On Tuesday of this past week, my parents called to inform me of a death in the family–my uncle’s death, my mother’s baby brother. A compassionate listener. The one who, in a world intoxicated by petty factions and fixated on disintegration, pursued peace without forsaking conviction. The one who could forgive and really mean it. The one who found the straggler and walked alongside. The hopeful one. The cheerful one, ever young. The one who carried me on his shoulders when I was just a boy, took me on hikes up Pikes Peak, and introduced me to the majestic backwoods and streams of Colorado. I owe my love for the outdoors as much to him as to my dad.

I sat down on the back stairs and listened to my mom struggle to talk through her tears before saying goodbye so that she could call my siblings scattered over the world. I sat stunned. A sunny, summer day and the many plans it held suddenly halted. Memories fell over me in waves and I wept. Hannah sat down and put her arms around me and we cried together.

I feel like I’m saying “Goodbye” to those whom I love with greater frequency. I do not look forward to that part of growing older. William Faulkner once wrote, “Between grief and nothing, I will take grief.” I agree with him wholeheartedly, but grief is a derailing and unpredictable thing. It slows the spinning world down and offers some easily forgotten perspective, but it always slips in through the back door and rearranges the entire house of my heart. I keep stumbling over furniture that has moved, memories I had forgotten were tucked away in the attic are now sitting right in the middle of the living room. I find myself tearing up at unexpected times.

We are bereft, are we not? But we are not without comfort. We are not without hope. Blessed be God, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles so that we may comfort each other (2 Corinthians. 1:3-4). The One who says, “As one whom his mother comforts, so I will comfort you and you shall be comforted” (Isaiah 66:13). “Blessed are those who mourn,” Jesus said, “for they shall be comforted.” And then we read this stunning verse in Revelation 14:13, “Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord from now on. Yes,” says the Spirit, “that they may rest from their labors, and their works follow them.”

My uncle was a man of God. A peacemaker. A top tier engineer. A water man. He spent 36 years of his life supplying water to the nearly half a million living in Colorado Springs and the many more who live in that part of Colorado. He knew those mountains, each and every landmark, each and every stream. He was the one responsible for a decade long project that provided water from the Arkansas river through 90 inch diameter pipes and stored it in massive, underground tanks, for times of drought that often cripple the area—a project 825 million dollars in the making. His cutting edge engineering feats can be found throughout the state. He had his enemies, of course. You can’t be the head guy of anything without having someone hate you, especially when it comes to water supply. I remember visiting several years back and learning at the mini-family reunion dinner that someone had planted a bomb in his mailbox that past week. It blew the mailbox off the front of the house, but did little other damage. My uncle dropped the news like it was no big deal and laughed off the incompetence of the bomb maker. Uncle Gary was a man accustomed to conflict, but he never leveraged his power for domination; instead, he served. And he served with a happy heart. Literally. Every morning, he used to visit each of his employees in their office space and say, “How are you?” And “What can I do for you today?” Even those across political lines came to his retirement to acknowledge his incredible ability to build relationships across impossible gulfs. He performed remarkably difficult negotiations and I suspect even his former enemies will turn out for his memorial service. Much of the city will, that’s for sure.

Gary Bostrom.
My uncle.
My friend.
The peacemaker.
The water man whose last name means “camped by the waters.”

How fitting that they found his body in a stream. He was riding his bike on a trail when he suffered a heart attack that, as far as they could tell, killed him right away, pitching him off of the bike and down into the water. Almost as if God knew what he was doing in this story and decided to tie it up with a bow. A beautiful story. But the rest of us get to keep living without him now. My mother, without her baby brother to encourage her. My grandmother, without her youngest to cheer her. His wife and four kids get to figure out what it means to live without him, without his counsel, without a chance to say one last “I love you” and “Goodbye.”

Better to bow in the house of mourning, than to hand jive in the house of celebration—that’s scripture. Here, in the house of mourning, my mortality comes to mind. In the house of mourning, the limitations of time come to mind. In the house of mourning, I recall that all time is Kairos time. Pregnant. Meaningful. Infused with divine purpose.

Here, in the house of mourning, that great hymn comes to mind:
The day is past and gone,
The evening shades appear;
O may we all remember well
The night of death draws near.

We lay our garments by,
Upon our beds to rest;
So death shall soon disrobe us all
Of what we here possessed.

Uncle Gary was part of the swirling milky-way of God’s grace in my life, part of the gratuitous beauty and generosity of a God who keeps giving and giving and can’t help himself. Even death is a gift for those in the city of God. It announces a home going. The end of an exile.

We are bereft, are we not? But alive. Living the story because God woke us up again today. All this huffing and puffing, this play and work, planning and hoping, eating and laughing are but the interim between the beginning…and the end. The end that is but another beginning. And someday we will meet beyond the Jordan and Uncle Gary will take me into the backwoods of Heaven and show me his favorite streams slipping down the mountain and take me on his favorite trails, whether I like hiking or not. Until we meet on the other side, Uncle Gary, “I love you. Goodbye.”

“Redemption Song” by Kevin Young

Finally fall.
At last the mist,
Heat’s haze, we woke
These past weeks with

Has lifted.
We find
Ourselves chill, a briskness
We hug ourselves in.

Frost greying the ground.
Grief might be easy
If there wasn’t still
Such beauty—would be far

Simpler if the silver
Maple didn’t thrust
Its leaves into flame,
Trusting that spring

Will find it again.
All this might be easier if
There wasn’t a song
Still lifting us above it,

If wind didn’t trouble
My mind like water.
I half expect to see you
Fill the autumn air

Like breath—
At night I sleep
On clenched fists.
Days I’m like the child

Who on the playground
Falls, crying
Not so much from pain
As surprise. I’m tired of tide

Taking you away,
Then back again—
What’s worse, the forgetting
Or the thing

You can’t forget.
Neither yet—
Last summer’s
Choir of crickets

Grown quiet.

God boiled down all the laws down to two: first, Love God; second, love others as you love yourself. That’s all fine and good, true to the core, but I’ve never honestly learned how to live out the last four words: “…as you love yourself.” Sometimes I love myself too much. Most of the time, I don’t love myself at all. This isn’t a ground-breaking confession, it’s just the simple truth common to us all. Could it be that one of the longest, hardest battles is learning how to love myself as God loves me? Here’s a beautiful reminder from one of my favorite singers, Andrew Peterson. May it help you live a better story this week.

Some are lonely, most asleep,

but we have come to make them leap!

painting by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner

I was smacked by the miraculous last Saturday. The Aspen trees were gilded in gold along the mountains in Buena Vista, CO as I drove to my grandfather’s memorial service. He was a tree farmer and I had the distinct feeling that all those trees had dressed in their finest to celebrate his life. I had the distinct privilege of saying a few words as the eldest grandchild and so I shared a portion of what I posted last week in the blog; namely, that while I haven’t developed a love for planting trees, my eleven-year-old son has. Mystery of mysteries.

Although they hardly knew each other, my son has some of his great-grandfather’s loves coursing through his veins. As you may have read in last week’s blog post, my grandfather sent a package of seeds that he had collected many decades ago and my son planted those seeds on the day my grandfather died. So this is a direct quote from what I said to all those people at the memorial service: “Who knows if they’ll take? But I know that if they don’t, it won’t be my son’s fault. He goes out most mornings in the dark, before school, and waters them from a spray bottle he stole from his mother’s stuff.”

Oh ye of little faith.

Twenty minutes after the service, we were all enjoying a luncheon hosted by my grandfather’s church. I was in the middle of a sandwich when I received this text from my ecstatic son: “Dad, we have four Japanese and one Australian growing. Yea!”

That’s right! On the day of my grandfather’s memorial service, those seedling broke through the ground as a grand gesture of new life and reminder to those of us with fragile faith of God’s sovereignty.

Some might call it “dumb luck” or “chance.”

Seriously? I call it a God who delights in the details. He lavishly flings forth such remarkable, unmistakeable, glimpses into his soveriegnty. If he pulled back the curtain and showed us all he has done and continues to do, down to the most minute detail, we would be unmade on the spot.

So I thank God for my grandfather, yes, but I give greater thanks for a God who decided it would be pretty cool to have my grandfather’s seeds break ground on the day of his memorial service.

God delights in the details! Mystery of mysteries.

I worked on his tree farm for one summer when I was in junior high. He woke me early to work the property, to get sap on my clothes and to harden my hands for manhood. He tried so hard to nurture in me an affection for seeds and saplings and to care for them. My proclivity to day-dreams, to laziness, to playing when I should be working, was admittedly frustrating to him. After a day of work, we used to roll into the house at around 9:00 pm to the smell of warm food and the chastisement of my grandmother.

“He’s a growing boy, Ed! You can’t keep him out this late. He needs rest and a good meal!”

He’d mumble something about every boy needing to learn how to work and there was a particular inflection in his voice that made it obvious how he felt about this boy in particular. I never doubted his love, but I also never doubted his opinion of my manhood: he was perfectly clear on what he thought of my work-ethic and, as everyone knows, manhood and work ethic were inseparable in his mind. They were, of course, both right.

I remember one particular night when my grandparents had guests over and there was really no place to duck and cover except up in my grandfather’s loft which was his bedroom. So I clambered up the stairs and brooded around, looking for something to do. I found a framed stitch-work hanging on the wall of Proverbs 22:29: “Do you see a man skilled in his work? He will work before kings. He will not work for unknown men.”

There was something enchanting about that little promise, something enticing in all the right ways. Something inside me awoke that night to the possible rewards of hard work. I realized that the rewards for hard work were not the grades or the financial windfall, but the possibility of doing great things with great people. In that moment, I realized why, to some degree, my PopPop worked so hard and why he asked me to work hard too. He wanted to do great things for great people and he wanted the same opportunity for his grandson.

I didn’t do the mental math at the time to recognize that my grandfather was already working before a king he knew and loved; namely, The Lord, Jesus Christ. However imperfect his love for Jesus Christ and for people, my PopPop had faith, like a seed, and he knew in no uncertain terms that it was the most important seed in all the world. He was faithful to nurture that seed in himself and in others and I’m the beneficiary of his efforts.

Now, I can say with the Psalmist that “the lines have fallen to me in pleasant places; Indeed, my heritage is beautiful to me” (Psalm 16:6) and “you have given me the heritage of those who fear your name” (Psalm 61:5).

I haven’t really developed an interest in planting and nurturing trees…but you’ll find this interesting: my son has. They hardly knew each other and yet there is something in my son that loves the seed and sapling. One month ago, he started a mango tree from seed and it’s still growing in my living room. Of his own accord, my son started a maple tree from seed last summer. He’s almost irritating in his attention to detail around those trees. I never told him to plant them or pluck the lower leaves or weed around their base or water them, but he does it all nonetheless. On the day we heard that PopPop died, we prepared four flats with soil and planted some seeds that PopPop collected decades ago. It was our small way to honor his life. Who knows if they’ll take? But I know that if they don’t, it won’t be my son’s fault. He goes out most mornings in the dark, before school, and waters them from a spray bottle he stole from his mother’s stuff.

Robert Louis Stevenson asked that these words be carved on his tombstone: “Here he lies where he long’d to be.” So it will be for my grandfather when his remains are buried in Michigan. His body will be a part of the loam of the earth, the loam that he loved, but he will be enjoying the new resurrection. In both cases it will be true: He lies where he long’d to be and his faith, like a seed, grows in his great grandchildren’s lives. Already, the mountains of this needy world are being peopled by the saplings he planted.

Today, I will join my grandmother, my uncles and aunts, my cousins, and my siblings in honoring my grandfather’s life. I can tell you with all certainty that I will thank my God for this rare heritage of faith. I will remember that stitched proverb. “Do you see a man skilled in his work?” Yes. Yes, I do. And, happily, he’s at work for the King of kings and Lord of lords right now in a place where there are no beetles, aphids, or diseases to threaten his work. There is no pain nor Alzheimer’s disease.

Now that you’re gone, PopPop, we’ll remember that “the mercy of the LORD is from everlasting to everlasting upon them that fear him, and his righteousness unto children’s children; To such as keep his covenant, and to those that remember his commandments to do them” (Psalms 103:17-18). While you have had to live in this broken world with a breaking body and mind, God brings you now to the other side of the smudged window where you see “face to face.”

PopPop, you’ve run the race and now you’ve heard what we so badly long to hear ourselves: “Well done, good and faithful servant.” I love you, PopPop. I’ll see you on the other side.