Today on Stille Zaterdag (Silent Saturday), I am remembering a Tuesday morning about 10 years ago. I know it was a Tuesday because that's the day of the weekly market in Duiven, the next village. I planned to go after I'd taken the girls to school. Maybe that's why I drove that morning. Usually they biked to school. I had dropped them off and was waiting at the traffic light on the edge of town with my right blinker on, all set to go to Duiven, when I got the distinct feeling I should turn around and go home instead.At home there was a telephone message waiting for me--the one we had been expecting ever since my father went into hospice. He had left his worn-out 86-year-old body and gone on to the next life.
Have you ever had anything like that happen to you? Remember it on those silent Saturdays, when Hope seems dead and buried.
And if you haven't, if every day seems silent, remember this: if death truly were the end, who or what told me to turn around and go back home?
*Photo of my dad, Ralph Van Rheenen, taken for his graduation from Western Theological Seminary, 1951.
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