A Life Well-Ordered
Remembering my late pastor and refocusing on my priorities.
For the fifth time this year, I found myself reflecting on death and what we leave behind. In addition to public tributes to B.B. King and Elisabeth Elliot, both figures whose work shaped my life, I also lost a grandfather, a childhood playmate…and now a pastor. Most of them had lived well past 80, but my pastor had just begun a new season of ministry.
David A. George brought many years of life and ministry experience to our church, which has a gifted but mostly 30-something pastoral staff. In the short time that he served our church, barely a year, he became a spiritual father to many of us. I’m chronically late to church, but David often stepped out from his post near the back door to greet me, often with a hug.
When I learned about his cancer diagnosis just weeks ago, I thought of poetry—first, lines describing the shock of his illness, then some poems I’d been reading. David had shown interest in a poetry party I hosted, so I planned to send him poems during his treatment, starting with selections from Luci Shaw’s advent-themed book Accompanied by Angels.
Her poetry doesn’t suck me in the way some sadly salacious headlines do, sneaking away 15, 20, 30 minutes before a semblance of sense of returns and I close the browser window. Instead, Shaw’s poems exalt the reader. My mind blooms with the kind of thoughts I want it to hold, and I remember who I want to become.
My pastor had a similar effect. David always encouraged and affirmed my gifts, even if I feared I’d been too bold in my feedback. In my best conversations with him, I came away with a slightly larger sense of my potential.
Reflecting on his life now, and the suddenness of his death, has reminded me …
A Life Well-Ordered
Remembering my late pastor and refocusing on my priorities.
For the fifth time this year, I found myself reflecting on death and what we leave behind. In addition to public tributes to B.B. King and Elisabeth Elliot, both figures whose work shaped my life, I also lost a grandfather, a childhood playmate…and now a pastor. Most of them had lived well past 80, but my pastor had just begun a new season of ministry.
David A. George brought many years of life and ministry experience to our church, which has a gifted but mostly 30-something pastoral staff. In the short time that he served our church, barely a year, he became a spiritual father to many of us. I’m chronically late to church, but David often stepped out from his post near the back door to greet me, often with a hug.
When I learned about his cancer diagnosis just weeks ago, I thought of poetry—first, lines describing the shock of his illness, then some poems I’d been reading. David had shown interest in a poetry party I hosted, so I planned to send him poems during his treatment, starting with selections from Luci Shaw’s advent-themed book Accompanied by Angels.
Her poetry doesn’t suck me in the way some sadly salacious headlines do, sneaking away 15, 20, 30 minutes before a semblance of sense of returns and I close the browser window. Instead, Shaw’s poems exalt the reader. My mind blooms with the kind of thoughts I want it to hold, and I remember who I want to become.
My pastor had a similar effect. David always encouraged and affirmed my gifts, even if I feared I’d been too bold in my feedback. In my best conversations with him, I came away with a slightly larger sense of my potential.
Reflecting on his life now, and the suddenness of his death, has reminded me …
What Elisabeth Elliot Taught Me about Longing
For this 21st-century single, her ‘Passion and Purity’ has stood the test of time.
When I heard the news of missionary and writer Elisabeth Elliot’s death yesterday, it hit me like a sad report on a once-close friend. Elliot’s example of Christian obedience, including her 1984 classic Passion and Purity, helped shape my own memoir of reluctant chastity, Sexless in the City.
Like most readers, I first learned of Elliot through her sacrificial work on the mission field. During my childhood, my family read aloud together daily—everything from veterinarian James Herriot to weird Christian sci-fi. We also read missionary biographies; I grew up on stories like Don Richardson’s Peace Child, Bruce Olson’s Bruchko, and biographies of women like Amy Carmichael and Gladys Aylward.
These books formed my early impressions of the Christian life and what it meant to follow God. Among our family reading, Elisabeth Elliot stood out. No other missionary story impressed itself as firmly on my young mind as how Elliot chose to love the Huoarani people, continuing to work among this tribe in Ecuador though they were the very people who’d killed her husband. This is the life of a Christian, Elliot’s story told me. You love people no matter what they do, even if they kill those you love most.
As a young adult, I discovered a side of her that meant even more to me. In Passion and Purity: Learning to Bring Your Love Life Under God’s Control, I met Elliot anew as a woman obedient amid the longings and uncertainties of singleness and a five-year courtship. Part memoir, part advice, Elliot used the story of her relationship with Jim Elliot to exhort Christian singles to the sexual obedience of chastity before marriage, charity after marriage.
In college, I learned to love God …
What Elisabeth Elliot Taught Me about Longing
For this 21st-century single, her ‘Passion and Purity’ has stood the test of time.
When I heard the news of missionary and writer Elisabeth Elliot’s death yesterday, it hit me like a sad report on a once-close friend. Elliot’s example of Christian obedience, including her 1984 classic Passion and Purity, helped shape my own memoir of reluctant chastity, Sexless in the City.
Like most readers, I first learned of Elliot through her sacrificial work on the mission field. During my childhood, my family read aloud together daily—everything from veterinarian James Herriot to weird Christian sci-fi. We also read missionary biographies; I grew up on stories like Don Richardson’s Peace Child, Bruce Olson’s Bruchko, and biographies of women like Amy Carmichael and Gladys Aylward.
These books formed my early impressions of the Christian life and what it meant to follow God. Among our family reading, Elisabeth Elliot stood out. No other missionary story impressed itself as firmly on my young mind as how Elliot chose to love the Huoarani people, continuing to work among this tribe in Ecuador though they were the very people who’d killed her husband. This is the life of a Christian, Elliot’s story told me. You love people no matter what they do, even if they kill those you love most.
As a young adult, I discovered a side of her that meant even more to me. In Passion and Purity: Learning to Bring Your Love Life Under God’s Control, I met Elliot anew as a woman obedient amid the longings and uncertainties of singleness and a five-year courtship. Part memoir, part advice, Elliot used the story of her relationship with Jim Elliot to exhort Christian singles to the sexual obedience of chastity before marriage, charity after marriage.
In college, I learned to love God …
B. B. King, My Soundtrack for Suffering
What the late King of the Blues reminded me about the King of Kings.
When blues guitarist B. B. King died last week, the web lit up with tributes, and San Francisco jazz station KCSM devoted all of that day’s programming to selections from King…
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