my children. He decides, or rather decided, everything. There are no places, let alone no playing fields, where God stays on the sidelines. 

We need to remember that everything that happens must have a sufficient cause. And we must remember that every sufficient cause eventually traces its way back to God before time. This happens because that happened. That happened because this other thing happened. Eventually this takes us to “God said, ‘Let there be light, and there was light.’”

Of course God works in and through secondary means.  He gives the gifts. He creates the weather. The one who numbers the hairs on our heads softens the ground where a defensive back slips, and a playoff game ends on an eighty yard touchdown pass. There is no thing, no cause, over which He is not sovereign.

Isn’t it, though, somehow beneath His dignity to be concerned with such things? Yes, of course it is. God has only one concern- the manifestation of His glory. And that is how He determines what will happen in a football game, and what will happen in an election, and what will happen in a cancer ward. His goal isn’t ultimately to make little boys in Pittsburgh happy, or little boys in Denver happy. His goal, which cannot be thwarted, is to show forth who He is.

Does that mean He plays favorites for the likes of outspoken Christians like Tim Tebow or Drew Brees? Of course. Because God loves those who are His, even as He loves His own Son, God is certain to favor them. That favor, however, isn’t a path to winning a football game, but is instead the path to true victory, becoming more like Jesus. God isn’t glorified in giving Tim Tebow unlikely victories that somehow redound to God’s glory. No, God is glorified in making His children, including Tim Tebow, more like His Son. Sometimes that means leading them to the thrill of victory. Sometimes it means leading them through the agony of defeat.

The more difficult and pertinent question for me isn’t does God care, but should I?  I don’t pray for Steeler victories. I do pray that I, along with my parents and my children, will make memories together. And I pray that we would have grace to accept His providence, even when the Steelers lose.

The Question: If “The Fall” was caused by just one sin from the very first humans and all humans since have sinned, what are our chances of remaining sinless in heaven?  I assume we would still have our gift of free will, so surely someone would sin?

There is no chance whatsoever that we will, once we are in heaven, will fall again into sin, for at least two important reasons. First, God has so promised. The picture we are given of the eternal blessing we receive in Christ includes our being utterly pure, white, without spot or blemish. That we will stay in this state will at least come to pass on the basis of God’s promise. Remember when God stood with Joshua looking out at the city of Jericho and its rather substantial wall. God said, “See, I have delivered the city into your hands.” God’s Word is so certain that what He has spoken, though it has not yet come to pass, that it can be spoken of as in the past tense. I call this tense, “God’s prophetic past.”

Secondly, and perhaps ironically, it is precisely our free will which will be the means by which God’s promise is brought to pass. All moral beings, men, angels and even God Himself are free to choose. All of them, however, in their freedom, always choose according to their nature. God, for instance, could sin, if He so desired. But He does not so desire, for He is altogether good. He is “free” to do evil in one sense, but not free in another sense. No one forces Him to do good, but He will always and only do good.

When we enter into our reward, we will be fully and finally sanctified. That is, we will be fully and finally holy. There will be no more sin, no more desire for sin in us. We will have no more sin nature in us; we will be altogether good. We, like God Himself, will be free to do evil, were we so to desire, but we would never so desire because we will be altogether good. This is one of the greatest promises of eternity, that the struggle within ourselves between the old and the new man, between the Spirit and the flesh will be over. We will be at peace; we will enter into rest. Our warfare will have ended.

The more difficult question is how it is that Adam and Eve, who were created good, could in turn fall into sin in the first place. That answer is well outside the scope of these little missives. I do, however, address it in my book Almighty Over All, as well as in our sound teaching series, “How Strong Is He?” if you are looking to look into that conundrum. It is good and right for us to mourn the fall, to look deeply into all the destruction wrought by our parents’ first sin. But we must in turn look forward to the fullness of the promises of God. We will walk with Him in the garden again, unashamed and at peace. This is what Jesus has brought to pass for us, His beloved bride. We will be what we were made to be, and will stay so forevermore. 

  

Because we are modernists and Gnostics we love to pretend that symbols and rituals have no meaning, that all that matters is what is in our hearts. Because we are humans, and image bearers, we find we cannot escape symbols and rituals. When my wife and I were married almost twenty years ago there were precious few surprises.  Black tux for me, white dress for her. Traditional hymns were sung, traditional vows were taken. She processed with her father, and recessed with me. And in between, we exchanged rings- simple, traditional, gold rings. The only twist remained within the tradition, inside the ritual. Inside our rings we had inscribed Joshua 24:15- As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.

Too many pundits tell us that if we want to have a successful marriage we need to make Jesus the center of it.  He is the glue, the center, the guide. There is wisdom here, but also danger. Is Jesus a means to a happy marriage? No, He is the end. Jesus does not exist for our marriages. Rather, our marriages exist for Him. Denise and I married not for ourselves, but that we might serve the Lord. We committed from the beginning not that I would die to self for her sake, nor that she would die to self for mine. Instead we would both strive to die to self for Him. We would pursue not our own happiness, but His glory. And in losing our individual lives, we found our one life together.

Jesus did not, forty days ago, take Denise from me. She was never mine to begin with. He placed her under my care. He blessed me with her wisdom, with her example, with her love. But she was then what she is now, and will always be, His. 

I too belong to Him. I asked Him to give me forty days to mourn- to devote time, space, energy to entering into my loss. Those forty days have drawn to a close. Crossing this barrier, stepping out of the ash-pile, however, hasn’t changed my heart.  Indeed despite recognizing the objective wisdom of my friend who suggested that I give myself over to mourning for forty days, I find myself not wanting to let go. I know, as I knew from the beginning that moving past this forty days will not end my sadness. I fear, however foolishly however, that it will end her, that she will pull further away from me.  I fear that I would be giving up the ghost, which seems to be all I have left of her. The dust of her death has become my familiar familiar.

The irony is the matching fears. That is, in putting that ring on Denise’s finger, in that ritual pregnant with promise and meaning, I was afraid. Could I be the kind of godly husband she deserved?  Would I be faithful in leading her? It is the same fear that haunts me now. Will I honor her memory by being the man she helped make? Will I be faithful to her memory, and our pledge? And the mirror of that fear is in the mirror of the ritual. On this, my fortieth day of mourning my beloved, I remove the ring she put on my finger. I cried through putting her ring on, even as I cry in taking mine off.

The ring reminded me not that my life was committed to Denise, but that our lives were committed to the Lord. Its absence, I pray, will remind me still of the message inside. As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord. God called me to be a husband for almost twenty years. He has called me to be a servant, a soldier, a disciple and a friend for always. Pray that I would be faithful.