In his second letter to his friends in the city of Corinth, Paul described these physical bodies that we live in as “earthly tents” … something that Paul would know a lot about. One of the ways that Paul supported himself and his ministry was by making and repairing tents. They didn’t have sewing machines back then so every tent had to be slowly and patiently sewn together by hand … one stitch at a time … which meant that Paul probably had a lot of time to sit and think as he worked.
I picture him sitting there, thinking about the couple or the family who would live in the home that he was making. He would picture them, warm and safe. He’d picture the meals that they would share around the fire, talking about their day. He would think about the love that would be made, the arguments that would be waged, the children who would be born … children who would grow up in the very tent that he was making and then start a family of their own under their own tent.
As he made the flaps for the front door, he would imagine the people living in the tent going out to face the day and then coming back through them at the end of the day to the warmth and safety of their home and family. He would imagine the friends who would pass through those flaps and share a meal or possibly spend the night or had come to comfort the family when someone had passed away or a disaster had hit the family.
As he fashioned the holes for the tent poles and tent pegs, he would try to imagine all the places that his tent would go. He would picture the tent that he made pitched by a cool stream or under whispering pines, maybe in the middle of a green meadow filled with spring flowers, providing shelter and protection in a savage and unforgiving wilderness.
As he looks over at the pile of tents that need repair, he thinks about all the weather and constant use and abuse that his tent will go through and how it will need to be patched and repaired many times until one day it can no longer be fixed and will have to be recycled into something else … rags maybe … or a tarp used to cover a wagon or hay in the field.
And then he thinks about Psalm 139 and he pictures God patiently stitching together the earthly tent that his spirt, his soul would call home for 60 years.
Sometime in April of 1932, God took some DNA from Paul Russell Mathews and some DNA from Lola Cothran Mathews and He began to knit together a life that would become known as Guy Samuel Mathews. As He created Guy’s eyes, God would picture the sights that Guy would see … the tears of joy and laughter … the tears of grief and pain that those eyes would shed. When he formed Guy’s mouth, He thought about the words that guy would speak … some in love, some in anger. He thought about the lips and eyes and cheeks that Guy’s lips would kiss … the food that Guy’s tongue would taste … all the stories and all the truth and lies that Guy would tell … all the prayers that those lips would pray. As He molded Guy’s ears to the side of his head, God would think about all the words that Guy’s ears would hear … some spoken in love, some spoken in anger.
As He made Guy’s hands, He thought about all the things that Guy’s hands would build and fix … all the tools that those hands would hold … all the weeds that those hands would pull … all the tears those hands would wipe away … and all the hands of loved ones those hands would hold. As He put the muscles on Guy’s arm, God thought about all the people those arms would hug, all the loads that those arms would carry.
When He made Guy’s legs and feet, He thought about all the places that they would carry Guy to … from his home here in Canton out into the world and then back home again here in Canton.
When God made Guy’s heart, God knew exactly how many beats that heart would beat. He also knew the joy that it would feel, the excitement, the love, the peace, the fear, the anger, the rage.
And then He made Guy’s crowning glory … his mind. God knew all the thoughts that Guy was going to have, all the wonder that he would experience, all the problems that Guy would solve with that mind … the lofty thoughts, the unique thoughts, the beautiful thoughts, the dark thoughts, the bored thoughts, the lonely thoughts … and all the doubts and fears that would haunt it.
And then, when God was done putting all the parts of Guy together, He added the most important piece – He breathed into Guy His Spirit, the part of God that lives in all us … the part of us that we call the “soul” … that spark of life … that piece of God that dwells within us all and calls these “earthly” tents of ours “home.”
On December 21, 1932, God presented His work to the world in Stephens County Georgia and placed His creation in the care of Paul and Lola Mathews. Shortly thereafter, the family moved up here to Canton, where he live and played and went to school, graduated from the local high school, and attended Blanton’s Business College.
Guy was one of five children who started out life during the depression. Like many of his generation, the depression and his humble beginnings left an indelible mark on him. He worked hard … determined to make a better life for himself and for his family. This carried over into his public life as well as he worked hard to make his community, his state, and his country a better place because he was a part of it. He was always ready to fix things that were broken … whether it was something in the home … which he built himself … or fixing something for a neighbor or something at the parsonage or at the church. His golf cart was loaded with tools and was well-known around these parts.
The way that he showed love and loyalty to his family was to give them a better life than the one he had growing up … and he succeed in giving them opportunities that he never had. He showed his love and loyalty for his community by working with the Masons and the Shriners. He showed his love and loyalty for his country by serving in the U.S. Army. He showed his love for His Lord and Savior … His Creator … by his love and loyalty and his participation in his church.
Like Paul’s tents, our earthly tents are subject to the wear and tear and struggles of life … and Guy’s tent was no different. He cut one of his thumbs off while working on his house. He had to have by-pass surgery, he had a broken hip, a knee replaced. He once was severely burned at the paper mills. He had cancer. Like all of our earthly tents, Guy’s body and mind simply wore out … but the “soul” … the “spark” … the breath of life that lived in Guy and that lives in all of us … that is eternal.
You see, as Guy’s body was reaching the end of its usefulness and Guy’s time here in this world was coming to an end … Jesus was already working on creating a new body for Guy … a spiritual body … an eternal body. When Jesus told His disciples that His journey here on earth was almost over and that He would no longer need this tent of flesh, He told them that they would see Him again and that He would come when their earthly tents were no longer of any use to their eternal souls and He would take them where they could be with Him forever … and, in order for that to happen … in order for them to be with Him forever … He would have to give them a new body … a forever body … one that was as uniquely made as the earthly bodies that they had left behind.
Guy lived in his earthly tent for 87 years but now his spirit, his soul is free of the limitation, the pain, and the decay of his earthly tent. While we are live in these temporary, earthly tents, Paul says that our spirit, our soul … that part of God that He puts in us … yearns, it groans to be at home with God. Guy’s spirit, Guy’s soul has ceased its yearning. Guy’s spirit, Guy’s soul has ceased its groaning. He is back with God. He is back with wife, Audrey. He is back with his mother, Lola, and his father, Paul. He is back with all his family and friends who have shed their earthly tents and gone home to be with Lord … never to be separated from God or their loved ones by death ever again.
Guy has gone on to be with His Lord … but God has used pieces of Guy to make some you … and the DNA … the pieces that He used also contain the DNA of Lola and Paul. But these “earthly tents” were meant to do more than just protect our vital organs. These earthly tents are where we keep our thoughts, our hopes, our dreams, our memories. Jesus said that we should not store up our treasures here on earth where moth and rust can consume them or where thieves can break in and steal them. Cars rust … houses decay … jewelry can be stolen … bank accounts can be hacked … and none of these will go with us when we leave these earthly tents … but I do believe the memories, the hope, the love, the dreams that we hold in our hearts when we do live in these earthly tents does go with us when we leave them. Guy’s memories, Guy’s hopes, his love, his dreams went with him when he left us to go home … but our memories, our love of Guy has stayed with us and will stay with us until, like Guy, we shuffle off these mortal coils.
In thinking about these earthly tents, Paul realized that to be present in these mortal, finite bodies means that we are away … apart from … God. While our souls yearn and our spirits groan to be with the LORD, we give thanks and we praise Jesus for it is Jesus who made it possible for our souls, our spirits to attain the desire of our heart … to be absent from these bodies and be present with the LORD. It was Jesus who made it possible for us to leave here and to join Him in Heaven and be with God forever. He made it possible by taking on flesh and then offering up His earthly body as a sacrifice for our sin … bearing the burden that we could not bear on the cross … a burden that weighed down our spirits and our souls and doomed us to be forever separate and apart from our heart, our spirit, our soul’s desire.
By our faith in Him, we are free of that load. Jesus’ sacrifice … His death and resurrection … lifted the power of death off of us. The empty tomb is proof that these earthly tents are not the end for us. By His death and resurrection, by the forgiveness that He won and the righteousness that He bestows on those of who believe, we will be able to stand before the judgment seat of Christ … just as Guy now stands before the judgment seat of Christ … not in fear but in anticipation of the great and wonderful things to come and the new and eternal spiritual bodies that He will cloth us with.
Today we mourn our loss but we do not loose heart. Today, we look to our future with hope and with courage because we know that Christ our Savior will lead us safely on our journey from earthly tent to heavenly home when our time comes … just as He has done for Guy and for all the saints who love Him.
Let us pray …
