March 3:  I sit an uneasy tryst beside the bed of one whose body systems are closing down.  Once -- a half week ago -- he smiled and talked animatedly in unrecognizable mumbles.  He smiled angelically and laughed with a sweetness he had not shown in years -- perhaps not since he was a toddler.  Whatever memories he was reliving were pleasant ones. For me it was an afternoon to be treasured.


Now, as our granddaughter enters the room with her three year-old, he once again rouses to smile at his little great-granddaughter.  She is indeed a wondrous sight.  Her long blond curls are caught up in a pony tail. Her big blue eyes reflect the glee she exudes as she announces, “Granddaddy, we’ve come to check on you.”


Years ago George’s older brother and brothers-in-law used to be great fans of New Yorker cartoons.  One favorite showed a gentleman approaching a monkey cage at the zoo and asking, “Who’s in charge here?”  It’s a great blessing in the ups and downs of nursing home and hospice care to be able to boldly answer such a question.  “The Lord shall preserve you from all evil . . . The Lord shall preserve your going out and your coming in from this time forth, and even forevermore.”  Psalm 121:7,8
                                     *                                        *                                     *
March 6:  This morning George passed on ahead to heaven to truly experience the forevermore part of the above-quoted promise. 


It’s a Monday morning and, true to his upbringing and conviction, George waited to pass away until the Sabbath was over.  The nurses at the home said he passed away peacefully.  When we arrived at his room we sensed that all was well.  God is still in charge of our going out and our coming in.  What a glorious coming in it must have been into the presence of the Lord.


                            Not death, not life, nor pow’rs unseen,
                                    Things now or yet to be,
                            Will God allow to come between -
                                     He loves eternally. . . .


                            God has a limitless reserve
                                            Of love that will endure,
                                    Uplifting love, which none deserve,
                                              Love holding us secure.


                                    From WordSing by George Lauderdale from Romans 8:38,39
                               Common meter as “O for a thousand tongues to sing”

“The next sound you’ll hear is Lewis White knocking on the door.”

It was bedtime when George said that.  We were about to turn in for the night and he needed to sleep fast if he was to be ready when his friend picked him up for the early morning prayer meeting.  In those days we could go to bed at an appropriate time and sleep soundly until dawn.  But even in sleep there seems to be an inner alert that something special is going to happen. And, indeed, it truly is.

The next thing anticipated on God’s calendar for mankind is His knock on the door.

Angels asserted the truth of this heavenly summons as they spoke to the Lord’s disciples.  Christ was ascending into the clouds on the fortieth day after His resurrection.  The angels proclaimed, “He will come in like manner as you see Him go.”  There were no advanced notices, no rousing public fanfare.  He simply went into the heavens.

With renewed anticipation and purposeful haste the eleven returned to Jerusalem to await the fulfillment of one promise, the coming of the Holy Spirit, and to ready themselves for the time when their Lord would gather them to Himself.  That second promise became the hope of the body of new believers soon to assemble in Jerusalem and then to spread across the known world.

To followers of the Way in Thessalonica, their mentor the Apostle Paul, wrote concerning the promise of Christ’s return.  He assured them that the time would come when believers would be caught up together to meet the Lord in the air.  (1 Thessalonians 4:17)

The next promised sound we hear will be the trumpet’s call piercing the heavens.  “Therefore comfort one another with these words.”

"Behold, I tell you a mystery: We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed -- in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet.  For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed."--- 1 Cor.15:51-52 (NKJV)
                                                                                                                                           

The shining beauty of the grand piano dominated the room as we entered the front door.  We were visiting our friends’ sparkling new home, one with the feel of a dream come true.

The piano daily responds to the skilled finger work of a ten year old boy, grandson of the home builders.  He and his family live on an adjoining lot.

Hearing Jonathan render the stately music of Bach and Beethoven, I realized why the magnificent instrument had so arrested my attention.  Memory drew back scenes of the student recitals of college classmates.  The recital piano was situated on stage in Memorial Hall.  Nervous music majors entered from behind the curtain which quartered off one side of the back-stage area.  Now, seeing that piano in Augusta (GA), I envisioned the instrument central to the recital of Dode Phillips.

Dose was the son of the famous Erskine College football player, David Gardiner Phillips III, also called “Dode.”  Among the many stories of Dode’s gridiron prowess, is the assertion that he once crossed the goal line with two - or was it three? - opposing players hanging onto his jersey.

Maybe the elder Dode had dreamed that his son, an only child, would be a great football hero.  But because that son was crippled (I believe from birth), any such ambition was laid aside.

In his early college days Dode used a crutch and later walked using only a cane.  But the night of the concert he entered from the wings a bit slowly but without the familiar cane.  The audience was motionless with a breathless awe.  As he approached the bench of the grand piano, classmates burst into a standing ovation reminiscent of the stadium roar when a quarterback makes an astounding play.

Every Sunday at Ebenezer ARP Church I see next to the pulpit a marble plaque commemorating the forty-four year ministry in that church of David Gardiner Phillips I.  DGP I was the great-grandfather of DGP IV.  Young Dode was later to teach at Columbia University and to become the father of four children, one of whom is named David Gardiner Phillips V.

"Lo, children are God’s heritage, to parents His reward;  The sons of youth as arrows are, for strong men’s hands prepared."--- Psalm 127 in meter from “Bible Songs”

Trees were a special part of life growing up.  There was a many-branched one behind Shirley’s house which faced on Highland Avenue.  It was also behind Ann’s house which was just around the corner on Hudson Drive.  It was down the alley from my house and that tree became an off-the-ground playhouse for three little girls, each claiming a branchy area as her own house.

Only one tree has survived from the yard of my childhood family home, the Rosedale.  That is a holly son George had transplanted to his yard in Decatur and later planted at our little home in the country.  The country house is built on land purchased by my grandfather in the late nineteenth century.  I suppose some trees in the wooded area could be called virgin timber.

Now, I have grandchildren and great-grandchildren living in a place where trees survive only when watered.  Their gracious shade is ever so much appreciated.  Maybe Abraham’s terebinth trees of Mamre were like that.  They provided a shaded eating spot for the Lord’s pre-incarnation visit informing Abraham of the birth of the child of promise by Sarah.

God’s Word makes frequent mention of trees.  In the beginning we learn that “out of the ground the Lord God made every tree to grow that is pleasant to the sight and good for food.”  In the same verse we are told that there were two special trees in the garden God planted.  In the middle of the garden was the tree of life.  There was also the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.  (See Genesis 2:9.)

In the dawn of human existence those trees were significant.  One of them we meet again in the last book of the Bible.  There in the New Heaven grows the Tree of Life and whoever eats of it will live eternally, those whose names are written in the Lamb’s book of life.

 “Blessed are those who do His commandments, that they may have the right to the tree of life, and may enter through the gates into the city.”
                                                              ---Revelation 22:14 NKJV

    Back pedal to the 1940s and find yourself in the Young People’s meeting room at church.  By choice of some misguided soul, I am there taking my turn at leading the program that Sunday afternoon.  I had worked all week on it, following quite a number of references on the subject of “light.”  Make that a capital L because I somehow put things together to recognize that the Light of Isaiah 9 was the same Light of John 1.

    As the sunlight began to fade in the room and the lesson was coming to its close, I flicked the light switch and dramatically proclaimed, “Let there be light.”  I remember wondering what the next week’s program could be about since we had so thoroughly covered all there was to say.   Now, more than 70 years have passed and the depth of God’s Word has not been plumbed.  Thankfully, God’s mercies are new every morning.

    Each year we take a new look into the wondrous coming of the Light into a darkened world.  The Old Testament is filled with the promises of One to come who would crush the head of Satan.  One who would bless all nations.  One who would be born in the line of David and rule on his throne eternally.  One who would be very Son of God by a miraculous birth, would shepherd His people, live sinlessly showing what the Father is like.  One who would die to save His people from the curse of sin, which is death.  One who would rise from the dead, would ascend to His heavenly glory.  One who has promised to return one day for His own and will have total victory over Satan and evil, will establish a new heaven and a new earth.  Oh, the glory of it all!!

   "For your were once darkness, but now your are light in the Lord.  Walk as children of light." ---  Ephesians 5:8

     We wish you a blessed Christmas.  Rejoice!

[Note: At this writing, George is in a nursing home facility]

For many years, the house had been leaning but nonetheless had sheltered a family for generations. It had slanted earthward for as long as I can remember. That is, until the industrial park opened down the road.

The Zebina [Road in Wrens,GA) “industrial revolution” brought about a widening of the right of way along the road and with it the placement of huge power lines and poles. The little unpainted house beside the road had to go. Now there remains only the brick chimney. And what a chimney it is! It stands tall and perfectly straight surrounded now by weeds, saplings and a few brave wild flowers.

After all these years, we realize what held up the leaning house. Although everything around it wanted to succumb to gravity’s pull, the chimney stood straight, ever pointing heavenward. Its strength upheld the weakened framework of a weary and worn dwelling. The house had something to cling to.

Here, with my feet entangled in the bed covers and my shoulders enshrouded in a fuzzy shawl, I sit in the rehab center learning to eat and walk again. I think of the stalwart chimney and take heart. I am thankful for the stronghold that the Lord is for us as He was for David.

" The Lord is my rock, and my fortress, and my deliverer; my God, my strength, in whom I will trust; my buckler, and the horn of my salvation, and my high tower."  ---Psalm 18:2

In the early history of my hometown, Ponce de Leon Springs was the destination of urban trolley travelers seeking a quiet and restful respite in the newly rebuilt city of Atlanta following the destruction of the Civil War.  The spring fed a four acre lake which became the focal point of the developing Ponce de Leon Park.  By 1903 there was a pavilion, a merry-go-round, a play house theater and other amusements.  Several years later the lake was filled in to make way for the Atlanta Crackers baseball field.


My first encounter with these developments came in the late thirties when my mother took my sister and me shopping at the giant Sears Roebuck building across the street from the baseball field.  Mother would hustle us to the basement to get a drink of water bubbling from a white porcelain fountain.  That water was piped from the old Ponce de Leon Spring into the Sears store.  It was good then, but when the Sears building was sold to the city of Atlanta in 1990, the old spring was found to be polluted and a corrupted sewer line had added contamination that had to be addressed before the grand old building could become “City Hall East.”


We had returned to live in Atlanta only three years when the Crackers ballpark was demolished.  With it went memories of the Baptist World Convention of 1939 when Granny Swan came and stayed at our house, and of the 1950 Billy Graham Crusade, and of countless Ladies’ Night ball games with my aunts.


We can no longer think of a pure, clean, ever-flowing spring when we pass the Midtown Shopping Plaza, as the old park is now called.  They say the old magnolia tree still stands beyond what was once center field.  It now edges the mall’s parking lot.  Cities, building and people do change, but Jesus never.


The Apostle John tells us that Jesus was on hand as the throngs pressed forward to the temple in Jerusalem.  On the last day of the Feast of Tabernacles Jesus openly proclaimed:
“If any man thirst, let him come unto Me and drink.  He that believeth on Me, as the scripture hath said, out of his heart shall flow rivers of living water.”         John 7:37b-38   KJV

From my place at the kitchen table I can watch the sun painting a magnificent scene at setting.  My window frames each evening’s slowly unfolding artistry.  At the earthward plane amethyst hues give way to yellows and blues that blend into a delicate green, the topmost edge of which meets the brilliant blaze of the orb itself.  Above it a horizontal bar of pale ochres spreads upward to push soft mauve into lavender blue deepening into the purplish sky.

I cannot see the vastness of the panorama before me as the sun slips away from my limited view.  But I can sense the awesomeness of the divine demonstration of the Creator’s handiwork.  I can understand the stunned cry of the Psalmist, startled by God’s marvelous works, “What is man that You are mindful of him ?”  David could only exclaim, “O Lord, our Lord, How excellent is Your name in all the earth !”

Now, the picture above is from the opposite end of the sun’s journey--- actually, its beginning.  As our son David takes his early morning walk with his dogs and camera, he records life along the shore. Such majesty as the dawn presents when it envelopes the ocean must have led Browning to pen Pippa’s exclamation,  “God’s in His heaven.  All’s right with the world.”  But it isn’t. Our world today sees unspeakable cruelty in Nigeria, horror in Nepal, terror in Syria, fear in Sudan, corruption in Rhodesia, suffering in Libya, unreasoning crime in America.

What are we to do in the face of such tumult?  When God revealed to Daniel woes yet to come, He assured him “that which is determined shall be done.”  (Daniel 11:36b  KJV)  We also must know that God controls in the affairs of men and nations.  His eternal plan will be fulfilled. We must trust Him.  In the meantime, we serve Him, praise Him and bless His holy name.


  “O Lord, our Lord, how excellent is Thy name in all the earth, who hast set Thy glory above the heavens!” ---   Psalms 8:1  KJV

We had viewed the crumbling remains of idol temples in Baalbek.  We had walked through the ancient streets of Corinth lined with half-standing walls and broken columns.  We had gazed at giant stones outlining erstwhile Egyptian places of pagan worship.  Our imagination stretched as we envisioned the long-gone houses and shops of what was once Tyre.  We had visited the ruins of Grecian glory at Mars Hill, had observed the armless statues of a former civilization.  We had marveled at the remains of the Colosseum.  Now our journey was nearing its end.  On our last day one intrepid traveller made her way to the breakfast table, took her seat and asked wearily, “Have you seen the ruins of Alta ?”  To be sure, we have never forgotten her first name.

The ruins were caused by fire and storm recently in a nearby town.  But they speak the same message.  Looking to the things of the past - unless they were of the Lord’s doings - cannot strengthen us for today.  And broken things lead to new beginnings.

The light of Scripture shines on two passages that illustrate truth concerning the move from a trouble-filled past into a place of fruitfulness.

First, remember Joseph.  He had come from the cruelty of what today would be called a dysfunctional family.  And now, by the grace and presence of the Lord, he finds himself in an exalted position as prime minister of a powerful nation.  He is wed to a priest’s daughter and uses significant names for the two sons of this union.  The first is Manasseh (Making Forgetful) and he declares, “For God has made me forget all my toil and all my father’s house.”  The name of the second son is Ephraim ( Fruitfulness) and he says, “For God has caused me to be fruitful in the land of my affliction.”

Secondly, the Apostle Paul in writing to his dear friends at Philippi, recalls the hostility of his younger days when he persecuted the followers of  The Way.  That is, he did until he met the Lord Himself one day outside Damascus.  That encounter made Paul a new man, a man who must tear down the walls of animosity and rebuild a new structure of love where Christ Himself is the cornerstone.
            "...This one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching  forth unto those things which are before, I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.”   Philippians 3:13-14   KJV

“And the Lord God planted a garden eastward in Eden . . .”  Genesis 2:8

The setting for the wedding seemed as though it could have been part of that first garden.  The site for the sacred vows was called the Fragrance Garden.  Brilliant blooms were accented by seemingly random bursts of lavender.  Sandstone pathways led to a wisteria-covered canopy. The wisteria arbor reached to cover a grotto-like corner where the pianist mingled music with aromas emanating from banks of flowers.

All this beauty graced a small part of the vast Red Butte Garden which makes its ascent up the mountain where the University of Utah is situated.

Although the setting was different, the preparations for our granddaughter’s wedding were the same - attention to dresses, hair, nails, rehearsal, flowers, music, the reception.  And my, what a reception it was!  It was held in a glass-enclosed arboretum called Orangerie, no doubt because of the fragrance from blossom-laden orange trees.

However, exciting as the exotic plants were, even more impressive were the deeply meaningful vows and minister’s homily.  The Lord had graciously drawn the bridal couple to Himself and He spoke in every phase of the service.  The songs, the Scripture, and the pastoral counsel all echoed the love of God.  Together we sang “O Love That Will Not Let Me Go” and “Joyful, Joyful, We Adore Thee”, reflecting the blessing of marriage that pictures the love of Christ for His church.  The closing song, Psalm 121, gave the assurance:

  “God shall guard from every ill,
   Keep thy soul in safety still.
   Both without and in thy door,
   He will keep thee ever more.”
                                         ----From 'Bible Songs'