sheffield birthday vision

I was just thinking about Charlie Sheffield. He died the other week. The last few years of his life were spent very bent over, walking with a couple of canes, but he never let any infirmity stop him from being involved in the real life of our church. He stood, or sat, as a greeter on Sunday mornings, he helped out with the Wednesday dinners, he added his sunny demeanor, the sunnier because it shone through a face wrinkled and worn with years and hardship.

One Sunday morning a few years ago, it just so happened to be a landmark birthday for him, and the congregation sang to him, with pipe organ accompaniment. He had to be called in from his post at the door. I couldn't help but imagine it from his point of view. Someone comes out and grabs him and takes him in to the sanctuary, and suddenly he sees two thousand people all standing and smiling at him — people he's known for decades, and complete strangers, his dearest friends, everybody — and singing the happy birthday song, and then bursting into a long, long standing ovation.

What a moment of truth for him. Every so often, we get a glimpse of heavenliness, heaven on earth, a peek at the operatic joy and intensity and purity of the eternal home. And I can't imagine a more perfect picture for Charlie than that moment. Then I remember that he's actually experiencing, in the eternal now of his journey's-end, the true love and joy of which that birthday day was only a whiff.

Which reminds me to whiff away.