We were sitting in a side room (it didn’t qualify for “Green Room” status; see my Perspective blog “The Green Room”) in a conference center in Dallas, Texas. Beyond the door, I could see and hear the session already taking place as we prepared for the main event later that evening.

Across from me was Dr. James Houston, the evening guest speaker. This gentleman Christian scholar and theologian was quite capable of presenting on his own to the pastors and lay leaders of 50+ age ministries, gathered there from around the US and Canada; but I had asked him to allow me to interview him instead. My reasoning was simple; I wanted the conferees to hear his story.

I went over how the evening would progress and suggested some questions I hoped he would respond to. I paused and then said, “Jim, I know you may wonder at the necessity for some of these questions, but trust me, they’re important since most of these people do not know you.”

He smiled (he has a great smile) and said something I will never forget.

“It’s because I’m hid with Christ.”

And we laughed together at his dry humor.

Some months earlier, I had invited myself to meet Jim the first time, by offering to drive from Seattle to Vancouver, British Columbia, with Dixie, and to take Jim and his wife out to lunch.

Arriving, we found he had himself prepared a lovely “English lunch” at their apartment home, overlooking one of the city’s many boat harbors. What I had surmised, but did not know for certain until we were together that first day, was that his loving wife of many years was suffering with Altzheimers.

We went about our visit together until it was time to go. On our drive home Dixie and I talked about how rich an experience this had been. The way Jim went about his work; how we were so well entertained by this humble teacher/leader, one of the founders of Regent College in Vancouver; the books he had written that we were carrying home to read (not all of them, for he has authored well over forty); and the loving way he cared for his wife.

When we had been together for awhile, he uttered another memorable statement (with a knowing smile), given the circumstances. “These are the golden years,” he said, “the years I get to love my wife without expecting anything in return.”

The four of us were together one more time after that in their Vancouver apartment. Soon thereafter, Jim and I said goodbye to the loves of our lives, as each made their difficult transitions from earth to heaven, leaving us to grieve “the golden years; the years we had respectively gotten to love our wives without expecting anything in return.”

And to reflect and rejoice.

“But we do not want you to be uninformed, brothers, about those who are asleep, that you may not grieve as others do who have no hope. For since we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so, through Jesus, God will bring with him those who have fallen asleep. For this we declare to you by a word from the Lord,

[d] that we who are alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord, will not precede those who have fallen asleep. For the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a cry of command, with the voice of an archangel, and with the sound of the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we will always be with the Lord. Therefore encourage one another with these words” ~1 Thessalonians 4:13-18.

This is our hope, and the hope of every Christ follower.

That evening in Dallas, Jim and I drew up two chairs and sat talking to each other, and to an eager audience, most of whom truly did not know this gentle, godly man; the only one we would likely ever know, who, in his earlier professorial years, had welcomed C. S. Lewis, among others, into his living room on a regular basis while serving as the Don at one of Oxford’s colleges.

To have a mentor in your life who is twenty years older. To be a mentor to someone twenty years younger. It’s a good rule to live by. Is this the way it is for you?

Jim doesn’t really fill the twenty years older category for me … though he is well into his nineties now, and still going strong for God. And because we live some distance apart, we do not connect regularly. But in spoken conversations and with written words, he continue to touch my life with “teaching moments.”

An Ontario daughter wrote to express thanks for inviting her father to speak that evening in Dallas, noting that, with age, he receives fewer and fewer such invitations. It is unfortunate we miss such opportunities to “mine” the hearts and minds and souls of our elder saints, don’t you think?

To be found, “hidden with Christ?”

It can happen, you know, for you and me.

And that should be enough.

“If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth. For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ who is your life appears, then you also will appear with him in glory” ~Colossians 3:1-4 (ESV).