60 On hearing it, many of his disciples said, “This is a hard teaching. Who can accept it?”
61 Aware that his disciples were grumbling about this, Jesus said to them, “Does this offend you? 62 Then what if you see the Son of Man ascend to where he was before! 63 The Spirit gives life; the flesh counts for nothing. The words I have spoken to you—they are full of the Spirit[e] and life. 64 Yet there are some of you who do not believe.” For Jesus had known from the beginning which of them did not believe and who would betray him. 65 He went on to say, “This is why I told you that no one can come to me unless the Father has enabled them.”
66 From this time many of his disciples turned back and no longer followed him.
67 “You do not want to leave too, do you?” Jesus asked the Twelve.
68 Simon Peter answered him, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. 69 We have come to believe and to know that you are the Holy One of God.”
Ann was and remains a Christian. And when we speak of her we would do well to remember that truth first and foremost.
To have been called to be a Christian means ultimately there is an understanding that, having been bought with a price, one’s life is not one’s own, and so all is life is lived under the authority of the Lord Christ who gave Himself as a Sacrifice for His people.
You see in being a Christian one is given the understanding that they are accountable to the God of the whole cosmos and so they fashion their life in keeping with His Word.
This confidence on Ann’s part of the fact that Christ died the just for the unjust so that His people might have Peace with God … that Christ loved Ann and gave Himself for her becomes then the explanation for who God created her and called her to be.
So deeply was this sense of abandonment to Christ owned by Ann that Ann found the passage in John we just read particularly comforting during her long battle with Cancer. In context the Lord Christ had been spoken truths that were hard to accept and as a result fair weather followers begin to peel off from following Christ. Jesus queries His core of 12 disciples if they were going to leave also and they respond with words that speak both of a divinely given understanding and of resolve.
“Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. 69 We have come to believe and to know that you are the Holy One of God.”
The disciples understood here that no matter how difficult the Words of the Lord Christ might be it was simply the case that all other Words were empty words.
Ann embraced this passage because as freely purchased with the blood of Christ she understood that no matter how difficult the path may be it was simply the case that Christ was the answer. Where else could she go with this Cancer? Christ alone had the words of Eternal life. Embitterment was not an option because Christ alone had the words of Eternal life. And so she entrusted herself to Christ and the Providence of God and not only refused embitterment but refused Fear.
One of Ann’s favorite Scripture was
“God has not given us a Spirit of Fear but the power of love and of a sound mind.”
In light of this Word from God Ann did not give into fear and relentlessly taught her children not to give into fear. This, of course is a Christian virtue itself given by the God of all grace. As Christians we are called to fear only God and when we offer up our fear to anything that is not God we, at the same time divinize what ever it is we fear other than God and so become idolaters.
There are many virtues we can rightly speak of regarding Ann but we should recognize that any virtue we speak of says more about the magnificence of the Creator than it does about the Creature.
It was the Gospel of Jesus Christ for Sinners that crafted and shaped Ann. It was Biblical Christianity that explains her family-centric orientation where she submitted to her husband and poured herself into her children. It was the Christian faith that explains her fierce loyalties to friends. It was nothing but the finished work of Christ and the confidence in God’s undeserved love that found her optimistic and cheerful in her living and dying.
This is what the Christian faith does. It takes people, who are remarkably unexceptional in and of themselves, like all of us who call upon the name of Christ, and by the Hands of the Sovereign craftsman it shapes, molds, hammers, and refines so that the result is a person who shines like a star in the Universe. The explanation for a life well lived then is not found in mortals for there is nothing in us that recommends us to God’s favor. The explanation of a life well lived is found in God’s favor as revealed in Christ’s work on the Cross and as then fashioned by the Master’s hands. The explanation in a life well lived is the truth that Grace restores nature.
So, considered proximately the legacy of Ann is her role of wife and mother but ultimately the legacy of Ann is that Her Savior, even in the context of what we might count as severe Mercy, was Faithful to Her.
She lived in confidence of the fact that He alone had the words of Eternal life and she is now at rest in the one who loved her and gave himself for her.
This is an excellent post and has greatly encouraged me. Since my return from Minnesota, my eyes have been opened to the fact that although I have been submitting my life to Christ’s law, I have been living my life rather selfishly. My friend Stephani reminded me that Christ should be the reason for everything I do. Not only should I be following the laws God established in Scripture, but I should be following them with the right motives: to glorify Him in everything I do.
It was comforting to be reminded as I read this post that I am not my own and that my identity is found in Christ. My purpose is found in Christ and apart from Him I am less than nothing. All the events in my life are sent by His sovereign hand. He is supremely good and holy, who am I to be thinking of my own happiness and well-being first when I have Him to life my life for?
Thank you for these words.
And keep in mind Amiee, lest you despair by seeing your failure in doing all you do to the Glory of God, that we sin every day in word, thought, or deed and as such we are kept in the bonds of grace to remember how great the Lord Christ’s salvation is that despite that He still names us as His own.
Also, a note about grammar.
You wrote:
“You see in being a Christian one is given the understanding that they are accountable to the God of the whole cosmos and so they fashion their life in keeping with His Word.”
The subject of this sentence is ‘one,’ which is singular, thus it should have singular pronouns following it, such as ‘he,’ ‘she,’ or ‘one.’ Never ‘they.’ Personally I find writing ‘she’ to be feminist, writing ‘he or she’ to be giving into the politically correct zeitgeist we are saturated in, and using ‘one’ throughout the whole sentence is awkward, therefore ‘he’ is the best choice. It flows with the writing and also subtly maintains the Biblical concept of covenentalism and male headship. Those are only my thoughts though, feel free to adjust as you see fit. Another option is to change everything to plural: “In being a Christian PEOPLE are given the understanding that they…”