“No one who is fit to live need fear to die.  Poor, timorous, faithless souls that we are!  How we shall smile at our vain alarms, when the worst has happened!  To us here, death is the most terrible word we know.  But when we have tasted its reality, it will mean to us birth, deliverance, a new creation of ourselves.  It will be what health is to the sick man.  It will be what home is to the exile.  It will be what the loved one given back is to the bereaved.  As we draw near to it, a great solemn gladness should fill our hearts.  It is God’s great morning lighting up the sky.”
… George Springs Merriam (1843-1914), A Living Faith [1876]

This devotion that came this morning was just for me, I think. On Wednesday a friend passed away, one for whom I had pulled weeds and with whom I had drank hot chocolate. That’s what one does when as a young man is invited to share in the life of a elderly widow down the street in his new neighborhood. Even when I had moved away and would return to visit my parents, she would still wave to Lori and I from her window, and through her daughter-in-law and my mother she would invite us over for a snack or visit.

When I got home this past Wednesday, there was a message from my mom that she had passed on. There are people I am a lot closer to, but Mamie Zinovich has a special place. My prayers go out to her daughter-in-law, Ruth, (who has been on this “list” for a long time) and the rest of her family and friends.