Wait, don’t click the “back” button! I’d like you to keep reading so I can tell you about Ronda—sweet Ronda who just went to be with Jesus. I am certain you will find yourself blessed and encouraged if you press on.
Ronda was born special. She was special in the sense of being unique and dearly loved, but she was also special in the sense that she was atypical. I’m not aware that she ever received a formal diagnosis—perhaps the appropriate label didn’t exist back in the early 50s. Suffice it to say, though, that even while she lived for 75 years, her mind remained like that of an eight or ten year-old’s. She was at the same time a senior citizen and a child.
Ronda came to our church’s attention about 10 years ago. By that time we got to know her, she had already outlived her parents and brother and even the trustees they had put in place. Her family had been assured that because of her physical and cognitive conditions, she could not possibly live to old age, but she proved the experts wrong. Though she now lived at a nursing home where her immediate needs were met, she had no family to love her, no friends to visit her, no carers to oversee her future. While her parents had done their utmost to provide for her, her finances were now quickly dwindling. She had no ability to know or understand such matters and no ability to do even the least thing about them.
So our church stepped in. Members of the church took turns driving her to the service each Sunday morning, hosting her in their home on Sunday afternoon, then bringing her back for the evening service. Others visited during the week to relieve the tedium of sitting alone in a room hour after hour and day after day. One member of our church even came to understand that he was one of Ronda’s nearest living relatives and was able to become her trustee. When Ronda’s financial state grew perilous, the church helped her move to a more affordable yet still comfortable nursing home, then made up the shortfall out of the benevolence fund.
Ronda had not been part of the church for long when she expressed a desire to become a member. Though she had come to Christ many years before, she had never been baptized. She was able to stand at the front of the room and provide the sweetest, simplest testimony to God’s grace in her life. She told how in 1966 she had heard the gospel at church. She told us that later that day, “Dad was down in the basement and mom was in the kitchen. I went downstairs to Dad’s workshop, and said, ‘Dad, I’d like to become a Christian.’” She knelt and prayed. “I started crying and Dad was with me. Mom came down and stopped in the middle of the stairs. And then she came down and hugged me.” Her parents had loved the Lord, led her to the Lord, then gone to be with the Lord. We had the joy of baptizing her and receiving her into membership. For ten years, she was loved and treasured as a member of our church.
Just a few months ago, we noticed that Ronda’s body was beginning to weaken and her breath beginning to fade. It was cancer, the doctors said. It had spread to her lungs and was so now extensive that there could be no effective treatment. She had weeks or a few months at most. When told the news in very simple terms that she could understand, she was sad for a few moments, then brightened a little and said “Well, I’ll get to see Mom and Dad.”
Before long it required three or even four people to care for her at church on a Sunday morning, and at least one of them had to have some medical expertise to help her through terrible coughing fits that sometimes caused her to faint. She insisted as strongly as she could that she wanted to keep coming to church, no matter what. Yet on Sundays when she was simply too weak or too ill, a couple of people would go to her room with an iPad so they could sit with her, sing with her, and watch the service together.
Last week she was taken to hospital and then to palliative care. She didn’t really understand that she was in her last days, but the church did. Different members kept vigil with her day and night, for it didn’t seem right that she should die alone. A couple of ladies from the church were at her side on Wednesday evening as she went to be with Jesus.
Shortly after that member of our church became Ronda’s trustee, he discovered a letter her father had written many years before. He expressed his special love for his special girl and asked several family friends to serve as her trustees. “You are aware that our chief concern is for our darling daughter Ronda. A lifetime of daily care for her has given us knowledge of what she needs and what we believe is best for her.” He asked only that she be well loved and allowed to remain in the one neighborhood that was familiar to her. And then he expressed firm faith in God’s provision and entrusted his girl to the Lord. “We take comfort in knowing whatever you do, you will seek the help of the Lord. As He promised us His help over the past years, we are assured that Ronda is still very much a ‘child of His care’ so we commit her again to God’s loving care and yours.”
What a blessing it was to learn that our church had been an answer to a father’s prayer—a prayer he had lifted decades prior, never imagining how it would be answered. I can’t even tell you the joy and pride I feel in the people of Grace Fellowship Church for so willingly and joyfully loving Ronda. And I am certain they would all agree it was a distinct honor to know, to love, and to care for one of God’s weakest and, therefore, one of God’s dearest daughters.

We’ve all heard that marriage was designed to make us holy more than to make us happy. And though it’s a bit of a trite phrase that threatens to force a false dichotomy between holiness and happiness, there is a measure of truth to it. At its best, marriage does, indeed, help us grow in holiness. It helps us in our lifelong quest to put sin to death and come alive to righteousness. Aileen and I knew this was true when we got married all those years ago, but as time has passed we’ve been surprised to learn how it’s true.

It had been our assumption that marriage would make us holy because we would essentially be enlisting another person to our cause—a person who would assist us in identifying sin and in helping us put it to death. “This is the will of God: your sanctification,” says Paul, and each of us would be involving ourselves in embracing God’s will for the other.
Certainly there have been times when each of us has helpfully and even formally pointed out where the other has developed patterns of sin and selfishness. There have been times when we have each helped the other fight a particular sin or a general sinfulness. Yet as we look back on the past twenty-three years, we see that this has been relatively rare. It’s not that we don’t see plenty of sin in one another and not that we are firmly opposed to pointing it out. No, it’s more that there is another way that marriage has helped us grow in sanctification—a way in which our efforts are directed at addressing ourselves more than fixing each other.
Each of us has our sins, our imperfections, and our shortcomings. Each of us is pretty well established in who we are and how we behave and each of us is, at 45, pretty unlikely to experience dramatic transformations in this. That’s not to say that we have given up or declared ourselves as holy as we can ever be. Far from it! But at this point we are assuming that the sins that dog us today will probably continue to dog us to the end—though hopefully with diminishing strength. And this means that the sin we have each had to tolerate in the other is sin we will likely need to tolerate for however many more years the Lord gives us. So while Aileen may grow in holiness by having me confront her in her sins, she seems to grow more in holiness by patiently tolerating my sinfulness—by loving me despite my sin and loving me as the Lord helps me progressively put that sin to death.
Then, while each of us has our sins, each of us also has our quirks, our preferences, our idiosyncrasies, our annoyances. And just like we assume that the sins that have dogged each of us through the first twenty-three will dog us for the next twenty-three, we assume that the things that just plain annoy us about one another today are likely to persist as well. And let’s be honest—it is often harder to tolerate a bad habit than a bad sin. It is often harder to tolerate the way your spouse chews his food or leaves her clothes on the ground than the way he sins against you or the way she remains unsanctified. And again, while Aileen might grow in her sanctification by having me formally point out a way in which she is sinful, she seems to grow more in sanctification by learning to accept and perhaps even embrace some of those non-moral but oh-so-annoying things I do—those eccentricities and matters of preference.
So perhaps the foremost way that marriage has helped make us holy is not so much in calling each of us to serve as the other’s second conscience, a junior assistant to the Holy Spirit in bringing conviction of sin. It is not in calling each of us to be a kind of moral sandpaper to actively scour off each other’s rough edges. Rather, marriage has helped make us holy by calling each of us to extend a kind of divine mercy toward the other—to simply live lovingly with someone who is prone to be sinful and irritating.
In marriage, God allows us to see one another as we really are, then to accept one another as we really are—as holistic human beings who are a mixture of holy and depraved, grownup and immature, wonderful and almost unbelievably annoying. Marriage makes us holy not just in compelling us to identify and confront sin in the other, but also in calling us to bear patiently with another person’s sin, preferences, and bad habits. In other words, marriage makes us holy in the way it calls us to be like God in overlooking offenses, in imparting mercy, in extending forgiveness, in displaying compassion, in refusing to be petty. Thus, the great sanctifying challenge of marriage is not so much to fix one another, as to imitate Christ.

Yup, we are still in Unalaska since all of yesterday’s flights were once again canceled. There is some chance we get off the island on Saturday, but if not, it will be Monday at best. But all is well because we know the one who raises and stills the storms and we are glad enough to be here for as long as he decrees.

My thanks goes to Ligonier Ministries for kindly sponsoring the blog this week and for offering you the ebook edition of The Legacy of Luther as a free download.
Today’s Kindle deals include some older books. I also added some newer ones yesterday.
(Yesterday on the blog: Three Years Later: What I Miss Most)
Critical Grace Theory
You’ll need to block out a bit of time and attention to read this article from Carl Trueman. “Can Christians appropriate modern critical theory, not just the theories we trace back to the Frankfurt School, but contemporary critical theories of race, sexual identity, and gender? The question can be reframed: When secular critical theory turns from analysis to transformation, does it see grace and forgiveness as means of social change?”
You Want People To Think Better of You Than You Deserve
“It is an unfortunate fact that you and I want people to think better of us than we deserve.” This is true. And worth thinking about.
Test, Seek, Pray, Fight: The Pursuit of Holy Affections
“Early morning hours are precious. The house is still, quiet. The aroma of coffee wafts from the steaming mug. A single lamp illuminates the chair and table. Here is a sanctuary, a peaceful place of communion between a man and his God. And yet on many days, it is anything but peaceful.”
A Lesson from Nearly Uprooted Trees
Lara reflects on a difficult time. “Tears in my hands and babies at my feet, I often asked God why he put us through it all. What was the purpose? What good did any of it do? What use was it to batter us so harshly with so many storms at once? Our life was fairly smooth until that year, then our roots were nearly torn from the ground. My faith felt frail.”
Autumn
Here’s a short, sweet reflection on autumn.
You’re Not Waiting Alone
“My eyelids lift in the dark of my bedroom. The autumn sun still sleeps below the horizon. I grab the phone on my nightstand and skim through the bolded headlines on the screen. Another attack in the middle east. Threats of terrorism. Flooding. Drought. Another shooting. My head hurts, my heart weeps, and I’m tired of waiting.”
Flashback: What the Wayward Wants
“To reach the prodigal, you must first crawl into the story of the prodigal.” It is an ugly story, but one God so often delights in ending with the prodigal returning to all that was once his.

God knew what we were before conversion- wicked, guilty and defiled; yet He loved us. He knows what we will be after conversion- weak, erring and frail; yet He loves us. —J.C. Ryle