Roll Call

Some of my earliest memories are of being with my family in church, singing hymns.  I loved hymns—they were my first exposure to poetry, though I didn’t know it then.  My favorite hymn when I was a very little girl was “When the Roll is Called Up Yonder.”  I had no idea what those words meant, but I loved the resounding, triumphant sound of it:  “When the roll is called up yonder, I’ll be there.”  Then one day, in first grade, my teacher mentioned that she needed to take roll.  And I had a word epiphany—I understood that “roll” was when my name was called and I said “here” to let the teacher know I was present.  That’s what that hymn meant, I realized.  When God called my name in heaven, I’d be there.

I could vividly imagine the whole scene.  Everyone I loved would be in heaven, talking and singing, until God sat down at a huge desk and got out an enormous fountain pen.  One by one, He would call out our names, and when we said, “Here!” He’d dip that pen in ink and mark us present.  He was actually going to call my name!  Once I knew what the hymn meant, I loved singing it even more.  I’ll be there.  I sang it with absolute certainty and such joy.

I never lost that certainty of my place in eternity, but as I grew up and my life turned out to be less of a fairy tale and more of a cautionary tale, I lost my joy.  I forgot what living as a Christian even meant.  In recovery, I began to reclaim my faith.  But my joy?  That came more slowly.  Last spring, God used a person I’d never met to show me how and why to reclaim that joy.

When Monty and I moved here, one of the first people we met, through church, was a precious woman in her eighties who instantly embraced us, both literally (she gives the warmest hugs) and figuratively (she took the time to get to know us).  Every time I see her, she hugs me and smiles and talks to me.  And her joy in and love for Jesus ministers to me every time.  It shines through her eyes and in her words.  Last spring, her son Greg died, at fifty-six years old.  I had never met Greg, as he lived in a different town in a home for the developmentally disabled.  But I went to the funeral because of his mother.  And, in a way, I met Greg there.

Before the funeral started, there was a slideshow of pictures of Greg throughout his life—with his family and friends, playing with his beloved basset hounds, and laughing with his dad, who had died several years earlier.  As the pictures went by, Greg’s favorite song “I Can Only Imagine” played over and over again.  This is part of his obituary:

“Greg loved everyone with his whole heart, didn’t know a stranger and wasn’t afraid to pray with or for anyone anywhere.  Greg lived his life to the fullest, and had more joy in his 56 years than most people could only hope to have in their lifetime.  Greg loved music, Elvis Presley, Reese’s cups, video games, hugs, Jesus, riding on lawn mowers, Bassett hounds, and Casa Bonita’s – not necessarily in that order.  Greg worked for various workshops for the developmentally disabled for the last 40 years.  His life was a living example of the Bible verse Ephesians 4:32:  ‘And be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving one another just as God also forgave you in Christ.’”

During the funeral, several of his friends, also developmentally disabled, stood up and spoke about Greg.  One after the other, they talked about how much their friend loved Jesus.  Some couldn’t speak and just pointed.  Some struggled to talk through their tears.  All conveyed the same simple message:  Greg loved Jesus.  A friend of the family conducted the funeral service, and he, too, reiterated Greg’s love for Jesus.  He said that Greg would go up to people, whether he knew them or not, and ask, “Do you know Jesus?”  Greg’s faith was profoundly simple, based on only three tenets—He loved Jesus, Jesus loved him, and he would be in heaven with Him someday.  And that faith gave him such joy that he radiated it—I saw it in the pictures of him.  I saw it in his friends.  It’s what I’d seen in his mother that had so drawn me to her.

I came home from Greg’s funeral wanting the kind of joy that he had shown throughout his life–the kind of joy that attracts others to Jesus.  We talk all the time in recovery about carrying the message: as people who have experienced the miracle of recovery, we’re called to share that message.  Greg’s example of carrying the message was simply to live in the joy of Jesus, certain of his eternal future.  And everyone who met him saw and heard that message.

I wonder what would happen if all of us who love Jesus let our love shine like Greg did.  That’s how I want to carry the message.  I pray that God uses me as He would use a lighthouse—that on a very dark, lonely night I could be the light that draws a lost soul to Him.  What if a desperate, drowning person were to look for the light of hope in me and not find it because I’ve let a lack of joy put it out? There could be tragic, eternal repercussions.   As a follower of Christ, I have the enormous responsibility and privilege of loving Jesus and letting that love attract others to Him.  Greg did that.  And I am changed because of it.

I want to live my life like Greg lived his, with the love of Jesus shining through me.  I’m so grateful to be able to count on the love of Jesus.  And to know, without any doubt, that when the roll is called up yonder, I’ll be there.  I’ll get to see Jesus face to face.  I’ll be reunited with the people who’ve gone there before me.  And I’ll get to meet Greg.  I can only imagine. . .

For Greg: