“The evening wore on…. That’s a very nice expression, isn’t it?  With your permission, I’ll say it again… The evening wore on.”

Harvey fans will recognize the line.  Language fans will recognize the pleasure of a phrase that manages to capture a world of nuance in a very few words.

One of the blessings I am thankful for in my heritage is that I come from a family of word lovers.  My maternal grandmother, Grandma Gunny (a.k.a. GG) immigrated to this country from Sweden when she was four.  Because her mother did not allow her to play with neighborhood children (afraid they would make fun of her for being foreign), GG learned her English in school, which resulted in her using a very proper variety of the language rather than the colloquial version she would otherwise have absorbed.  Being an avid reader, she acquired an impressive vocabulary.   Until dementia closed her mental dictionary, I never knew GG at a loss for just the precise word to use, no matter how obscure.  She was a crossword puzzle and word jumble fan, as are my mom, several of my siblings and I.  Although GG wasn’t a game player, the generations since are very fond of Scrabble and other word-based games.  My grandfather was also a voracious reader, and that love of reading cascades down the generational lines all the way to my own grands.  No matter which family members were present, conversations around our table were lively affairs, and puns were ALWAYS on the menu! 

It is to GG that I attribute my own passion for the nuances of words, and my delight in the intricacies of the construction of language.   She wasn’t a writer, but I couldn’t write as I do without the influence she had on developing my appreciation for words as both tools and toys. 

Solomon wrote a proverb I like to apply to those of us who love language.  “Like apples of gold in settings of silver is a word fitly spoken.”  Using just the right word carries an immense satisfaction.  Think of just the ways to indicate the act of moving one’s legs to travel from one place to another.  One can walk, of course.  How pedestrian.  (Like I said, puns are always on the menu.)  But there’s no need to merely “walk” when you can saunter, skip, mosey, sidle, strut, slink, march, sashay, float, or trudge!   The whole tone of a story can depend on just that simple choice of words.  For example, think of the opening line of so many well-known jokes:  “A man walks into a bar….”  Now substitute one of the words I gave above for “walks”.  Each of them gives an entirely different feel to the set-up, doesn’t it?  (And I don’t know about you, but I have a verrry hard time using “sashay” or “skip” referring to a guy.  One more nuance!) 

Sometimes, which word you use in a situation depends on your perspective.  The quote at the beginning of this post obviously came from someone who enjoyed the event.  If it was an evening spent at a fashion show, most guys would probably describe it as “The evening dragged on.  For-e-ver.”  When my husband spent 5 years in Japan, one difference he had to get used to in language perspective concerned one person being called to approach another.  In English, we call and say, “Come here” and the response is, “I’m coming.”  The referent point is where the CALLER is, and that the responder is coming TO him.  In Japanese, the caller also says, “Come here”, but the response is, “I’m going” – the referent point being where the RESPONDER is and the fact that he is leaving FROM where he is at now. 

Since my mother was diagnosed with stage IV lung cancer, the words “death” and “dying” have understandably become rather a more common part of our vocabulary.   For most of us – even believers – our thoughts of death tend to focus on it as leaving – leaving the world of the familiar, leaving family.  But there is a phrase that is used a number of times in the Old Testament that I have long loved because it turns that reference point around.

First used in Genesis 25:8, it says of Abraham that he “… breathed his last and died in a good old age, an old man and full of years, and was gathered to his people.”   And was gathered to his people. 

Remember how Jesus said, weeping over Jerusalem, “How often I would have gathered your children as a hen gathers her chicks…”   If you’ve ever seen a hen gathering her chicks, you know the tender, fiercely protective action it is.  She doesn’t just hold her wings out and say, “Here, chick, chick.”  No, she actively pursues and gathers them in.  Only a chick that flatly refuses to come under her protective wings will be left to fend for itself.  We who die in the Lord may not have another human being around when we die, but we will never be alone when we die.  God doesn’t just open The Door for us to walk through as He waits for us on the Other Side.  Even as we breathe our last breath, He is there to gather us in.  We don’t have to do a thing.

My mother is an old woman, old and full of years. Like Abraham, she will leave behind family members who are still living.  But, like Abraham, “her people” – OUR people – the true gathering of God’s family – isn’t here on earth, anyway.  

Our referent point is here; God’s referent point is eternity.  We feel we’re being left behind; God knows that, in Him, we are never apart.  We see dying as leaving our family; God knows it to be joining the Family.  

At the end of our days, whether our life wore on, or dragged on, or something in between, for all the uncertainties and mysteries that lie in just what Death is, it is a comfort to know one thing for certain:  at the end of it all, we’ll be gathered Home.