This morning from my journal: I was drawn to thinking of Dr. Calvin Miller, author, pastor and professor, who died this year, August 9th, 2012, at the age of 75. His written works include The Singer Trilogy, The Celtic Path of Prayer, Life is Mostly Edges, Sermon Maker, Into the Depths and his most recent (that touched and helped me beyond any other) Letters to a Young Pastor. This isn't a complete list of his works, but a good start. He also has written several children's book and many poems. Much thanks to Pastor Roger Daniel of Caffee Junction Church of God for introducing me to this great man and writer. Though I never met him in person, he retired from Beeson Divinity School in Birmingham, Alabama where I live, and he lived in Trussville just a few miles from where I now pastor. It seems that we were destined to meet, though it never happened, but one day I'm confident, in Christ, we will. On the day of his death, when I saw the Tweets concerning his passing... I couldn't help but cry.
Here's the entry from my journal dated Tuesday, November 20th, 2012...
For some reason I'm thinking about Calvin Miller this morning. A man I don't know except through his writings.
What a writer and thinker he was here upon this earthly realm. What a writer and thinker he must now be on that eternal shore where he is no longer inhibited by the limits of mere human expression. His mind has now been unlocked as the blinding scales of our humanity have been peeled away by Christ's own fingers.
Some might think it absurd to imagine that in Heaven there is writing. I imagine that the best writing is done there. Here we're only given a glimpse of the writing potential that exists when no prohibition is made to the artistic expression of such a beautiful form of communication as when the mind has finally been liberated to righteousness, holiness and unhindered perception, now having an eternal vantage point.
Oh the words Calvin now has access to that express such fullness of concepts no human tongue has knowingly uttered; except, perhaps, in some form of charismatic spattering that most of the Christian world condemns as emotional ecstasy. Those unknown languages, are at his full disposal now, and the concepts he once struggled to string together here (oh that I "struggled" as he) now flow in holy ecstasy expressing the beauty and grandeur he knows now so vibrantly. Down here, he only could guess at the grandeur he penned in books published on dirty, used presses. There the grandeur is now bathing him in golden warmth where his soul is satisfied, and his writings printed in angelic hues of electric light on parchment peeled from Divine Presence.
I imagine him with some holy pen (holy because everything in Heavenly is illuminated by light that emanates from God's own Son so that it can be seen and grasped by spiritual hands) feverishly writing of all the new things his eyes have been awakened to. Perhaps one complete sentence there, though no time at all passes, has taken him here 10,000 years to scribe.
He probably shares in a writers guild with those passed away writers such as Paul, with his letters; Isaiah and Jeremiah, with their oracles; David and his son Solomon, with their poetry and praise; Moses and Esther, with their stories of Presence; Spurgeon, with sermon; Charles Wesley, with song; Tolkien and Lewis, with sheer genius. I hope, also, that Oscar Wilde is with them having now learned the craft of grace. He pens now not from the perception of hedonism and sensual exploitation, but from the perception of perfect Love he found on his death bed of sickness from a life wrecked with human taking and grief now redeemed by glowing, piercing beams of grace. I think they're all, also, waiting in anticipation for their sons Lucado, Zacharias, Chan and Platt to arrive.
I hope they'll let me sit in on such an eternally, exquisite guild one day. Not because I'm ever to become an "accomplished" writer such as they, but because I've cried out to the Spirit in my journals of desperate weakness. In those cries, I hope, something of those inexpressible ecstasies spilled unknowingly onto my pages in groanings that were not written in any audibly recognizable tones of intellectual purpose.
I'm not quite sure what turned my think this morning to Miller, but, for whatever reason, the thought of his writing finally being loosed in Heaven gives hope that Spirit filled writing will be loosed on Earth as well. The writings that Calvin now engages must be wonderfully expressive and fully complete in a way his human hand never achieved. I think of him spilling his liberated heart out in divine poetry that no human here can read, but one day, by the heavenly sea, we'll recline and read and marvel still at the works of the Spirit through Calvin Miller.
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