Just an Old Sinner Saved by Grace

King David

David asks a question that would be a good one for me to ask myself as a good and consistent reminder for my own life. The question is, “Who am I, Lord God, and what is my family, that you have brought me this far? And as if this were not enough in your sight, my God, you have spoken about the future of the house of your servant. You, Lord God, have looked on me as though I were the most exalted of men.” (1 Chronicles 17:16-17)

It is not lost on me that this was spoken by a man named David and that today it is being read by a man named David. It is not a verse that I recall ever spending much time meditation on. I suspect not many reading this has ever even noticed it. But today it jumped of the page and into my heart. But this morning it came alive. 

“Who am I, Lord God and who is my family that that you have brought me this far.” Looking back on the life I have lived I feel like the country song says, “From a Jack to a King". Slowly and steadily as that idiom I have over time experienced a massive rise in status gone from a low or ordinary position (a Jack in a deck of cards) to the highest position of honor and success. I am both amazed and humbled by what the Lord has done. Like that shepherd boy David who became a king and spoke these words I can look around at my life journey and “you’ve come a long way baby.” 

As I look at the life that God with which God has blessed me I stand in amazement. He moved me forward in a gigantic way when He brought Susan Warren into my life as my Ezer kenegdo (עֵזֶר כְּנֶגְדּוֹ). He made a way through educational preparation by enabling the obtaining of three advanced degrees when I could not afford the proverbial “free meal”. 

He has graced me with the chance to serve, and I am in awe of what God has done in our life. He allowed me to lead five of his local fellowships (churches) where all experienced growth. He allowed me to teach at the university level and to serve in numerous denominational positions. He surrounded me with mostly wonderful people and a few that He used to “test my metal.” I certainly am not a self-made man . . . I am the product of His hand. It is "by the grace of God I am what I am" is a famous Bible verse from 1 Corinthians 15:10.

Our children born in our youth when were still young grew up in time to support help sustain us in old age. These children are “like arrows in the hands of a warrior.”  Having a “quiver full” of children is a biblical concept that comes from Psalm 127:4–5: “Like arrows in the hands of a warrior are children born in one’s youth. Blessed is the man whose quiver is full of them.” 

Those many years ago as we were starting our family and stepping into ministry, I never imagined that God would bless us this way. I can look back and clearly see how God has taken my family from “humble beginnings” to a place where we are now. I think we can all see the same thing in our own lives. 

It may be hard to see at times, but Susan and I looked at our lives and saw how God was present, active, and working. So many things and yet none in which I can boast. Like my names sake I say, “You, Lord God, have looked on me as though I were the most exalted of men.” In my lowest moments the Lord always showed up and delivered my but more than that every low point in life turned out to be a rung that took us both forward and higher. 

Truth is, without Him I am nothing . . . . “all that I am, I am by the grace of God". When you boil it all down, in the end I am nothing more and nothing less than a sinner saved by grace. Jesus wears the crown and I bow myself to the ground. To Him belong all praise and glory and honor.

Why I Go to Visit my Wife's Gravesite?

David Alan Appleby

I have not been seen at the cemetery very often these days. Truth is that I probably have not been there as often as I needed or should have gone. Somehow, while sitting there in the shade of that old oak tree, for few minutes it feels as though I can feel her presence. I suppose you would call it my place of remembrance. I guess you could say that her grave site with its marker is my Ebenezer (meaning “The Lord has helped us”) . . . . . my "stone of help" . . . . . help to remember how God has provided and helped me in the past. That "Appleby" gravestone serves as a major peg upon which the majority of the most significant experiences with the Lord are hung. 

As such it fills me with gratitude for what the Lord gave me when He gave Susan Warren Appleby to be the Ezer Kenegdo in my life. It also serves as renewal of hopeful expectation that He would not have taken half my strength if He were not going to continue supply all my needs through Christ Jesus my Lord. It reminds me to lean on Him the more as my eternal Ezer Kenegdo. The truth is everything that I attribute to Susan in my life was in reality God working through her. 

I do not go to that cemetery because I think somehow mystically, she is present in a spiritual since near her grave. I do not expect to actually or even mystically encounter her while there. I am all too much aware of the fact that my sweet Susan is not there. In fact, I rejoice that she is not there. Her death has been swallowed up in victory, and she has entered into her eternal rest in the place the Lord Jesus had prepared for her beforehand in Paradise. Susan, on May 30, 2021, like the thief of the cross, joined Jesus in Paradise. 

David and Susan Appleby

Cancer had had already started robbing her of much of her physicality even before it finally took her
life. So much so that physically she looked little like the person I married. I will forever hear her saying as she looked in the mirror, “I look like a holocaust victim.”  In a sense she was a victim . . . a victim of the American Holocaust – the ravages of Cancer. I knew what she was saying, and I understood how she felt. Like the Apostle Paul, she truly wished to be freed from her dying body, but she felt she had to fight the losing battle for my benefit.   

But I saw past the deterioration of her physicality to the person I knew and who had dedicated her life to me. I saw the godly woman who was full of a love like that of our Master and vibrancy for life.  To be sure I certainly appreciated her physicality. Through the lenses of my eyes, she was a beautiful woman who filled me with desire. But more importantly, what we shared went so much deeper than that. 

So much of what we think, and feel is communicated through how we look at one another, the way we touch, our smells and sensations we give and receive. These allowed something of our spirits to move through our physicality to our hearts and souls. God allowed us to find a way to communicate a spiritual connection through a physical means. 

Have no misconception about this . . . I certainly thought she had a beautiful body, and I longed to hold her close to me . . . I loved the way she looked, the way she smelled and how she touched me, . . . .  And I still do. But it wasn’t her body with which I was smitten . . . . it was the person behind her eyes that I saw when as a preadolescent boy on a church hayride I looked into them. I don’t think we even spoke that day. I thank God that He enabled me to see the person early in our relationship.

I was in love with the person who lived within that body and that person isn’t at the cemetery. In fact, the only reason her body is at the cemetery is because cancer caused her to drop it like and old worn-out bath robe as she heeded the call of the Father to “come up higher.”  I do not begrudge her what she has gained but I do feel the pain of what I, at least for this present time, have lost. To be sure I am confident that one day we’ll be together again. Otherwise, what is the point of becoming one? 

When she left, I kept a large part of who she is with me, and she took with her a part of me. That breach cannot be restored until I too hear the voice of God say to me, “Come up higher.” Like the Apostle Paul, I find myself “in a strait betwixt two, having a desire to depart, and to be with Christ, which is far better” and the fact that the Lord apparently deems it necessary for me to remain for some purpose of His. With the exception of my progeny virtually all the significant people in my life are now with Susan. That’s part of what I was alluding to when I said I am in a strait betwixt two.” 

I started this by saying, “I do not go to the cemetery very often.” However, I do go from time to time. Usually, it is on day that was significant to us . . . her birthday, Mother’s Day, our anniversary etc. Being there adds a dynamic that I don’t find anywhere else. In may not be holy ground but it is certainly a significant place of remembrance. 

It a place of intentionality. I go there expressly to focus on her and on the love of God she exemplified to us who visit that It is a place where remembering is the goal and a choice not one of the many blind side memories that daily catch us off guard. I go because it is the only physical place I can go where I can sit explicitly and to remember what she gave to me.

I know she is not there, but I like to think she knows that I am there. When it is just me, I talk to her hoping that somehow in the grace of God she can hear what I say. I know she will not answer audibly but seems that God allows me to draw from the thousands of conversation Susan and I had over the years what she most likely would say.  

We keep flowers on her marker to show that we still love her, and she has not faded from my memory. I remember saying as I did the grave side service for Susan that we were fulfilling our last responsibility to her and that was true then and it is true now. I don’t show up at her grave because it is my responsibility I show up because it is my will to do so. Just because she is in Heaven does not in my mind free me of the promise, I made to her that “as long as there was breath in my body, you will not be forgotten.” 

Susan Eileen Warren Appleby
06/12/1047 - 05/30/2026

 

Truth is, I get my battery recharged, 

my hope bolstered and my joy restored 

when I visit Susan’s grave.