Last week I visited our dear friends and longtime Guideposts contributors John and Elizabeth Sherrill. John started writing for Guideposts in 1951 and Elizabeth took up her pen to do the same not long after. The Guideposts passion for telling heartrending and life-changing stories of faith can very much be attributed to their work over the years and the high editorial standards they have held us to.
John is 92 and Tibby–as we all call her–is somewhere in her eighties although I’ve always been taught that a woman’s exact age doesn’t have to be mentioned. The good news: they are as sharp and charming and faith-filled as ever, albeit they have slowed down a bit.
They live in a retirement community south of Boston, close to their daughter, and I arrived knowing that John had recently had surgery for a detached retina. (Yes, you can pray for them.)
“Do you really want me to come?” I asked Tibby in advance. “Yes,” she assured me. “You will be a sight for sore eyes, although John should only look at your shoes.”
Read More: Mornings with Jesus Devotional
I immediately discovered what she meant. To recover from his surgery John needs to keep his head down for two weeks. “It’s the posture of prayer,” he said, not completely joking. Of course, John is so sociable, he clearly found it difficult not to look me–or anybody else–in the eye.
“John,” Tibby kept warning, “head down. Posture of prayer!” I figured if I just lay on the ground I could look up to him that way. Well, I’ve always looked up to John.
Like the best of old friends, we discussed a million things, but one topic that came up was the challenge to keep faith when you’re going through a medical crisis.
“You need to keep looking for the God moments,” John said. “There’s always something glimmering in the darkness.” He went on to say that when he’d just had this eye surgery, the anesthesiologist turned out to be the same one he’d had when he had heart surgery five years earlier.
“Different hospital, different doctors, and yet the same anesthesiologist. It was a little God moment. I’d recovered from that surgery…I would recover from this.”
See what I mean when I say they are as sharp, charming and faith-filled as always?
At the end of our visit the priest from their local Episcopal church dropped by–he clearly is a fan too–and he brought with him the elements for communion. We sat outside on their porch, and we shared the body of Christ in the breaking of the bread, John dutifully keeping his head down.
The body of Christ can refer to who we are when we gather together in His name, that we followers of Jesus are all one in Him. And that was certainly how I felt.
I gave them both hugs and headed home. Tibby was taking John to the doctor’s for an appointment. We all prayed that the posture of prayer would bring its benefits.
