Be
exalted, O God, above the heavens;
let your glory be over all the earth.
Psalm 57:11
Took my breath away. Honestly, it did. Years ago now, I was on the very edge of what
Canadians call “the bush,” in an old 1930s farm home in northern Ontario with
twenty-some people, fifteen or so members of one family, all of them
smiling. I was an honored guest, the
youth retreat speaker, but so were a half-dozen others, kids on retreat. When Dad prayed that first morning at
breakfast, I felt the blessing.
One afternoon Dad and his boys
butchered a cow. I walked out back to
watch. When one of the boys got on the
tractor and scooped up the entrails, I asked another one where he was toting
blood and guts. “We’ll dump it out back,” he said. I shook my head in the loud sputtering
of that tractor. “The bears’ll get it,” he yelled over the popping.
A wilderness family of 17 people so
full of love and spirit that I wished the world could take a seat at that long kitchen
table and get their own breakfast scoop of porridge. Faith breathed in that house and beamed out
there in the bush; and, young writer that I was, I knew, maybe for the first
time in my life, that I had to commit what I felt to words.
A few days ago, 25 years and a
half-dozen visits later, I returned from Mom’s funeral. Her husband died just a few months
before.
It’s a long ride up to the bush,
and we got there just before ten at night, the wake just about over. They’d
kept the coffin open for us, they said, because they knew we were coming. And there she was, Mom to 15 kids and 50+
grandchildren, most of them there in the church. Her mortal shell was there, but she was gone,
somewhere smiling, I’m sure.
Her sons had built the coffin, and
once we backed away the six of them together closed the lid. I’ve seen wreaths
laid at Arlington’s Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, but those six strong men
bringing the cover down over their mom’s remains, a cover they’d made with
their own hands, was a beloved gesture I’ll never forget.
Honestly, I’m not sure what David
means when he asks the Lord to exalt himself. It’s as if he’s trying to coax
some jittery kid out on the stage for a show that’s been rehearsed for weeks. I’m
still not sure God almighty needs a cheerleader. “Be exalted, Lord,” he says,
as if the Creator of Heaven and Earth is a retiring introvert.
But this morning I’m thinking that the
glory of the Lord is not just a perfect dawn or some stupendous miracle that
leaves us speechless. The God I know is
exalted in the lives of his saints, each of them, and in their going home, all
that devoted joy behind.
A couple of years ago I attended
the funeral of a deeply pious woman, mother of 15, who, long ago, with her
husband, made me want to sing in a house on the edge of the bush, bears for neighbors.
Up there in the wilderness again I saw, for the last time, the face of a woman
on whom God’s glory shown like some sparkling patina.
I don’t think David had a funeral in
mind when he ended this wholehearted psalm of praise with the words he did, but
I believe he would have been singing himself at the blessed eternity of the lives
of the saints, one more of whom is now home.
In her annual joy at first robins
and early daffodils, in her unceasing prayers for her children, in her lifelong
trust in the Lord, that woman, a cheerleader in the God’s glorious wilderness,
praised the Lord. God almighty was and
is exalted.
Maybe I can say it this way: I’m
thankful this morning that I was there to see David’s prayer answered, once
again.
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