It is quiet around here these days. Not that it is usually noisy, unless a train is going by, but when only one person is in the house there is not much conversation going on, unless I am on the phone or talking to myself. And I usually only talk to myself when I am at the office, I don’t know why.

Randy has been in California the past few days with our sons and families, enjoying playing with the grandchildren. He was there, as I mentioned earlier, because he had an opportunity to drive with our son, Seth, as he moved his (Seth’s that is) mother in law’s belongings across country from Pennsylvania to Colton, CA. They had a safe trip, only one flat on the trailer hauling the car behind the Penske truck, in downtown Las Vegas, and gorgeous vistas all through the mountains of Colorado and on into Utah. Randy said they were taking all kinds of pictures, it was so beautiful. And that was just along the interstate highways (I-70 and I-15). They didn’t even go into any of the national parks.

Randy is flying home today and I pick him up from the airport in Charleston. He will have been gone a week. It was an unanticipated journey, but we are glad he could accompany Seth on that long trip. It is always better to have another person along on such a journey. And it is a joy for us to help our kids. Besides, Randy got to see his grandchildren a few weeks earlier than planned and that was to him, “like Christmas”. Sometimes God gives us these special gifts.

So I have been rattling around in this big house, as a friend commented, the reverse of what had gone on for most of the past year and a half, when I was in California with the children and grandchildren and Randy was here alone in this big old house. I wonder if he talked to himself….

I do not mind being alone, if you are wondering. I like quiet and I am not afraid to be by myself, even at night. But I will be glad when Randy is back. We enjoy being together. God has blessed us with a wonderful relationship and we both are amazed at His kindness to us.

I’ve been reading a little book of two essays by Malcolm Muggeridge, the text of the inaugural addresses he gave back in 1978, of the Pascal Lectures on Christianity and the University, at the University of Waterloo, Ontario, Canada (the book is “The End of Christendom”, Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.). Very interesting reading. I need to read Blaise Pascal (1632-1662) on whose writings these lectures were based. Anyway, Muggeridge, toward the end of the first address, says something which resonates with me, not because I identify with his perspective of old age and his particular bodily experience, but I identify with the tenuousness of life, the fragility of life in this body which he speaks of, and the insight gained because of it. Let me quote the passage here for you.

“You know, it’s a funny thing that when you’re very old, as I am, seventy-five and near dying, the queerest thing happens. You very often wake up about two or three in the morning and you are half in and half out of your body, a most peculiar situation. You can see your battered old carcass there between the sheets and it’s quite a tossup whether you resume full occupancy and go through another day or make off where you can see, like the lights in the sky as you’re driving along, the lights of Augustine’s City of God. In that sort of limbo, between being in and out of your body, you have the most extraordinary confidence, a sharpened awareness that this earth of ours with all its inadequacies is an extraordinarily beautiful place, that the experience of living in it is a wonderful, unique experience, that relations with other human beings, human love, human procreation, work, all these things are marvelous and wonderful despite all that can be said about the difficulty of our circumstances; and finally, a conviction passing all belief that as a minute particle of God’s creation, you are a participant in his purposes for his creation and that those purposes are loving and not malign, are creative and not destructive, are universal and not particular. In that confidence is an incredible comfort and an incredible joy.”

Yes! What more is to be said? I know this reality for myself. I have lived enough along the edges of life, being also the edges of death, to know in the deeps of my being the truth of both. We are but a breath. This makes every breath I breathe a gift, special, not to be taken lightly, not to be squandered. God has given me back my life so many times; to me, life, living, means loving God and trying, yes, trying because I am still not very good at it, to love my fellow humans and give them the place in my life I reserve for myself. To love and serve the living God with all I am is all I want to do, to be “a participant in his purposes for his creation”, knowing they are good, that these purposes are something much bigger than “me”. This is worth living for. This makes me get up in the morning.

Even when I feel insignificant, or am tempted to feel that way, when I feel powerless, I am comforted, as Muggeridge notes, because I am part of something much greater than myself. I can with confidence know I have meaning; there is meaning to my life, my existence on this earth. And flows from that, joy. I am free to delight in God’s good world, even when things are not altogether right in the world.

This confidence, this joy and comfort and meaning to life do not flow from within us but are realities only because of the Incarnation, God come in the flesh, in the person of Jesus Christ. Only in embracing that reality, accepting that truth, receiving Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior of one’s life, can any of this which Malcolm Muggeridge spoke of and I have been talking about be experienced. Outside of that, you are on your own, and none of the above applies; no confidence that you are part of something which transcends your own existence; no comfort, no joy no sense of meaning in life. All that person can have is what they make up for themselves…and it will die with them.

But while there is breath, there is hope. And I would hope for everyone to take seriously the words and claims of Jesus Christ. He alone holds hope for both this life and the next, time and eternity.

I do not mind being alone, because I am not truly, nor do I feel, alone. My closest companion is the living God, by His Spirit who lives in me. He it is who enables me to delight in His good world, in the beauty of nature around me; to joy in my friendship, companionship, and loving relationship with the husband “of my youth”; to delight in family members and friends; and to know the satisfaction of being occupied with good work. Life is good, because the Giver of Life is Good.

I asked last week for you to pray for my brother, Robert, who had surgery which removed his spleen and part of his pancreas. These problems stem, I believe, from his colon cancer surgery of a few years ago. He has gone home from the hospital and is in pain but improving every day. Please continue to pray for his healing. There are specific conditions which follow this kind of surgery so pray for that complete healing and protection.

Another request I have is for my daughter in law, Monica, Jeremy’s wife, who is carrying their third child and could go into labor at any time. She was supposed to be due in September but is approaching week 36 (next Tuesday, August 25) and the doctor is not sure the baby will wait until then. Her last child (our grandson Emmanuel) came fast and furious; they barely made it to the hospital. So pray for everything to go well, the other 2 children to get to their caregivers quickly (my other son and daughter in law) when the time comes, Jeremy to be there or get there quickly, etc.

Thank you, you who pray for us and these needs I bring up. You bless us.

Jacque