The first time I met Clark was in 1959. I was almost 11. Mom, Dad, Danny, and I had driven to Wheaton College for my sister Nancy’s graduation. We had a picnic lunch on the front lawn of the college, and Nancy had convinced Clark to come over to meet us. Clark had just graduated, too, and he was Nancy’s new boyfriend. I don’t remember much from that first meeting, other than that he was tall – 6’ 3” – and handsome. He smiled a lot and seemed pleasant.
The next time I saw him was later that summer. He drove up to Cambridge with his tape recorder to record Nancy playing some hymns on the organ. He was sometimes asked to sing in churches and he had to accompany himself on his guitar. He wanted Nancy to play a few hymns and gospel songs that he could play for accompaniment instead of having to strum a guitar. We had a small electronic organ in the living room. He was able to connect the organ and tape recorder with a cable so Nancy could play and he could sing, and only the organ music would record. He won me over during that visit by having me play a couple songs on the organ, too.
A couple years later Nancy and Clark were married. I was one of the bridesmaids – my first time in that role.
Over the years, my appreciation for Clark has fluctuated more than for anyone else I’ve known. The biggest blow up came when I was a senior in college. At that time, Nancy and Clark and their three sons and one daughter were living in Wheaton in the house where Clark had grown up, and Clark had started up a handyman business. He had gone to seminary after college, and had served as a youth pastor of a church in another Chicago suburb for a few years, but he really didn’t like the job of being a pastor, especially with the requirement to spend most of his evenings in church-related meetings. He liked doing the work that he had done to earn his way through seminary better, mainly painting houses and doing home remodeling projects.
Marian with nephew Steve and niece Cindy
During my last year in college, Nancy and Clark invited me to live with them to minimize my costs of going to college. Their house was about a mile and a half from campus. During that year I realized how differently Clark and I thought about many things, and how important it was for Clark to be able to control the actions of everyone in his family, including me. In my last few weeks before graduation, I was busy making plans for what I would do after college, and Clark was trying to tell me what I could and could not do. By the time graduation came, Clark and I were barely on speaking terms.
Over the next 30 years, we had many family dinners and other activities together, and we both had good enough manners to be civil, even pleasant to each other. Occasionally, we even enjoyed each other’s company. But mostly, we intentionally tried to minimize our interactions. We were both imperfect souls, trying to find our way through life the best way we knew how – and our ways were very different. But because we were family, we needed to learn how to interact with each other the best way we could.
But then everything changed. In 1999, Nancy suffered a major stroke that left her with limited mobility. She worked incredibly hard in rehab, and regained the ability to walk somewhat, but she never regained complete use of her left side. Somehow, Clark was transformed by her stroke. He became the kindest, most loving and considerate person you can imagine. Over the next five years Nancy and Clark and Mim and I, and the rest of our extended family enjoyed many special times together.
In 2004, Clark was diagnosed with advanced leukemia and he died quite suddenly, not long after the diagnosis. His funeral was on the day that would have been Nancy and Clark’s 42nd wedding anniversary. A few weeks before his death he led a small group Bible Study and prayer meeting, and someone recorded him spontaneously singing the song “Sweet Hour of Prayer.” That tape was played at his funeral. His low voice singing these words, unaccompanied, is what I think of whenever I hear the song.
Sweet hour of prayer! Sweet hour of prayer!
That calls me from a world of care,
And bids me at my Father’s throne
Make all my wants and wishes known.
In seasons of distress and grief,
My soul has often found relief
And oft escaped the tempter’s snare
By thy return, sweet hour of prayer!
I came across the song this week as I was looking over some quiet, introspective music for Lent. That’s what I’ve chosen to do for my spiritual practice throughout Lent this year – to spend time at the piano every day with prayerful music.
Sweet hour of prayer! Sweet hour of prayer!
The joys I feel, the bliss I share,
Of those whose anxious spirits burn
With strong desires for thy return!
With such I hasten to the place
Where God my Savior shows His face,
And gladly take my station there,
And wait for thee, sweet hour of prayer!
It was good to think about Clark again today. He was one of the most challenging people on “God’s Guest List” for my life (to borrow author Debbie Macomber’s term). But he was also one of God’s greatest blessings in my life.
Clark Kornelsen
When I was a little girl growing up on a Wisconsin farm, I thought of four families as being our neighbors: the farmers across the road just west of us – the Henry Henderson family; the farmers who lived on the farm immediately south of us – The Mulcaheys; the farmers just east of us – the Scotts; and Ruth and Merrill Kenseth, a brother and sister who were double cousins of my mom (their moms were sisters and their dads were brothers) – and they lived on the farm across the road north of us. I didn’t really know any of the neighbors very well, except the cousins. Sometimes, on a nice summer evening, I would walk over to the Kenseth farm to play with their barn cats while Merrill was milking the cows, especially when there was a brand new litter of kittens to play with.
Jesus answered by telling a story. “There was once a man traveling from Jerusalem to Jericho. On the way he was attacked by robbers. They took his clothes, beat him up, and went off leaving him half-dead. Luckily, a priest was on his way down the same road, but when he saw him he angled across to the other side. Then a Levite religious man showed up; he also avoided the injured man.
But then last week happened. World Vision changed one of its internal personnel policies. World Vision is the largest Christian charitable organization in this country. It is the organization that has created the means that enables thousands of individuals to personally sponsor children, one by one, to provide some of the poorest children in the world with food, clothing, shelter, education, medical care, and companionship – direct communication with a person who cares about them enough to provide for their basic needs. Thousands of caring people worldwide sponsor these children, one on one. My mom was among the sponsors. When she passed away, Mim and I continued to sponsor her little girl. More recently, Mim and I have periodically made donations to World Vision for some of their other humanitarian efforts, particularly after major natural disasters. Because World Vision already has networks in place worldwide to care for the needs of their sponsored children and their communities, they are particularly well-suited to provide immediate aid following natural disasters.
What makes me ashamed of being identified with evangelicals is the way many evangelicals reacted to this policy change by World Vision. Thousands of sponsors in the worldwide network of sponsors providing life-saving aid to poor children withdrew their monthly support because of this internal employee policy change. Apparently, standing firm on this controversial political issue is more important to thousands of evangelicals than keeping a personal commitment to a poor little girl or boy to continue to provide food, clothing, shelter, education, medical care, and companionship to her or him.
My heart sank when I heard of this mass exodus of support. I just can’t understand how thousands of evangelicals can be so obsessed with condemning “homosexual behavior” – something Jesus never even mentioned (at least nothing is recorded in the Gospels) – that they would allow a poor little girl or boy to starve rather than allow someone like me to work for World Vision to help feed these children. Clearly Jesus’ priority was to care for the children, not to judge our co-workers.
Every week I think a lot about what music I should play for a prelude and postlude in church. I think the prelude is particularly important for setting the tone for the service, to invite the people into a sense of readiness for the worship experience that is beginning. To help me select music that is appropriate, I study the Scriptures that will be read, I consider the hymns the pastor chose for the service, and I sometimes search out Internet resources for music suggestions related to the themes associated with the lectionary readings for that week. (If I’m short on time, I look back in my files to see what I played three years ago, the last time the same Scriptures were read.)
Last Friday provided a good example of our two-way sharing of thoughts. I did a quick check of emails and Facebook before going upstairs for breakfast, my usual pattern. A friend of mine had posted this picture (on the right) of Senator Hirono on Facebook.
