People are often more complex and more interesting than they appear on first glance. A few years ago, my father-in-law was living in an assisted living center near our home. His usual supper table consisted of himself, Art and Irwin. Irwin had a very soft voice. I had to stain to understand him. Art and Keith were both hard of hearing. I had to raise my voice to be understood. The trio often sat at a table with the fourth chair empty. It was natural, when visiting, to end up in the role of translator, especially for Irwin’s stories. No second language was required, just an adjustment of volume. Our lives were very busy in those days. We were also caring for my mother in our home, so Susan and I often headed in different directions. She spent more time with her father and the people at the assisted living center, making daily visits. I got there about once a week or so. But we both got to know the people who lived there pretty well.

The years pass. Keith died in the April of 2011. Art passed away in November of the same year. Irwin had to move across the street to the care center. I see him about once a month. He is even quieter than before. We often run out of topics when I visit. The best I can do these days is to share the quiet with him.

I miss their stories. They all had stories to tell.

Art studied electrical engineering in college. When the war came, he served in Africa and Europe. After his foreign service, he was stationed in Texas, a time he referred to as “my second foreign tour of duty.” Then he came back to this area and became a banker. He worked banks in Miles City, Montana, and Hettinger, North Dakota, before coming back to the Black Hills. Banking is not a calling that has ever appealed to me. Like many others, I do my business with the bank, but never thought of it as a place where I would like to go to work every day. Art, however, was well suited for the job because he loved the people. His stories about banking had little to do with interest rates and balance sheets. They are stories of the endless parade of people who walked through the doors of the bank.

Still, one might not expect Art to be a man who did a lot of theological thinking. I don’t remember him speaking much about his faith, though he was a regular attendee at the monthly services I lead at the assisted living center. He would smile and participate in the service.

I was surprised to discover that he had written hymns. He never wrote music, but wrote words that could be sung to familiar hymn tunes. A few of us gathered in the Belle Fourche cemetery yesterday for the committal of Art’s ashes. Susan officiated. I stood in the shade of one of the magnificent pine trees that grow on that slope, with enough breeze to keep things from being too hot. And I listened. It seemed very natural. I did a lot of listening in the days when I visited with the trio of men at the assisted living center. Art’s daughter-in-law had a small set of speakers that she attached to her phone to play Amazing Grace and one of Art’s hymns. It was set to the tune of “Morning Has Broken.” Eleanor Farjeon wrote the words we know in the early 1930’s. The tune is a traditional Gaelic tune known by “Bunessan.” I love the hymn. But I was struck by Art’s words:

Heaven is morning.

Just as at dawning there comes a great light,
When we are passing into God’s love.
Heaven like morning will start a new day
Fear not departing to Christ above.

I like the image of the song. I’ve always been a morning person. I like to rise in the wee hours. I write my daily blog by 5:30 a.m. most mornings. Sometimes I just go outside and look to the east. We have a good sunrise view from our home. I love to go out to a lake for an early paddle or row. When I go through the pictures on my camera, I am struck at how many are pictures of the sunrise. Each sunrise is unique. Each brings promise of the things that are to come.

When I have had times in my life that have been filled with problems, the problems almost always seem more intense and troubling in the evening than they do in the morning. After sleeping, my head is clearer and my capacities for problem solving are renewed. People seem less like problems and more like gifts in the morning. I wonder if this change in attitude is due to the effects of sleep, or simply a product of the fact that I like to rise before other people. I have the mornings to myself most days. I am often awake an hour or more before someone else in my home rises. I can go to the office and get in a couple of hours of work before the phone rings for the first time or anyone else walks into the building. Morning is also a gift of solitude for me.

I like other people. I am grateful that my job involves working with so many interesting and creative people. I enjoy the challenge of working with a job that is too big for an individual to accomplish. There is joy in knowing that the work I do did not begin with me and will not be completed when my time on this earth has come to its end. There is security in knowing that God has more to be done, more to be accomplished and that I belong to a line of history-making that extends far beyond the span of a single lifetime.

So for me heaven as morning just makes sense. It is an image that inspires me. And, every morning, I get a little glimpse – a small taste – of the goodness that lies ahead.

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