Happy Is the Man — I Will Rejoice Greatly

✦ It Took Me Decades

Kempis brought this passage twice — yesterday and today. And when the Word repeats itself, the soul pays attention. The greatest saints chose to live in secret with God. The same words. But today they arrive on a different road — the motorhome rolling through Pinhel, Portugal, on the way to France. A new country ahead. The old one receding in the mirrors.

And the testimony: it took me decades to learn. Not a retreat weekend. Not a sermon that changed everything overnight. Decades. The slow, patient, faithful forming of a soul that rose before dawn, again and again, until the secret life with God became not a discipline but an identity. My personal time with the Lord is who I am. That did not happen in a day. It happened in a thousand days — and today, on the road, the suitable time is still found. The secret place travels with the soul that has learned to carry it. 🙏

✦ I Will Rejoice Greatly

Kempis brings his most solemn teaching — order yourself as if you were to die this day — and the soul that hears it does not tremble. She rejoices. Not because death is small, but because the conscience is good. Not because the soul is perfect — all perfection has some imperfection joined to it, as Kempis said earlier this week — but because the soul knows Whose she is. The good conscience is not the sinless conscience. It is the forgiven conscience. The 500 denari soul who was forgiven much and loves much — she does not fear the meeting. She looks forward to it.

To-day man is, and to-morrow he will be seen no more. Kempis writes it as a warning to the dull and hard heart. But for the heart that is already awake — the heart that rises before dawn to meet God — it is not a warning. It is a promise. Tomorrow I may be seen no more — and what a tomorrow that will be. To live is Christ. To die is gain. I will rejoice greatly — this I know. 🙏

✦ She Was Not There

If you have ever seen one die, consider that you also shall pass away by the same road. Kempis says: look, and learn. The one who has seen death should understand — the same road awaits.

And the testimony answers: I have seen it. And I rejoiced. Not because the loss was small. Not because the heart was numb. But because the eyes of faith saw what the eyes of the body could not — she was not there. The body in the casket was the house the tenant had left. Consuelo had gone with the Lord. The woman who said não tenho medo de nada, confio no Senhor right up to the end — she had already arrived where the fear could never follow.

I sense that she is very much alive today. Because she is. The communion of saints is not a metaphor. The mother who found the Way through her daughter — the mother who translated Chambers and Hagin into Portuguese near her ninetieth year — the mother who said "I saw Christ in you" — she is alive. And she is well.

And the tears that come — it's a cry of love, not grief. The saudades. The Portuguese word that only a Portuguese heart fully understands — the longing for what is absent, the ache that is not loss but love. The distance is real. But the distance is temporary. The daughter will pass by the same road. And on that day — I will rejoice greatly, this I know. 🙏

✦ Send Some Good Before You

Now is the accepted time, now is the day of salvation. 2 Corinthians 6:2 — Paul's urgency, carried through Kempis across six centuries to a motorhome on the road to France. Do not put off. Do not trust to the help of others. Do not wait for a better season. Now.

Send some good before you. The treasure laid up in advance. The mornings before dawn — each one a deposit in eternity. The journal entries — each one a witness sent ahead. The decades of learning to live in secret with God — each one a coin in the treasury that does not rust. The good has already been sent, morning after morning, year after year, city after city. Dallas to Caldas da Rainha. Caldas da Rainha to Pinhel. Pinhel to France. The address changes. The treasure does not.

And Kempis ends the week where he began — with the urgency of the present moment. The good life is not a goal for tomorrow. It is the offering of today. 🙏

✦ A Week with Kempis — A Word of Thanks

This morning I thank the Lord for Kempis, and his life. God provides pastors and teachers to edify us and maintain our zeal. I cannot thank him enough for all his words of encouragement.

Seven days. From the simplicity of the good life to the hour of death. From love to be yourself unknown to I will rejoice greatly. From the single-hearted to the stranger and sojourner. From the kindling of daily zeal to the road that leads to France. Thomas à Kempis — a monk in the Netherlands, writing in the fifteenth century — arrived this week when the soul needed him most. God provides pastors and teachers. He provides them across centuries, across languages, across the distance between a cloister and a motorhome. "I see you, Kempis." He heard it. 🙏

✦ Atendê-la, Ouvi-la, Guardá-la

A new voice arrives through Consuelo's hands — Kenneth Hagin, Alimento da Saúde — and the simplicity is stunning. Three things to do with the Word of God. Attend to it and put it first. Hear it. Guard it in the heart. That is the entire discipline in three lines.

Kempis spent seven days teaching it in a hundred different ways — the good life, the secret with God, the suitable time for meditation, the daily kindling of zeal. Hagin, through Consuelo, says the same thing in three sentences. Put the Word first. Hear it. Guard it in the heart. The morning before dawn is all three at once — the attending, the hearing, the guarding. The soul that does these three things has done everything Kempis asked.

And this is the second author Consuelo translated — Chambers and now Hagin — carried from English into Portuguese by a woman near her ninetieth year, a woman who feared nothing and trusted the Lord. The mother's hands on the Word. The daughter reading those hands this morning, on a road the mother will never travel — and yet she travels it too, because the Word she carried goes with her daughter wherever the road leads. 🙏