Lindsay Clancy, the Nepal floods, and King Harald V

At this writing, the jury is deliberating in the trial of Lindsay Clancy, a Massachusetts mother charged with murdering her three small children at their home in suburban Boston. She has not disputed that she killed them.

However, her lawyers argue that she should not be held legally responsible because she was suffering from severe mental illness. Prosecutors counter that she made a calculated decision to intentionally kill her children and should be held legally responsible. If convicted by a jury, she faces life in prison without parole.

The case has generated national publicity in part because it raises issues regarding mental health and postpartum psychosis (for more on the mental health side of this story, see Erin Kerry’s “A Christian response to the Lindsay Clancy case”). For many of us, the story is truly horrific because three children died at the hands of their mother, a tragedy beyond description or comprehension.

The Nepal floods are making headlines for similar reasons. Allison Johnson, one of our website contributors who has visited Nepal and worked alongside fellow believers there, reports that concrete sludge swept away “bridges, buildings, cars, and people with tremendous force.” She adds that while more than 1,500 people are missing, many live in remote villages and are not registered, so it is extremely likely that the numbers are much higher.

Allison calls the tragedy “incomprehensible devastation” and urges us to pray today for the victims and for those ministering in the midst of the crisis.

By contrast, the death of Norway’s King Harald V at the age of eighty-nine is making headlines because he was Europe’s oldest monarch, not because his passing at such an age feels like a tragedy. Some deaths, such as Dolly Parton’s homegoing this week at the age of eighty, are marked more with gratitude for the person’s life than with shock at their passing.

A comment on my mother’s obituary

My mother’s birthday was August 27. Reflecting on her long life, I felt prompted to go back to the online obituary my brother and I wrote for her when she died eighteen years ago at the age of eighty.

Scrolling through it, I found for the first time a note our home church pastor had posted on the obituary website two days after her passing. He wrote: “Sharon and I send our thoughts and prayers to two of our special preacher boys, Jim and Mark. In this experience you will find that God’s Grace IS sufficient.”

Bro. Cecil Sewell passed into heaven himself five years ago, followed by his wife Sharon earlier this year. He initiated the bus ministry in 1973 that invited my brother and me to church. 

Sharon was the tenth-grade Sunday school teacher who led me to faith in Jesus. Bro. Sewell led my brother to personal faith a few months later. We will be in heaven with them for eternity, largely because of them.

While everything I do in God’s kingdom is a continuation of their ministry, they ministered to me yet again today when I read their comment on Mom’s obituary. Bro. Sewell had personal experience from which he wrote: some years earlier, he had presided at the memorial service of their only daughter.

It’s been said that our children are supposed to bury us—we are not supposed to bury them. And yet Cecil and Sharon’s faith and courage in that service marked all of us who attended. Knowing them, we were not surprised. But we were blessed.

Now they have ministered to me yet again after Mom’s death and their own homegoing. I was reminded of the text in Bro. Sewell’s beloved King James Version: “he being dead yet speaketh” (Hebrews 11:4).

Drift roses and eternal echoes

The drift roses in my backyard are dying. Not just because they are mortal, as are all plants, but because an incurable virus is slowly killing them. The nearby azaleas are not victims of such a disease. But with a typical life span of fifteen to twenty years, they are dying as well, just more slowly (unless a hard freeze kills them).

We are all in one category or the other. Some of us have cancer or heart disease growing in our bodies, but don’t know it. Like the virus killing our drift roses, it will eventually kill us. We may even die quickly, as with a “widowmaker” heart attack caused by blockage in the left anterior descending artery, the first symptom of which is often death.

The rest of us are dying more generically. We can still get ALS or die on a highway next week. But the mortality rate, excepting for Enoch and Elijah, is still 100 percent.

My purpose in offering this sober reminder is not to discourage you but to encourage you: God has given you this day to love your Lord and to love your neighbor. You may not get another day on this planet, but you have this one. And every word you speak and every action you take in serving him will echo in eternity.

Changing the past today

This is why Paul’s injunction is an imperative: “Whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God” (1 Corinthians 10:31).

Simple tasks such as eating and drinking can glorify the Lord if done in the leading and power of his Spirit. Starting a bus ministry or teaching a Sunday school class can change the eternal trajectory of eternal souls. Leaving a comment on an obituary can bless a family member eighteen years later.

Your prayers today can even alter the past and the future. Since God transcends time, he has all of eternity to hear your next prayer. And he knew of your present petitions years ago and considered them in his actions then. The same is true of future events that your current intercessions can affect.

For example, the Lord knew eighteen years ago I would be writing this article today. I believe one of the reasons he prompted Bro. Sewell to leave his obituary comment then was so I could reflect upon it today. Such is the omniscient grace of our omnipotent Father.

So, as a wise mentor once advised me, stay faithful to the last call you heard from God and open to the next. One day, someone will say of you, “he being dead yet speaketh.”

I often note that we cannot measure the eternal significance of present faithfulness. Let’s claim this fact with joy today, to the glory of God.