Time to Fold Your Tent

For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven: a time to be born, and a time to die; Ecclesiastes 3:1-2

The time to die…Gregory G Wilkinson, child of God, died at 7:30 p.m. last night. Family was gathered with him in prayer, offering comfort and strength as his body slipped away, and he joined the glorious company of the saints, the glory realm. Summer 2006 when Greg shared with family the news of his cancer prognosis, he said ‘‘I ‘m not positive I’m going to make it, but this I know, for me, to live is Christ, to die is gain.’’

A time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance…In our time of mourning and weeping, when one can be at a loss for words, words of scripture and poetry brought comfort to Vernie. She asked that they be shared with all of you.

It is Time to Fold Your Tent
I am sure it is my duty, as long as I am in this tent, to keep stirring you up with reminders since I know the time for me to lay aside this tent is coming soon, as our Lord Jesus Christ made clear to me. And I shall take great care that after my own departure you will still have a means to recall these things to mind. 2 Peter 1:13-15
All of us earth-people will someday be asked to fold up our tents and come home. Death and life stand near each other. It is difficult at times to see where one begins and the other ends. This poem is dedicated, with love, to all the tent-folders who have ever walked this earth and to the tent-folder who is waiting in you.

Once again death’s mystery
holds us in its arms
and we are memorized
with a thousand things
You were and are, and now
always will be.

We celebrate this journey with a quiet shyness
always a little uncomfortable
with a mystery so deep.
But with hearts full of life
we hold out our hands
to receive the mystery of death
the gift of death
and sometimes we weep.

Eyes that see all the way in now
proclaim to us the new truth,
When you stand close enough to death
it isn’t death anymore.
Its new name is life,
yet those of us with earth-eyes
still call it death.

There is really no death
for those caught up in God,
only a moment of passing over
a moment of folding up your tent
a hard, painful, giving-up moment
It is always painful to let go.

We praise a man
who had the vision to let go.
We praise a God
who had a love to ask him
to let go.

O God of life
it is in our moments
of not letting go
that we truly experience death
and all the while
It is life that you have planned for us!

O God of life
dip us into the mystery of letting go
of folding up our tents
so we, your earthen vessels,
can bear the beauty of the braking
and hold the fullness
of the life.

Do earth-people always call things
by the wrong name?
Is it death we celebrate?
Or is it life?
Or is it letting go?

I warn you
when God gives you the grace to let go
be prepared
for a radical transformation!
Macrina Wiederkehr.

In sure and certain hope of the resurrection to eternal life through our Lord Jesus Christ, we commend to almighty God, our dear and beloved Greg.

written by Georganne Wilkinson Robertson