I Have Called You Friends

I lost a dear friend to cancer last week. Dale Young and I were stand partners in orchestra. I admired his ability to lead. He had confidence to play out when I was scared to make a sound. I played better because he was at my side.

But that’s not the reason I’m going to miss him. I miss him because he was my friend. We had our own set of private jokes about pencils, parentheses and notes we wished we could play. His smile and friendliness blessed me. His sense of humor made rehearsing until 10:00 pm bearable.

I valued Dale for who he was, not for what he accomplished in life or how he played violin. I wonder if that’s the true message of death.

As a Christian, I am confident I will go to heaven when I die, not because of anything I’ve done, but because Christ paid the price for me on the cross. But I don’t look forward to death. There are too many things I want to do first. Many of these are things I want to do for God.

Death is God’s way of telling me He doesn’t value me for the things I can do for Him on earth. He values me for who I am. And someday He wants to enjoy me in heaven. Just my presence. Not my acts of service. As Jesus said in John 15:15, “No longer do I call you servants…but I have called you friends.”

Creation and "Cosmos"

My Sunday afternoon multitasking involved listening to an episode of Neil deGrasse Tyson’s series, “Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey” while I copied bowings into my orchestra music.

I expected to disagree with Tyson on his view of young-earth creationists. There is scientific evidence on both sides of the argument. Things aren’t as simple and obvious as many people claim.

But I was amazed how much I agreed with  a scene late in the episode. I would have shouted, “Amen!" if that were appropriate while watching "Cosmos." The scene is an animation of the astronomer William Herschel walking on the beach with his son, John, and discussing William’s friend, John Michell.

“He held that some stars are invisible,” said William. “They really exist, but we shall never see them. Dark stars, Michell called them.”

“With all due repsect, father, surely your friend was mistaken. If no one can see them, then how can we possible know they exist?”

“Did you see the man who left those footprints, John?”

“Why, no, father, I did not.”

“But do you know that he exists?”

Dark stars, now called black holes, leave footprints in the cosmos. Their gravitational pull is so great that light cannot escape. They are invisible. We detect them by watching the evidence of their gravitational pull on other things in the universe.

Sometimes the most powerful things in the universe are invisible. God is my Black Hole. I cannot see Him, but I have seen His footprints in the cosmos, in history and in my life. His pull is so great that once I got close to Him, my life was absorbed by Him. And I shall never regret it.