Salvation and Sorrow — Small Stories of a Big God

“Let not your hearts be troubled. Believe in God; believe also in me. In my Father's house are many rooms. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, that where I am you may be also. And you know the way to where I am going.” John 14:1-4

It all started with Jeff’s Aunt Joyce wanting us to look for a grave.

She is the remaining voice on that older generation – the only one who has not passed on – the youngest sister of Jeff's mother. Our family historian. I think every family must have one. In my daddy's family, it was Mary Jane Tanner Jenkins, his older sister, and then the keeper of all Tanner history became my cousin Perry.

Anyway, Joyce wanted us to take a little trip down the road to Oakland Cemetery to find the grave of a distant relative, Benjamin Thrower, father of Choice Thrower, who sadly died in the West Point Battle a week after the war had already been declared over. Those little details give you a pretty good idea of a conversation with sweet Aunt Joyce.

The afternoon was sunny and unusually warm, so with comfortable walking shoes on and the dog on her leash, we entered into the Historic Oakland Cemetery, established in 1850, named Oakland in 1872. If you like wandering around in cemeteries, it is a beautiful one, lined with uneven brick pathways and oak trees. Daffodils were just beginning to raise their yellow heads. A slight breeze moved the sprouts of green under our feet as we stepped up onto a raised bed, surrounded by an iron decorative fence that marked off the four graves. The white marble was worn; the many words that described the life of Benjamin were weathered to the point that his tombstone was unreadable. His wife Elizabeth’s marker was clear; it was erected sacred to her memory; she had been born in Spartanburg, SC in 1804, she had died June 28, 1866. She had felt the loss and pain of losing her son Choice the year before she died.

There are always those little traces of life still clinging to the dates and inscriptions of tombstones if you pause for just a moment.

We walked around for an hour or so, exploring the pathways, peering into the marble sepulchers. Reading the names, taking note of the different styles of monuments and grave surroundings. The thing that got to me was the dates. These were reminders that life then was much harder than life now. The loss was constant for some families. Within one family plot, the little headstones would line up with the names of sons and daughters, and I would find myself doing the math; 2 years old, 2 years old, oh, only 1 year old when he died. She was 3. He was 10. This little one was 14. She was 26, "beloved wife and daughter", and "the light left" their life when she passed away.

As the sun became low in the sky, we passed through the graves of the young men from Kentucky and Alabama and Texas dying in battle, far from home. I felt the tears sting my eyes. It was so sad I couldn’t stand it.

There was one gravestone that lifted the sorrow. She too had the name Georgia. And under her name the simple inscription, still bold after a hundred years read "Who – Though Born a Slave Died the Child of a King". I climbed the steps to see if there were more details of this woman and found this; "In Loving Memory of Our Colored Mammy". Beloved as a family member, she had been buried in the family plot.

This was bold and powerful love. This was in a cemetery that was segregated until the 1960s. Yet here she was, in death as in life with the family who loved her. Daffodils were starting their bloom next to her grave.

Death. It haunts our thoughts on some dark nights. We keep it at bay, held down by marble and granite, tucked away behind iron gates, brick walls. It would drown me with sorrow if I didn't have the salvation of worship and the sound of hope singing in my soul.

But I do.

That is where I had come from earlier in the day. Church. A gathering of women who believe as I do that the very Spirit of God lives within us, never to die. It is a promise, long-promised, that the Son of God fulfilled. It is why we place our hope on his death. He did not remain dead, and he told those who placed their hand in his nail-scarred one, that they would do the same. And so we rejoice in all things. Even the hard things of sorrow. This life is the temporary one. The one to come is eternal. And wonderful.

I get a taste of it when we sing together. I hear Mac’s voice strong and clear, “God, I’m running for your heart ‘til I am a soul on fire…” The tears that sting my eyes here are reminders of joy, not the tears of sorrow.

I get a taste of it when I hear the impassioned cries of my spiritual sisters calling out to their Father they know well and trust to their deepest souls. Praying together is a powerful thing. I hear them echo each other’s requests, I hear them read God’s promises back to Him, I hear them hunger for His mercy and justice. And I know He hears our lifted, united voices.

Because we too, were born as slaves. Slaves of this world. Slaves of our own sin and the sins of others. Slaves to death and its dark judgment. But, like Georgia Harris, born a slave, we too will die the child of a King. And in His Kingdom, there is life.

This is why we sing. It is why we pray. It is why we sit at the feet of our teachers to hear His Word spoken with power and in truth. It is why we tell of his presence in our lives. It is why we speak his name: Jesus. The One who came to defeat death. The One who came to erase our slavery to sin. The One who changed our sorrow into gladness. The One who came to bring us life eternal, never-ending, living forever as a child of the King.

For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. John 3:16-17

Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die. Do you believe this?” John 11:25-26

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i3i-_VWxOAc

Third Day (Mac Powell) and Brandon Heath – Creed by Rich Mullins

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RqgpxzDHkr4

Third Day Featuring All Sons and Daughters

Soul On Fire