Comfort to Spare (XIV)

It's unlikely that Grandma and Grandpa read Comfort to Spare together. Mealtime's family altar rarely deviated from the Holy Scriptures. But a few scribbled notations most definitely suggest that someone read it. What's more, it's in very poor condition, its binding in dire need of glue.

I can only assume both of my grandparents read it, probably separately, but what I can't know is how they might have responded, what they were thinking when they read the gospel Van Baalen preached. 

This much I know: he's not cliched, nor is he flowery, nor does he ornament his ideas with blessed spiritual follies. I thought he'd be, but if anything he's brusque. The very first text he chooses seems a strange, even unfeeling choice, and more than a little oddball: "If thou faint in the day of adversity, Thy strength is small." He begins, or so it seems, by belittling.

I think it unlikely that grief counseling today would begin with a riff on Proverbs 24:10, but Van Baalen's Banner obituary claims his personality required some getting used to; he was not particularly timid. The obit claimed his bluntness was behavior others needed to look past. 

Grandpa fell to pieces when he opened the front door that night. Grandma, on the other hand, tried to be kind to those whose job it was to carry the horrible news. I couldn't help wondering what they thought when they opened the book to that first verse?

Maybe nothing. Some people read words but not ideas. Maybe they simply waded through the words without associating them with their worlds and their experience. 

Then again, maybe not. Maybe they quite adeptly read themselves into that verse and his commentary. Maybe it felt as if the man knew them inside and out.

A cousin once told me that when he was a boy, his family visited at my grandparents' house frequently. In every visit, he said, there would come a time when talk turned deeply toward the Lord. Those sessions seemed obligatory to him, as if a visit between relatives wouldn't register with the Almighty unless something was said about the Almighty and our helplessness before him. This cousin was, back then, too young to participate but too old not to take note. There they would sit, he said, the conversation steering into the darkness of their spiritual lives. Soon enough, Grandma would do what she could to steer the conversation elsewhere. She knew that darkness was a danger; the sheer abundance of sin and guilt too effectively kept grace off the stage. "Your grandma tried to make the rest of 'em giggle," he told me, giggling himself.

So what possibly might the two of them thought when they opened the book. "If thou faint in the day of adversity," like Grandpa had and did, "thy strength is small." Van Baalen goes on to say God's words "are not words of sugary sympathy. He merely looks us over, and sizes us up," he says, and then, "Callous? Unfeeling?" he asks. A page or two into this book of consolation and comfort, and those words certainly came to my mind.

But what about them, my grieving grandparents. I could make a case that my practical grandmother, and her deeply spiritual husband appreciated that verse. Grandma might have read those words and decided that this preacher had a good head on his shoulders. My soul-sick Grandpa, on his own somewhere, might have read "thy faith is small," and said to himself, "That is so true, in'so?"

But Van Baalen says no. The great God isn't callous and "is not without feeling. He does not rebuke, as well he might. He merely tells us what he thinks of those who, under sudden calamity, go to pieces just as quickly."

I was skeptical, but the more I read, the more I couldn't help but think that Comfort To Spare was made easier for both of them because what the writer says hit so very close to home. He was, after all, speaking to people he recognized because they sat in pews, people just like my suffering grandparents.