My wife and I passed by the casket, having shaken hands with my deceased friend’s surviving siblings and mother. Then came the hardest part, the real reason we had come: we embraced his wife.
“You came!” she exclaimed, encircling us in her arms.
Mandy was tired but strong and steady. Most of all, she was grieving.
We soon made our way out of the church with her words, “You came,” echoing in my ears. And deep in my soul, I was eternally grateful we had.
But sad I hadn’t called.
Five months after I retired from the pastorate, Mandy’s husband, Eddie, my friend and fellow pastor, also retired. We had discussed our plans, with questions about what we would do and how we would minister. Where would we attend church? And most of all, what would we do with all our books?
“I’ve got to call Eddie,” I commented to Lori after he retired.
Not having made the call, I told Lori a few weeks later: “I wonder how Eddie’s doing in his retirement? I’m going to call him tomorrow.”
Several days later, I again felt something prompting me to call Eddie.
But I didn’t.
A few days after that, Eddie had surgery. We connected with Mandy several times, as she had requested prayer for Eddie. Then, he experienced complications.
“As soon as he can receive a call, or they can take visitors, I’m connecting with him,” I vowed.
Then the word came: Eddie had passed.
I have shared with Lori my belief that we sometimes get nudges or promptings from the Spirit of God. I had told her that once when walking to the post office, I felt a distinct urge to call a friend I hadn’t seen in years. Although we now lived hundreds of miles apart, his image came to me. So I called him immediately.
“I’m so glad you called me,” he said at the sound of my voice. “My brother just died.”
Years before that incident, upon leaving my pastorate in Alabama, one of the senior ladies of that church shared with me how she had been desperately lonely one night. I had presided at her husband’s funeral only days before. “And you came by to visit me. When I asked why you came, you said, ‘God told me.’ I’ll never forget your visit that night.”
There were other stories of times I’d made a call or a visit, having felt God’s urging. But on the day of Eddie’s funeral, leaving the church, though dressed in coat and tie, I felt my soul naked and exposed. “Why hadn’t I made the call? I wonder what he would have said?”
I’m confident I’ve missed others, too, times when my “to-do list” so preoccupied me that I didn’t sense the Holy Spirit’s gentle nudges. I don’t have the stories to tell about those. No, “and now for the rest of the story,” anecdotes bubble up. That’s because I didn’t make the call. So the mysteries remain, hovering in eternal space, suspended until then.
When?
When on that Day, “I will know everything completely, just as God now knows me completely” (I Corinthians 13:12).
And the same God who will make all things right for us—flawed creatures that we are—will, by His grace, set us on solid ground here, where we can live freely and joyfully in the care of his eternal call, which beckons us forward and onward, forgiving us, sustaining us, healing our spiritual deafness.
And so, for me, that means one thing now:
I’ve got to make that call.
You can contact Dr David Whitlock at drdavid@davidwhitlock.org