It often feels serendipitous—the way people have appeared in the nick of time, illuminating my path.
Those lantern lights are gifts from the kind and providential hands of God, whose timing is exquisite, knowing exactly what his children require to become more like the Son. The Lord knows who are his, and orchestrates seasons of suffering to whittle away the sin clinging stubbornly to our frames, sins working to diminish what we ought to become. How gracious of him to send people to help.
Some of God’s lanterns I have known face to face: beloved family and beloved friends, while others died before my time, saints of old, discovered through Scripture and biography, men and women whose devotion to Christ still illuminates God’s path, posthumously.
Other lanterns have been lesser-known people, waking, walking, and working in quiet fidelity, largely unseen by most.
Today, I remember one.
A man small in stature, frail, but a giant in the pulpit. By the time I fully realized how his preaching had marked my life, it was too late to thank him.
///
First, the backstory.
It is a long and winding one, but suffice it to say that when our young family moved across the country, we left behind a large Southern Baptist church, filled with cheery topical preaching; highly unoffensive: Seven Ways to Fix Your Marriage, or How to Keep Your Teen in Church, or Smart Christians Invest Money, and so on and so forth. Messages with three alliterated points, chop, chop, chop, quickly sprinkled with a Bible verse or two; services followed by hearty back-slapping, and Let’s grab lunch.
Although I was busy mothering, homeschooling, and scheduling play dates, I was living in the shallows, my soul slowly shriveling. Our family was in church each and every week alongside many kind folks, but I was not being challenged, admonished, or brought face to face with my sin, the importance of repentance, and the power of the Christ to redeem. I did not pause to think deeply and biblically about my soul. No, I did not pause to reckon with my heart.
God intervened.
Fast forward to a series of unusual happenings: an unexpected, painful cross-country move (which I would later recognize as a severe mercy) and my random discovery of The Pleasures of God by John Piper, which sparked a new delight in Scripture. As the months s-l-o-w-l-y ticked by, God captured my affections through His voice, the Bible, which opened my eyes to the entire purpose of my life: to know God, to treasure God, and to make him known.
My heart caught fire.
And because of this, our new church in a new state became a new concern.
That in itself is an entire chapter, but the breaking point came when the pastor handed each person a tiny jigsaw puzzle piece, a clever reminder to find our place in God’s puzzling world. Heartsick with ongoing cleverness, I went home, opened my dresser drawer, and offered my husband a thin piece of paper.
Can we try this one? I said, and pointed to the top of the (short) list of reformed, expository-preaching churches in our town.
I was done with event-driven churches, bougie coffee bars, and the wild devotion sweeping the West, pastors operating the church like a business or a country club: enticing people with fancy coffee, motivational talks, frenzied youth events, while continually tiptoeing around Scripture.
The following Sunday I held Jon’s hand as we walked into a tiny chapel, our four young children in tow, and found a pew in this new church plant.
That Sunday is forever etched in my mind; it was that different. The chapel was stuffed with people of all ages, families nestled together in pews, babies napping on their mothers’ shoulders, fathers and mothers and children and grandparents and friends with open Bibles, smiling, singing hymns and choruses with heart, with gusto. I remember that sweet ache I felt as we closed our eyes and sang In Christ Alone, a newly written hymn.
This, I thought, was a foretaste of heaven.
After praying, the pastor opened his Bible, invited us to do likewise, and, adjusting his wire-rimmed glasses, read the Scripture passage. He prayed again, and preached through the text, word by word. He soberly, and passionately, addressed what the text addressed: sin, God’s wrath, repentance, Christ’s glory, and divine grace. The meaning of the passage was the point of the sermon. He was not without humor, and at times we laughed, but his words were mostly urgent and serious, and it was good.
The service was unhurried, longer than the speedy one hour we were accustomed to, but never mind, I could have stayed all day. After, we stepped outside beneath the sky, a canopy of brilliant blue, and the crisp air permeated my lungs. I smiled and buckled our little ones in the van, my heart trilling with gratitude to God for his truth, preached. My soul had been swept heavenward: brought low in repentance, and lifted high by Christ the Redeemer.
This, this, was what church ought to be. Filled with Scripture, filled with truth, filled with loving admonition. Words preached in power, never dominated by the clock or by three tidy alliterations, never chased by apologies.
Over the course of the months to come, three things twinkled like stars in the pitch of night, brightening my mind:
- This church loved God and bowed to him as Sovereign.
- This church treasured the Bible.
- This church was a lantern in a dark.
///
Over the next year and a half, we befriended some people in our congregation, and occasionally hosted a small group in our home. In time, I learned that our pastor and his family had given up everything: their comfortable home, belongings, and a beloved congregation, to plant this church. As they walked in faith, someone handed them the keys to a brand-new home, a home they suddenly owned outright, mortgage-free.
This incredible gift freed our pastor to study, study, study, equipping himself to know and teach the Bible and, in turn, equipping the saints to do the work of the ministry. Verse by verse we traveled, enriched by the whole counsel of God. It takes a whole Bible to make a whole Christian, said Tozer, and he was right. There were, however, some murmurs circling, critical remarks about the excessive introversion of our pastor, and how it would be so nice to know him better socially.
I saw things quite differently: he was doing exactly the task God had called him to do: preach and teach the whole counsel of God. His time in sequestered study was for our benefit, and God’s glory. I know now that his preparation produced seeds of maturity in others, kingdom seeds that took root and still bear fruit today, decades later.
///
Eventually, our family moved again. I missed our church, oh how I did.
But my heart was ablaze; Bible-saturated. I now carried a lantern to hopefully light the way for others.
///
Nearly a decade passed, and our family was unexpectedly plunged into a deep well of suffering. It was a pitch-dark season, difficult to inch forward in the moonless night. Plagued by confusion and disbelief, and tempted to despair, I fled to 2 Thessalonians, where Paul comforts believers who are being persecuted.
And then, one particularly rough evening, I remembered our former pastor’s sermons from these passages. Tapping the keyboard, I searched for those sermons, preached long ago.
My computer screen lit up with the obituary of our former pastor, who had suffered and died at the age of 52, leaving behind his beloved wife and four children. I was stunned and tempted to say that he died far too young.
But I could say no such thing, because he had taught us the Bible, verse by verse, chapters pulsing with God’s Sovereignty, and reminding us that our days are divinely planned and numbered.
The beauty that remains is this: his lantern glows on, a candle burning brightly in the darkness.
“You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden. Nor do people light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on a stand, and it gives light to all in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven.”
Matthew 5:14-16
The Palest Ink 