Passage Four: Him Up Close
I had sat and listened
To the preacher preach his version
Of we die and go to heaven or to hell
And let this be a warning to us all
And I was looking forward
To the funeral being over.
And then he asked
If any in attendance had a story
They would like to share
And a woman seated near me stood.
She said Rick had been her mother's
Next door neighbor for many years.
She told of how often it had been
She had asked her mother
If she needed help with this or that,
And had been told that Rick
Had taken care of it already.
She told us that one evening
She had been visiting her mother
And they had been sitting on the front porch.
When it came time for her to leave,
She told her mother she needed to go in,
Because it had gotten dark
And she didn't want to leave her out alone.
Her mother told her not to worry,
That Rick was out, sitting on his porch.
She knew because there was a certain light
He always kept on until he went in.
Her mother told her
Rick always kept an eye on her
And he would always holler over,
"Faye, time to go in now. I'm going in."
I did not know Rick well.
He was the brother of a friend.
He was a big guy with a gentle way
Who had raised some hell
In his younger days,
From what I understood.
I feel confident in saying, though,
That it never entered into Rick's mind
That in loving his neighbor
He was doing something
To get himself to heaven
Or to avoid a punishment in hell.
I do not know what one calls
Things done in the hope of getting a reward
Or things done to escape a punishment,
But love and goodness are not parts of it.
We cannot come to the Father out of fear,
But only out of love for Him.
The love of life, in all its forms,
And in all of us, is the love of Him,
For He is the life in all.
We do not need
To try to comprehend Him,
In all of His magnificence.
Our glimpses of Him
In these places and these parts,
In these instances and moments,
In each and every one of us,
Are of Him up close.
