The Sweet Dropper

Over the past few months I’ve shared some excerpts from the CaringBridge site for Buddy Wood, brother-in-law of one of our FPC Kosciusko members. Buddy’s journal of his spiritual growth in the midst of brain cancer has taught me a lot about living and dying well for Christ’s sake. I’ve chronicled them in entries such as In Everything Give Thanks, Allies with Your Enemies, and The Hazards of Dealing with Trials.

For the last two weeks or so, Buddy has been under hospice care, and this afternoon I received this:

Friends and family,

Our dearly beloved husband, father, brother and friend left this earth to be with his Heavenly Father this afternoon at 4:18 PM. Buddy’s last moments on this earth were peaceful and filled to the brim with the dying grace of which he often spoke in this garrison. He was surrounded by family as his breathing gradually slowed to a stop and he was taken off at last to a heavenly kingdom where words like cancer and suffering no longer apply. Buddy fought a brave fight and remained a faithful servant of the Most High God to his very last breath. Our grief is great but it is not without the hope that comes from faith in Our Savior and the knowledge that we shall be reunited with him again in God’s perfect timing. God’s grace overflows in the abundant love poured forth on us by friends and family.

Love,

The Woods

Buddy shone like a star–and his works follow him. May God grant more of us such grace to live and die well and, like Buddy, not to waste our lives.

Thursday, 5 July 2007, Robert C. Cannada, Sr. died in Jackson, Mississippi after an illness of 5 months. Mr. Cannada was a ruling elder at Jackson’s First Presbyterian Church for 50 years, and was a founder and former Board chairman for 25 years of Reformed Theological Seminary. He was also an important leader in the founding of the Presbyterian Church in America in 1973 and made important contributions to the drafting of the PCA’s Book of Church Order. The Sweet Dropper remembers him as a kind and generous Christian gentlemen of the first order. Below is some more information about Mr. Cannada’s family and professional life, along with funeral arrangements:

…a founder and former Managing Partner for 25 years at the law firm of Butler, Snow, O’Mara, Stevens, and Cannada, and an officer in the Navy and veteran of World War II and of the Korean War. He was also a board member of a number of other legal, business, civic and Christian organizations. He was a faithful and godly leader in the home, in the church, and in the community. He was preceded in death by his lifelong love and wife, Inez Chisolm Cannada, and by one son, Paul Davis Cannada. He is survived by two sons, Robert C. (Ric) Cannada, Jr. (and wife, Rachel) and R. Barry Cannada (and wife, Angelyn), and by five grandchildren, Christy Cannada Burrow (and husband, Beau), Cecilia Cannada Rutledge (and husband, Bryan), Kathryn Cannada Nicholas (and husband Taylor), Caroline Chisolm Cannada, and Robert Davis Cannada, and by 5 great-grandchildren.

In lieu of flowers, memorials are encouraged to be made to the Founders Fund at Reformed Theological Seminary (5422 Clinton Blvd, Jackson, MS 39211) or to the Twin Lakes Retreat Center at First Presbyterian Church (1390 N. State St., Jackson, MS 39202).

The funeral service will be held at First Presbyterian Church in Jackson on Tuesday, July 10, at 11:00 am, followed by internment at Lakewood Memorial Park on Clinton Blvd. Visitation will be held at First Presbyterian Church on Monday, July 9, from 5:00 to 8:00 pm and on Tuesday, July 10, from 9:00 to 10:30 am.

When Sen. John Kerry was a candidate for president in 2004, the word nuanced was used a lot to describe the senator’s positions on a number of issues. To some, Kerry’s nuanced arguments displayed great intellect and sensitivity. To others, he sounded like a non-committal pantywaist.

This past Thursday the church militant lost one of her least-nuanced members, one who was anything but non-committal, one steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord–ruling elder John T. Goodner of the Covenant Presbyterian Church in Auburn, Alabama. John was 53 years old, a native of Birmingham, a scuba instructor at Auburn University, and owner of Adventure Sports in Auburn and Montgomery. He also served as a key leader on the boards of Women’s Hope Medical Clinic and Camp Maranook. John was a deacon at Covenant while I served as assistant pastor there from May, 1994 to January, 1999.

But back to the nuance thing–John was as nuanced and subtle as a Johnny Cash song. He had that great Presbyterian gift of being both ‘tight as a tick’ with money and yet remarkably generous. He was plain-spoken in praise or criticism and yet unfailingly charitable and kind. He was serious about the advancement of the kingdom of God and yet he always made you laugh. If you put him up in front of a congregation to pray, he was prone to ramble and talk way too long before actually praying, but then his short prayer would be full and substantial and centered on Christ.

His family and mine have remained close through the years. John and his wife Aileene had seven children–sons John, Jr., Drew, Gray, Straley and Will; daughters Mary Beth and Cate. Needless to say, their home was always lively and bordering on chaotic. And there in the midst of it all would be John, always barrell-chested and usually shirtless and red-faced from all the time he spent outdoors, displaying firmness without harshness, seriousness without ever failing to smile at the goodness and grace of God.

Death is an outrage; it is nasty and brutish; but the captain of our salvation has burst through that boundary and come out on the other side. He is risen from the grave; and in his resurrection we see that, though we live in a vale of tears now, where death seems to hold the trump cards, there is a day coming when we know that we and all the loved ones who have gone before us in Christ will rise to be with Christ. His death was agonizing but it could not hold him; ours will no doubt be terrible and traumatic; but because of Christ, death will not hold us either.

In saying ave atque vale [hail and also farewell], let’s give the Lord Jesus the last word from John 6:37-40:

All that the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never cast out. For I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will but the will of him who sent me. And this is the will of him who sent me, that I should lose nothing of hall that he has given me, but raise it up on the last day. For this is the will of my Father, that everyone who looks on the Son and believes in him should have eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day.

The Sweet Dropper loves Reformed University Fellowship (RUF), the campus ministry of the Presbyterian Church in America. And we love and pray for those men who are called to serve as campus ministers. Thus, an ‘ave atque vale’ for The Rev. Dustin Salter, who was called from the Church Militant to the Church Triumphant on 19 March, after suffering severe head injuries in a wreck while cycling last November. Dustin was RUF campus minister at Furman University and had previously started the work at Texas Christian University in Fort Worth. Glenn Lucke wrote this tribute for Common Grounds Online. We remember Dustin’s family and students in our prayers.

“Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.”

And he who was seated on the throne said, “Behold, I am making all things new.” Also he said, “Write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true.” And he said to me, “It is done! I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. To the thirsty I will give from the spring of the water of life without payment. The one who conquers will have this heritage, and I will be his God and he will be my son.” (Rev. 21: 1-7)

The Sweet Dropper notes that Bruce M. Metzger, professor emeritus at Princeton Theological Seminary and an authority on Greek manuscripts of the Bible, has died at age 93. He was the George L. Collord Professor Emeritus of New Testament Language and Literature at Princeton Theological Seminary. He earned a bachelor’s degree from Lebanon Valley College in 1935, a bachelor of theology degree from Princeton Seminary in 1938 and a doctorate in classics from Princeton University in 1942. He became an ordained minister with the Presbyterian Church in 1939.

Metzger began his teaching career at Princeton Theological Seminary in 1938, where he stayed in the New Testament department for 46 years. During his time at Princeton Seminary, Metzger developed 25 courses on the English and Greek texts of books in the New Testament. He was also involved with committees in the production of the United Bible Societies’ Greek New Testament (1966) and the New Revised Standard Version (1990).

Think of him if you take a Greek New Testament in your hands, and give thanks to God for learned and faithful scholars.