Friends from Tennessee are coming to visit and attend an Atlanta Braves baseball game this weekend. With the three young Woodwards and the three Davis kids being close to the same age, we have gotten together every summer for years. As the children got older, the visits were less frequent, but we always picked up where we left off with friendship and fun.
Timmy Woodward was one of my best friends in college. Four or five of us played on the same intramural sports team each season. We also competed against each other constantly… including playing cards almost every night. When I think of college, these are my memories. Though none of us would admit it, we all knew Timmy was the best at everything… and the funniest guy we knew. Post college, Timmy became the best husband and father… while keeping his sense of humor.
On July 29, 2019, without warning, Timmy had a heart attack in a suburb of Nashville, an hour’s drive from his home in Smithville. Paramedics arrived within five minutes and started CPR, but it did no good. Timmy died 43 days before his 60th birthday.
In Life of the Beloved, Henri Nouwen explains that as God’s children we bless others in life AND in death. He writes:
We may be little, insignificant servants in the eyes of a world motivated by efficiency, control, and success. But when we realize that God has chosen us from all eternity, sent us into the world as the blessed ones, handed us over to suffering, can’t we, then, also trust that our little lives will multiply themselves and be able to fulfill the needs of countless people? This might sound pompous and self-aggrandizing, but, in truth, the trust in one’s fruitfulness emerges from a humble spirit. It is the humble spirit of Hannah who exclaimed in gratitude for the new life born in her: ‘My spirit exults in God my savior – he has looked upon his lowly handmaid – and done great things for me… from this day forward all generations will call me blessed.’
The fruitfulness of our little life, once we recognize it and live it as the life of the Beloved, is beyond anything we ourselves can imagine. One of the greatest acts of faith is to believe that the few years we live on earth are like a little seed planted in a very rich soil. For this seed to bear fruit, it must die. We often see or feel only the dying, but the harvest will be abundant even when we ourselves are not the harvesters.
How different would our life be were we truly able to trust that it multiplied in being given away! How different would our life be if we could but believe that every little act of faithfulness, every gesture of love, every word of forgiveness, every little bit of joy and peace will multiply and multiply as long as there are people to receive it…
We’ll all be constantly thinking of Timmy as our families reunite this weekend, but his life lives on. Printed on the announcement issued at the funeral home was a handwritten note found in Timmy’s Bible. If we could hear his voice from heaven, he would repeat the same message: “Stay focused! Keep priorities straight! Seek first the kingdom of God!”
“Very truly I tell you, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds.” John 12:24
Life of the Beloved by Henri Nouwen; ©1992 The Crossroad Publishing Company, New York, NY; pp 122-123