The Patriarch

I love the drive through the mountains whenever we go home.

There's always a period during the drive as you enter Hope, the hills begin to jut into the sky and disappear behind curtains of clouds. Shortly after that, you yourself begin ascending on the highway that takes you far from civilization, far from gas stations and rest stops, towards the toll at the summit.

And as the car climbs, your ears begin to plug and the air outside gets colder. The trees get skinnier with less oxygen and the clouds hang off of their tips like cobwebs being pulled from a dusty trophy.

It's breathtaking and it's all I can do to keep the car on the road. There's so much to look at.




Sometimes it's good to just pull over and take it in.

Eventually you start the slow descent into Merritt and Kamloops as your ears pop, your bladder nags, and the purpose of your trip comes back to you. Ruth and I have traveled this pass so many times.

There were two very important reasons to go home last weekend. They can really only be blogged separately so we'll start with this one...



Last Wednesday night George Henry Lepp fell asleep. When he woke up he was somewhere else, but he was no longer with us.




There are 80 family members that either call George Father, Grandfather, or great Grandfather. We got together to honour grandpa, and put his tired old body to rest. At 88 he lived to see things I can barely imagine.



He was born in Russia, present day Ukraine. His family left their home looking for peace and prosperity in Canada. They found it, but George lost two brothers on the journey here. One in Latvia, one in Canada soon after arriving. Farming was in the bloodlines. It carried on from my grandpa's Dad, to my Grandpa, to my own Dad.

Wheat was his favorite crop.



Soon after being married to Mary, George heard a radio program that changed his life. He turned to Christ and never looked back. He opened his Bible everyday. He lived to serve his family and his saviour.

He was an extremely hard worker, suffering from a heart attack at 36. He worked with his hands and made use of what he was given. He did the work that God put in front of him.

I know he wasn't perfect.






I don't open my Bible everyday.

Sometimes I have a hard time being a servant. I know he wasn't perfect. I know I'm not perfect either. But at times like these it's good to evaluate things.

Sometimes when I'm on the treadmill at the gym, I feel a tightness in my chest. I think about grandpa and I slow down.



At the end of the graveside service, a time for sharing was opened. There was silence for a minute. I'll never forget watching my Dad walk across the grass to the bundle of wheat next to the coffin. He used his hook to break open the twine as he announced, "It's time for harvest!" He began handing out wheat. I raised my camera to steal that scene forever but I decided instead to just remember it.

It is harvest time. Some extended family couldn't make it because harvest has started in Manitoba. And it was harvest for time for Grandpa. What God had been sowing in the soil of his life was ready to be collected.



I looked, and there before me was a white cloud, and seated on the cloud was one "like a son of man" with a crown of gold on his head and a sharp sickle in his hand. Then another angel came out of the temple and called in a loud voice to him who was sitting on the cloud, "Take your sickle and reap, because the time to reap has come, for the harvest of the earth is ripe." So he who was seated on the cloud swung his sickle over the earth, and the earth was harvested.
Revelation 14: 14-16