Tim Harlan Memorial
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Before I ever heard Tim’s name I knew him as “The candy man.” It was honestly a troubling introduction as a pastor. One of the first things I did as a new pastor in Bonners Ferry was to go talk to “The Candy Man” and figure out what was going on with an older gentleman giving candy to kids at church. Tim had such a kindhearted approach that he wasn’t even offended by the fact that I was coking to make sure the kids were safe. He just told me all about his candy-love-language and how he brought treats to all kinds of people at church on the weekend and visiting them during the week. The kids were just a bonus, and he loved to see them smile.
Smiling. I always found Tim smiling. It wasn’t as though he couldn’t be a serious businessman when he had to be, but he came back to fun and smiling as soon as he could.
For most of the time I knew Tim he was facing down cancer, but that never defined his life. He told me several times, “everyone is going to die sooner or later, I just know its going to be sooner for me.” His continued concern when I would visit him was for his children. He told me that he knew Jesus loved him and where he stood with God. He just wanted to ensure that his kids were going to be ok, and that his death wouldn’t cause any division in the family.
When I think of Tim I kind of imagine a biblical patriarch blessing his sons before he died. Judah went through his line of children from Reuben to Benjamin, pointing out the character traits in each one that stood out to him. Some were very positive, some were… less than complimentary, but in the middle of it all his dying blessings he said this:
I trust in you for salvation, O Lord!
Isn’t there a lot that we need to be saved from? We live in a broken world that we can’t control no matter how much will power, stamina, skill, or money we possess. We are afflicted with sicknesses, besieged by bad habits, and broken by our own selfishness. And that’s just our personal issues. Look at the broader world and you’ll find a whole litany of things you can’t solve on your own—wars, famines, weather crisis, and human trafficking. Tim knew that there was one solution for all of it—Jesus.
Some trust in chariots and some in horses,
but we trust in the name of the Lord our God.
The name of the Lord.
In one of the famous bible verses of all time, Jesus talks about the name that saves:
“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God.
We could try to figure out whether Tim’s best characteristics outweighed his worst, but that would be a useless exercise because the Bible says that even our best righteousness is like filthy rags. Nothing we can do, no good behavior or benevolent deed will make us merit heaven. Our most significant choice in life is whether or not we have allowed Jesus to be our Lord and savior. And it comes down to this simple phrase: believe on the Lord Jesus.
Margaret Becker wrote a song about the name of Jesus entitled, Say the Name:
A more sweeter sounding word
These lips have never said
A gentle name so beautiful
My heart cannot forget
Just a whisper is enough
To set my soul at ease
Just thinking of this Name
Brings my heart to peace
Say the Name
Say the Name that soothes the soul
The Name of gentle healing
And peace immutable
I'll say the Name that has heard my cry
Has seen my tears and wiped them dry
From now until the end of time
I'll say the Name
May I never grow so strong
That my heart cannot be moved
May I never grow so weak
That I fear to speak the truth
I will say this holy Name
No matter who agrees
For no other name on earth
Means so much to me
With all the honor I can find
With all my heart, my soul, my mind
I will say the Name
Without defense, without shame
I will always speak the Name
Of Jesus
From now until the end of time
Say the Name
Tim believed in the name of Jesus, and I think that his greatest joy would be to wake up when Jesus calls the dead back to life and to see each one of you there with him to meet the Lord.
The Bible says that whether you’ve died or you’re still alive when Jesus comes, we’ll all go up together at the same time. Let’s read 1 Thessalonians 4 again:
But we do not want you to be uninformed, brothers, about those who are asleep, that you may not grieve as others do who have no hope. For since we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so, through Jesus, God will bring with him those who have fallen asleep. For this we declare to you by a word from the Lord, that we who are alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord, will not precede those who have fallen asleep. For the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a cry of command, with the voice of an archangel, and with the sound of the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we will always be with the Lord. Therefore encourage one another with these words.
Paul tells us to encourage each other with this hope, but courage can be hard to muster when we face the loss of someone we love. It’s difficult to see the spaces they filled and hear the phrases they often repeated, and touch the things they once held. Grief and loss can feel like an overwhelming darkness. But there is light again.
C.S. Lewis wrote about his grief after he lost his wife.
No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear. I am not afraid, but the sensation is like being afraid. The same fluttering in the stomach, the same restlessness, the yawning. I keep on swallowing.
This is one of the things I’m afraid of. The agonies, the mad moments, must, in the course of nature die away. But what will follow? Just this apathy, this dead flatness?
Some of the emotions of grief come as questions, and more than most, we question God. Can a mortal ask a question that God can’t answer? Of course, all nonsense questions are unanswerable. How many hours are in a mile? Is yellow round or square? Probably half the questions we ask—the great theological and metaphysical problems—are like that. And as C.S. Lewis struggled with pain he realized that,
Heaven will solve our problems, but not by showing us subtle reconciliations between all our apparently contradictory notions. The notions will be knocked from under our feet. We shall see that there never was any problem.
There was a moment when Lewis realized that he was coming out of the stupor of grief, like slowly waking up from a nap. He described it as the dawning of a morning when you’re up long before the sun. As you sit in darkness, Imperceptibly the darkness begins to lift, but you don’t notice any difference until suddenly you say to yourself, “I can see again.” The cold darkness slowly yields to the warmth of the dawning sun, and so too does the darkness and flatness of grief yield, slowly, imperceptibly, to the dawning of new joy. Your life warms with a kind word of a friend, and with the confidence found in a verse of Scripture. It brightens with the name of Jesus.
From what I know of Tim I think he would like us to mourn his loss, but not for too long. He would want us to live with joy and vigor and enthusiasm. He would want us to live with hope.