I was looking for an email from someone who recently emailed me a kind birthday greeting. He and his wife are incredible people of prayer and he is a retired pastor now. They have been influential in my life and encouragers toward my first shaky steps into any kind of ministry work.
As I looked to find and re-read his message, another email
came up not written by him, but he was included in the people this message was
sent to along with me and two other people.
This message jolted me as I read who had sent it. It was from a precious
young man who had a need for prayer. Who was facing life or death on this earth
and instead came the latter. I had not deleted his message. He passed away that
Spring. From my way too overloaded pack
of undeleted emails rose up his message again that he had written from three
years ago to the day, Nov. 18th, 2011.
I re-read his message, his plea, his hope, his fears, his
truth, his life in the balance. He wrote
his new diagnosis in the fullness of complex scientific names and reframed them
into words we could then understand. I
noticed as he wrote of the detailed procedures and the risks and the effects
and the hardship that all of these words and descriptions would bring in
paragraph after paragraph, were written in black ink.
Then, as he wrote out the possibilities of what could work,
what would possibly be an extension of time, what would be given in life and of
life of hope and prayers and God’s unfailing hand; these paragraphs were
written in green ink. His hope for life,
his trust in God, his faith, his joy and his comprehension of God with him was
undeniably all as uplifted in living as the green of his ink to the greenest of
living leaves and grasses that rise in the sunshine and glisten in the dew.
Though the greater amount of the letter was black as the
circumstances swirled in darkness and ugly truth, his life and hope in Jesus
lived bright and green. He signed his
letter with his name in green ink. And yes, he lives. He lives with the LORD even more than he did
on earth, where the throne of the King of kings has an emerald bow all
around. Revelation 4:3 He left the black ink words that
had their power only here and in that moment, but the power of faith, hope,
life and living is forever an evergreen and is now and will be an eternal
life.
His letter rose up again, three years later to the date for
me to see the fullness of life still here in the green of his ink. November 18th. Eighteen is the
number for life in Hebrew. Chai. His fullness of life in heaven is now and his life left life living
here on earth too, as it runs through the faith of his three little boys and the
mother of those children who presses on in life, in hope and love. Life is
here, life is now and life will be again. As Jenny writes through the process of living through grief and finding solace in her Savior, she shares the truth in grace in her blog, Still Here And Still His.
Jeremy Erickson’s good words remain in his songs, his writing
and his speaking that have been compiled and continue to rise up to the glory
of God and the fullness of life in Christ.
Life.
Evergreen.
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