The Problem of Eternity

Wil Triggs

Summer is the memory-making season. Most often I think of our summer camp experiences and people in Russia. But sometimes, the memories reach back to my Uncle Silas.

I didn’t grow up knowing Uncle Si. Not like my other aunts and uncles, on my mom’s side, who lived nearby, and I saw all the time. He and Aunt Alberta first came into my life as a rest stop on the summer road trip we took from southern California to Connecticut to visit my sister and her Yankee husband. We didn’t have a lot of money, but over the course of the year, the family saved money so we could make the trip. Prior to the journey, my brother, who was 22 when I was born, would plan our itinerary and find places where we could stay along the way.

This is how I discovered family I never knew I had—cousins, aunts/uncles who lived in various parts of the country. After our first visit to Alberta and Si, their home in Wyoming became a place we had to stop on every trip one way or the other.

We would stay up late talking with the two of them and then wake up early for a day trip to someplace I’d never been before. The first time we stopped at their home, I woke the next day to the smell of bacon cooking. Thick cut. Maple. Uncle Si was cooking so his wife could talk to her brother (my dad). We went to the Grand Tetons or Yellowstone or both, as well as journeys into the reservation to watch part of an all-night tribal dance.

Then they retired and moved to northern California, where I got to know them even better. Uncle Si grew berries and grapes and all kinds of vegetables. I learned about jam-making and canning for the first time from him. And their pantry was filled with jars of sweet goodness from their yard.

I grew to love them. The days we spent with them were magical. I would soak everything in that they showed me and they enjoyed having me around. Every visit with them fed my heart, and it was always hard to say goodbye. It seemed at the time that heaven might be a little like those days of wonder and discovery. Uncle Si spent his career in education, and there was almost no topic about which he didn’t know interesting things.

But there was one thing we almost never talked about— God. Nevertheless, God was not far off.

Back then there were only two ways that we communicated important news: either by phone or by letter. There was no Facetime, no email or social media, nothing immediate like that. The only thing a wristwatch told us was the time of day if you remembered to wind it.

So, when a letter came from Aunt Alberta, we knew it was important.

Uncle Si had a disease for which there was treatment, but no cure. It was going to kill him. Today’s treatments were not available back then, so just a few months were left, the doctor predicted.

They didn’t want us to come. Their daughter, my cousin, would help them if needed. They asked for positive thoughts.

This positive thought thing was a problem for me. By then, I was following Jesus and my positive thoughts would surely not be enough. Even if something positive happened in relation to the disease, there was the problem of eternity.

Why had we never talked about eternal things? As far as I could tell, my aunt and uncle belonged to a fraternal lodge for social connections, but no church. One of their sons had died when he was in his twenties. I think it may have been a hunting accident. I overheard my mother and my aunt talking about how Uncle Si was never the same after that. He seemed pretty great to me, but had that possibly shaped him to turn away from eternal things?

I had no idea. I was the kid. If they did talk about God, it wasn’t in front of me. Now, it was almost too late.

So, I did what people did back then when they had something important to say. I wrote Uncle Si a letter. I didn’t keep a copy, but here’s what I remember trying to say to him.

I wanted to say how much I loved him, how he and Aunt Alberta had given me some of the happiest days of my life. I said thank you. The thought of not seeing him again was hard and sad. But that I believed in both heaven and hell. There was a way that we could see each other again in heaven—but that was only possible through Jesus. I wrote them the good news of Jesus and that there was a way to heaven, but also an alternative that none of us wanted.

Like I said, I didn’t keep a copy, and I’m sure there would be a lot to critique in that letter. We share imperfectly, but I couldn’t help it. I desperately wanted Uncle Si in heaven with Jesus. I prayed like crazy for Uncle Si.

What happened?

I still wonder. My aunt told my mother to thank me and to let me know that she read every word of my letter to Uncle Si and that it meant a lot. Someday I’ll find out.

Meanwhile, I don’t want to push God to the back of conversations with the people around me. Lately I’ve been reading tracts, not so much to hand them out as to see how in just a few words people express faith in God. We’re adding more of them to the bookstall when it reopens in August. Pick up one or two to read. How do we speak the good news to people around us? There are as many ways as people—each of us in our own way, adapting to the person, our friend, colleague, uncle, whoever.

While many are reading or writing academic articles, I’m happily reading these tracts. One of my favorite tract writers is Roger Carswell. In one of the tracts he asks, “For you, what would be the best news? To win the lottery? To be given a clean bill of health? To find the perfect partner? To be able to start all over again? To be forgiven for all that is past?

“…The good news reminds us that even the enemy, death, has been thoroughly beaten by Jesus who not only died and was buried, but rose again three days later. As the Bible says, ‘Christ is risen from the dead.’”

Speaking the good news is not a thing to put off for another day. Prayer plus words and more prayer seems the way to go. It’s hard. It’s scary. We won’t always do it right. But let’s not hide Jesus under a bushel. The light of the world deserves to shine in big and little ways wherever we go.