One of the first phone calls we had was from the police, who told us about Jon’s autopsy, which would be performed that day.  We again asked about seeing him prior to burial and we were told that it would not be permitted.  We understood what was going on – obviously, the trauma to his that killed him had to be absolutely devastating, given the adamant responses whenever we asked the question.

Yesterday I related the story of our two youngest daughters being brought to the site of where Jon’s Toyota had been found and how they had extracted Jon’s dog from the vehicle.  On this day, we found out where his vehicle had been taken – it had been taking to a local tow yard that I passed twice a day.  We asked about access to Jon’s property inside the vehicle.  We were told by law enforcement that we could not access any of Jon’s belongings, but that we could go to the tow yard and view the vehicle, which we did.  It was heartbreaking to see the things inside the car and not be able to get at them.  One of our concerns was that the vehicle was just sitting out in the open, unattended, with no security at all.  As I said, I drive by this yard twice a day and it is always open.  There was nothing to do about it, however, given that it was now evidence in an ongoing crime investigation.

Mid-afternoon was the time I had arranged for a meeting with the funeral home where we would make arrangements.  Two of my wife’s friends came over to the house and “kidnapped” her, just to get her away from all the “stuff” of death.  I went to the funeral home.

The funeral director was a man who literally sat behind me in church each week.  I can’t imagine his job, dealing with people every day in the state we were in (and no doubt, much worse than us).  Jon had no life insurance, as most independent 19 year-old males would not.  He died with his paycheck money in his pocket – around $800.  We had no funds with which to pay for a funeral.  One does not set aside funds with which to bry one’s teenage children.  We are not people of means and didn’t have a savings cushion from which we could draw.  The best we could hope for was the proverbial “pauper’s funeral.”

We desired the funeral to be on Saturday, to facilitate people’s attendance who would be coming from a distance and to best fit people’s work schedules.   A glitch came up right away.  We wanted Jon to be buried in our local township cemetery.  The glitch?  They do not do “pauper’s funerals on weekends.”  The poor have to buried on a weekday.  The funeral director could see my anguish.  It’s hard enough to do this and now we are told that the poor aren’t accommodated in the same way as the non-poor.  This, of course, is not suprising, since it is that way in life in general, but this wasn’t making things easier.

The fineral director says he’ll try the cemetery in Petoskey, 12 miles away.  He calls their cemetery director and praise God, that cemetery will do a burial on a Saturday.  Then the negotiatoosn really started and this was the worst part.

It was like buying a used car. Dickering, juggling numbers, give and take – it was awful.  For me and no doubt, for the funeral director as well, as he has to look at me and knows my reactions as we’re doing this.  We finally set a price of $2,000 to get Jon a casket that is in essence a large cardboard box and a small plot in the back part of the cemetery. (When the bill finally came, we know they probably have to do this per the law, but we really didn’t need to know their charge to wash his body)

Driving home from the funeral home, I was struck by this about two mile out – maybe the reason some people aren;t in a real good mood on a given day or maybe the reason they’re distracted is because they just finished driving home from a funeral home.  Maybe they have  recived some other news that takes precedence in their lives.  For several years I had been seeking some compassion training.  I was well aware that my compassion level for those who were hurting was not what it should be.  I had been wokring on a chpalaincy training rpogram at our local hospital, but just as that was to begin, it fell through.

A month prior to this, we had conducted a Keryx weekend at Chippewa Correctional Facility.  There is a service that occurs Sunday morning where each participant – prisoner and volunteer – is permitted to go forward and pray.  One of the themes of that service is the need for us to be broken before God.  In my prayer, I had prayed that if God needed to break me, then He should break me.

Yes, Calvinists pray.  They pray hard.  God uses means to accomplish His eternal plan and purpose.  One of those means is prayer.  There is no conflict between God’s eternal, preordained plan and human beings praying for God to move and act in time and space.  I prayed in time and space at Chippewa Correctional Facility on April 28, 2002.  God’s eternal plan came to pass on May 29, 2002.  Jon’s death was no “accident.”  We look at events such as Jon’s death as “accidental.”  From our perspective, they appear to be “accidental.”  But if Jon’s death were not in God’s eternal plan, Jon would not have died that day.

One may then say, “Well, if it’s in God’s eternal plan, why do you cry?  Why do you mourn?’  Que sera, sera, right?  We cry and mourn because we – even we Calvinists – are human.  Ecclesiastes 3 is clear on this – it says there is a time to cry and a time to mourn.  Jesus cried and mourned – Jesus, being God Incarnate – cried at the tomb of Lazarus – knowing that He was going to raise Lazarus from the dead.  Tears are a fact of life due the the Fall of man – we look forward to the day when there will be no more tears (cf. Rev. 21:4).  In the meantime – the here and now – there are tears.

I received my compassion training starting the morning of May 29, 2002.  Buckets full.

The phone calls made the day before had started a chain reaction – people were praying for us, and praying hard.  These people praying for us included the prisoners at the prisons where Sheryl and I volunteered.  Thursday were (and still are) the nights when men gather for small groups.  I didn’t hear a voice from God telling me this, but I just knew this: I had to go there and be with the guys that night.  Sheryl gave me her blessing.  I contact one of the guys who usually goes – the second man to show up at our house in the rain the day before – and he said I could tag along.  Another volunteer – a retired educator – went along with us.

We arrived at the prison and went to the cafeteria, where the meetings are held.  There were about 40-45 prisoners there and I knew them all.  After opening announcements, they announced – for those who had het to hear – Jon’s death.  Then they called me up to speak.  I had no idea they were going to do that.  What do I say?  Many of the men to whom I was to speak had put people in situations such as the one I was in at that time – mourning the death of a loved one – and these men were the cause of that mourning.

I guess I spoke for about 15-20 minutes – I couldn’t tell you then and can’t tell you now.  I don’t remember much of what I said other than (pardon the language), “It hurts like hell.”

As soon as I finished all the guys came up to me, circled me and began to pray.  That sort of thing typically make corrections officers nervous – a volunteer disappearing into the midst of a group of 40 prisoners – but the officer overseeing us at the raised desk in the cafeteria did not intervene.  Many prayed and the one that stuck in my mind was the last one to pray.  Nineteen years prior to this he had murdered a young woman.  In his prayer he said that he had come to terms with what he had done and had accepted responsibility for his crime – but he had never addressed the pain he caised his victim’s family until he heard me speak.  he confessed his hard-heartedness to everyone and to the living God.  There were many tears all around.

Two hours later we left.  On the 75 minute rode home, the volunteer who is a retired educator asked if there was anything he could do for us.  I said, “Yeah.  Jon’s car is in a million pieces in our driveway.  We have no idea how to put it back together.”  He says, “Hmm.  Let me get back to you.”  The work that needed to be done on the car?  The transmission needed to be replaced.  There was a transmission sitting elsewhere on our property waiting to be installed.  We had no idea what to do.

Interesting things happened as a result of that trip to the prison.  Some happened over time.  One happened the very next day, as you will see in our next post.

Filed under: Grief, Indian River Baptist Church Tagged: Indian River Baptist Church ]]> http://thelightheartedcalvinist.com/2012/05/30/ten-years-ago-today-part-3-the-day-after-your-son-dies/feed/ 0 45.444178 -84.786711 45.444178 -84.786711 oldbutweary http://thelightheartedcalvinist.com/2012/05/29/ten-years-ago-today-part-2-the-day-your-son-dies/ http://thelightheartedcalvinist.com/2012/05/29/ten-years-ago-today-part-2-the-day-your-son-dies/#comments Tue, 29 May 2012 07:05:32 +0000 Jeff Peterson http://thelightheartedcalvinist.com/?p=6596 ]]> May 29, 2002 was closer to being one of those cold, damp rainy days one experiences here (and elsewhere, I know).  I remember my wife having awakened at some point in the middle of the night and getting out of bed for a few minutes but then she came back and nothing seemed out of sorts.  Between 630am and 700am we woke up and looked outside and saw something odd.  Across the road, directly north from our bedroom window, was a white Dodge Ram pickup in the ditch.  One would not be surprised by that during the winter – but it was now nearly June and the snow was long gone.

Something else was odd – there was an Emmet County Sheriff’s Department vehicle parked just east of the truck and there was a deputy standing in the road.  My wife said she would go out and see if she could find out what was happening.

I continued preparing for work – and things become a bit hazy at this point with regard to time, but the events are somewhat clear.  It’s curious how even as things such as this happen, it appears to be somewhat ethereal as if they really aren’t happening – at the same time that you know are really occurring.

The phone rang. I picked it up.

“Hello?”

“Jeff, this is _______________!!!!! (the mother of Jon’s best friend.  I will leave the names of certain people undisclosed as a matter of discretion.  Some are in the public record, some aren’t.  The undisclosed names do not make a difference in these accounts.)”  She then screamed this:

“Jon’s in the ditch and he’s not alive!!!”

Nobody is ever ready for that phone call.  Even when you receive it – what do you do?  How do you react?  Jon’s not alive?  How do you process that?

I don’t remember what I said next.  I must have asked where this was, because I grabbed my keys and wallet and ran outside to get my wife, who by now was chatting with the Sheriff’s Deputy out in the road.  What did I say to her?  I have no clue.

I don’t remember driving the half-mile to the house of Jon’s best friend.  We arrive at the intersection a couple hundred yards away from that house and we are met by crime scene tape and Michigan State Police vehicles blocking the road.  We jump out of the car and run up to the officers and they say, “Sir, you can’t go down there.”

I said, “My son’s in the ditch up there.”

“What’s your son’s name?”

“Jonathan Matthew Peterson.”

“I’m sorry to inform you, sir, that your son is deceased.”

My guess is that part of law enforcement training is how to notify someone their family member is dead.  Perhaps they are trained to say “deceased” because it appears less harsh than “dead.”  Our experience?  It didn’t soften the blow.

I cannot tell you what my wife did when we heard that.  All I can tell you is that the next thing I knew I was on my knees.  It’s hazy here again – not just now, but it always has been, since that day.  Perhaps this is God’s way of intervening so that we can deal with such events.  All I know is that at some point, the officers asked if I wished to go into the house there and make some phone calls.  I did.

When we left the house, we had told our children what I had been told and that we’d let them know what was going on.  I cannot describe how hard it was to pick up the phone, dial our number and get ready to tell which ever child answered the phone that Jon was indeed dead.

I called home.  Our 15 year-old daughter answered.  I told her it was true – Jon was dead.  Ten years later her scream still rings in my ears.  Not only do parents never plan, expect or hope to hear that their child has died – nor do siblings ever expect that, either.

I work for a surgeon – that was a Wednesday and I knew he was in surgery but I had to call the operating room and tell him that I wouldn’t be in to work because Jon had died.  I had to call the sawmill and tell them Jon wouldn’t be in because he had died.  I called a prison ministry colleague who was (and is) the chaplain at the local county jail.  I called my parents and told them their grandson had died.  Whoever else was called fails to come up in my memory.

Looking back – and perhaps this is God’s providential intervention – we never remember asking about Jon’s body.  It turns out that before we entered the house to make the phone call, his body was lying on the edge of the road, mere yards away.

We returned to our house and another image is burned in my mind – Jon’s little brother, 13 years old, sitting on the couch, curled up, sobbing.  What can you say at that point?  Nothing.  Absolutely nothing.  You so desperately want to say something but nothing – nothing – will suffice.

So what do you do at this point?  There’s no training for what one is to do at such a time.  We just sat there.

It began to rain.  A day made dreary by events became literally dreary and damp with dark skies and rainfall.

We were sitting in the living room now.  I’m sure the phone was ringing but I don’t remember.  What I do remember is this: there was a knock on the door.  I opened it.

Standing there in the rain was the chaplain from the county jail, rain water dripping off his bald head, tears streaming down his face.  We invited him in.  What did he say?

Nothing.  Absolutely nothing.  He just hugged me and my wife and we looked at each other for a couple minutes.  He then left, not having said a word.

A short while later there was another knock on the door.  We open the door.  It’s another prison ministry colleague, standing in the rain with tears streaming down the face.  We invite him in.

What does he say?  Nothing.  Absolutely nothing.  He hugs us, stays a few minutes and leaves, having yet to say a word.

When did Job’s friends give their best counsel to their mourning, suffering friend?  During the first week when they said……nothing.

¹¹ Now when Job’s three friends heard of all this evil that had come upon him, they came each from his own place, Eliphaz the Temanite, Bildad the Shuhite, and Zophar the Naamathite. They made an appointment together to come to show him sympathy and comfort him. ¹² And when they saw him from a distance, they did not recognize him. And they raised their voices and wept, and they tore their robes and sprinkled dust on their heads toward heaven. ¹³ And they sat with him on the ground seven days and seven nights, and no one spoke a word to him, for they saw that his suffering was very great.”

Do we think our friends read Job 2 before they came to the house?  No, we don’t.  But God guided them to give the same counsel as Job’s friends in this passage.  That counsel was the best counsel they could have given and I have attempted to try and use this method of counsel in the years since, when appropriate.  As I mentioned above, we want so badly to just say something at times like those – but what word(s) can do anything?  We don’t know – and a lack of words can be the best words.

It was still raining.  There’s another knock on the door.  We open it.  There stands another prison ministry colleague who is a logger.  He’s standing there, water dripping off him, in his logging gear, crying.  What does he say?

He says something, but what?

He sticks out his hand, holding a sandwich in a sandwich bag.  He says, “I thought you might need something to eat.  Go ahead and take it.”  I take it.  He hugs me and turns around and leaves.  He had driven an hour in the rain to bring us a sandwich and now had an hour’s drive back to his logging site.

During the course of the day we had multiple conversation with law enforcement.  Jon had been found dead half-on, half-off the pavement on the road and had obviously died from severe blunt force trauma to his head.  Thus, the place where he died was a crime scene.  We found out that his body had been taken to Grand Rapids, three and a half hours south, for a forensic autopsy.  I asked when we would be able to see the body and we were told by the police that it was doubtful we could see him at all prior to burial because the trauma was so devastating.

One of our conversations with law enforcement involved Jon’s second car and his dog, Winston.  As I said yesterday, Jon had a Mazda torn apart in our driveway and all those parts were now sitting in mud.  He had a second vehicle (a Toyota) that he was driving in place of the Mazda.  In the course of their investigation, the police had found that the Toyota was sitting in a dry creek bed, about a mile and a half from where he was found.  The police showed up at our house mid-afternoon and had a question for us.  They wanted to know if someone could come with them and help retrieve the vehicle.  The problem?

Jon’s dog, Winston – a large, male Boxer – was in the vehicle, and he was not happy.  Whenever the law enforcement people approached the vehicle, he went ballistic and they decided they wanted assistance in removing the dog from the vehicle.  With all the things we were dealing with, our two youngest daughters volunteered to go.  They did.  Evidently they just walked up to the vehicle, showed their faces, opened the door and the dog came out, happy to see them, and they returned home with Winston.

We did, upon their return, discover a factor that may have added to Winston’s agitation.  Remember, the car was in a dry creek bed, but the surrounding area was somewhat swampy.  Having been shut in the vehicle overnight with the window cracked, hundreds of mosquitoes had entered the vehicle and extracted their measure of blood from the poor beast.  He had hundreds of mosquito bites all over him.

As evening approached – what do we do?  The phone’s ringing and all this stuff is happening with police asking you questions and so much more.  At 6pm, we  decided to watch the evening news.

In our area, at that time there were two “local” stations with newscasts.  ”Local” by our definition is this – one station is 100 miles away in Cadillac and the other 80 miles away in Traverse City.  We turned on the news.

Jon’s death was the lead story on the Cadillac station.  This sort of thing doesn’t happen very often out here, so it’s big news.  They handled the story very well.  We turned to the Traverse City station.  What do we see (it was their second story)?

Jon’s body, in a body bag, being loaded into the back of a van.  That was our first sight of him since the night before – a body, in a bag, going in a van.  Where were we when this had happened?  I can’t tell you.  What I can tell you is that image is still burned on my mind ten years later.  Suffice it to say, when a mother and siblings see such a sight, they are not exactly enthralled, either. (After the funeral, I wrote the TV station, asking them if it was their policy to show body bags being loaded into vehicles at death sites.  The news anchor wrote back and said their policy does not permit such and they couldn’t have done that, but they would check their tapes and get back to me.  She did do so and responded that they did indeed show Jon’s body going into the van on the newscast.  She apologized profusely and said they would take measures to see it didn’t happen again.  I thanked her for her swift response.)

After we watched the news, then what?  It’s Wednesday night and what did we do on Wednesdays?  We went to church.  My wife and I went this night as well.  It just seemed to be the natural thing to do – where else should we go?  There appears to be an inadvertent connection here with what both Job and David di after their child(ren) died.  Both accounts in the Scripture said they did something interesting:  they worshiped.

¹⁸ While he was yet speaking, there came another and said, “Your sons and daughters were eating and drinking wine in their oldest brother’s house, ¹⁹ and behold, a great wind came across the wilderness and struck the four corners of the house, and it fell upon the young people, and they are dead, and I alone have escaped to tell you.”

²⁰ Then Job arose and tore his robe and shaved his head and fell on the ground and worshiped. ²¹ And he said, “Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return. The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.”  (Job 1)

and,

¹⁹ But when David saw that his servants were whispering together, David understood that the child was dead. And David said to his servants, “Is the child dead?” They said, “He is dead.” ²⁰ Then David arose from the earth and washed and anointed himself and changed his clothes. And he went into the house of the Lord and worshiped. He then went to his own house. And when he asked, they set food before him, and he ate.  (2 Samuel 12)

Several days later I encountered a friend whose daughter had died at age 19 several years prior to this – he said, “I couldn’t figure out where to find you guys because I didn’t have your phone number.  Then it hit me – you went to church.  Where else would you go?”  Indeed – where else would we – should we – go?  We went because we love our Lord and we just needed to be there, especially that night, given those circumstances.

Eventually it came time to go to bed.  The day had been a whirlwind.  Many events passed from memory shortly.  What hasn’t is what happened after going to bed.

You’re just lying there.  The phone isn’t ringing anymore.  It’s pitch dark.  The kids have finally stopped crying enough to fall asleep (or at least they are muffling their tears so we can’t hear them across the hall).  All you do is lie there and think.  All you have are your thoughts.  Memories.

Bringing him home from the hospital (see the above photo).

The time he got sick and we had to take him to the ER at about age one and they gave him a spinal and I still remember hearing him screaming from 50 feet away.

Going to Disneyland when he was almost three.

All those Little League games.

The day he got his first bicycle at age five.  It didn’t have training wheels and he had never ridden a bike before.  He spent all day riding up and down the driveway falling down, getting up, falling down, getting up, until he mastered  riding a bike.

He was so proud of being a big brother to his little brother.

Arriving at work when Jon was about nine to have our secretary race out and tell me that I needed to get to the ER because Jon had been hit by a car while riding his bike.  It turned out to be only a scalp wound that took some stitches.

The time I went watch batting practice when he was 15 and I saw him hit this rocket that just carried forever and went about 380 feet.  At that point I knew he wasn’t our little boy anymore.

At 15, also, when he went on his missions trip to Kenya and acquired the nickname, “Musembi.”  We took him to Metro Airport in Detroit to meet his group and all others were on one flight and Jon was assigned a separate flight, never even having been in an airport before, much less now having to switch planes in Amsterdam by himself on the way to Nairobi.  His flight left over and hour late and his layover in Amsterdam was only a little more than an hour to begin with.  It was three days before we knew if he had made the connection in Amsterdam, much less made it to Nairobi, which he did – praise God.  It turns out he had to literally run from one end of the Amsterdam airport to the other – like a movie scene – in order to make his connection.  He loved Kenya and always wanted to go back.  Some years after he died, we received a letter from the people he met there and they said they were looking forward to him coming back as well.

The day he got his first deer.  He hunted on property almost adjacent to El Rancho Reformado.  The day before he got his first deer, my wife and other children told me about hearing a gunshot right before dusk, then a series of a few more and Jon returned home shortly thereafter deerless.  I asked him, “What happened with all those shots?  The deer started shooting back?”  When he got his first deer we heard the gunshot and 10 minutes later he shows up at the door and say we need to help him dress the deer.  Off we traipse and it’s myself, my wife, Jon’s little brother and our two youngest daughters, who were 13 and 11 at the time.  The dressing process, shall I say, cured those two daughters of a desire to go deer hunting.

There are so many more – that’s what we thought about that night as we didn’t sleep.

Then what?  The day after your son dies.  They don’t teach you how to make plans to bury your son, for instance.  That’s tomorrow’s post.

It is not easy writing these posts, but at the same time there is something, in some way, that is cathartic in doing so.  I am not writing to elicit sympathy.  I am writing about real events that happen in a real, fallen world that have real effects on real people and that also have theological and doctrinal implications.

Much of what I will write will be old news to those who have heard me speak in the prisons.  Over the last 10 years, literally hundreds of prisoners have heard parts of what will be forthcoming.  To those to whom this is an exercise in redundancy, I apologize.  Kind of.

————–

In late May of 2002, our son, Jon, had just moved back home.  He had been on a sabbatical from residing with us due to some teenage rebellion that culminated with his being requested to find domicile elsewhere in April of 2001.  He did so, but even at that time, our relationship was never severed.  We visited him at his various dwelling places and he was always welcome at our home.

Over the next few months, he visited more and more and through the winter of 2001-2002 he was at our house a lot.  Eventually, in the spring of 2002, we invited him back to live at home and he accepted.  he moved back Memorial Day weekend and immediately began tearing the front end of his 1996 Mazda MX6 apart because it needed work.  he and his best friend took this repair job upon themselves even though they had never done it before.  Jon and his friends had been best friends since they were very young since Jon was 7 and his friend was 5, they being two years apart.  His best friend lived a little over half a mile away.

Jon had been very active in Christian activities in his mid-teens, going on a missions trip to Africa at 15, going to Chicago on a short-term missions trip, going to Washington DC for the DC/LA event and also being involved in our local teen abstinence group known as “Who’s In Charge.”  As he approached and passed age 18, however, his involvement dropped and so did his attendance and involvement in Christian things.  He never professed to not believe any longer – in fact, prior to his moving back home I remember him and I having several long discussions where he desperately wanted to know why he believed.  he kept wanting to try and figure it out and I just kept telling him that he couldn’t figure it out – faith wasn’t like a puzzle or a riddle that is an exercise in mental gymnastics – faith is a gift from God and all we do is receive it.

It was now May 28, 2002 – just ‘another day’ in rural Michigan.  It was a nice day – pleasant and not the cold, damp rainy conditions that one can experience that time of year, even with summer just around the corner.  At that time, our two oldest children – who were ages 29 and 25 – had, of course, moved out and had their own lives outside our home.  We had three other children living at home, two daughters aged 17 and 15 and our youngest son, age 13.

Jon’s car was in a million pieces of our dirt driveway.  He and his friend were goofing around outside along with our youngest son as dusk approached.  At that time, Jon had been working at a sawmill for a little over a year and he was in good shape, spending hours each day bucking logs.  I remember looking outside and seeing Jon shadow boxing with his little brother.  It was  about 930pm.  Jon and his friend jumped in Jon’s car and I heard it back out the driveway.

That was the last time I saw Jon alive.

To be continued tomorrow.

Philippians 1:12–18 (ESV)

The Advance of the Gospel

¹² I want you to know, brothers, that what has happened to me has really served to advance the gospel, ¹³ so that it has become known throughout the whole imperial guard and to all the rest that my imprisonment is for Christ. ¹⁴ And most of the brothers, having become confident in the Lord by my imprisonment, are much more bold to speak the word without fear.

¹⁵ Some indeed preach Christ from envy and rivalry, but others from good will. ¹⁶ The latter do it out of love, knowing that I am put here for the defense of the gospel. ¹⁷ The former proclaim Christ out of selfish ambition, not sincerely but thinking to afflict me in my imprisonment. ¹⁸ What then? Only that in every way, whether in pretense or in truth, Christ is proclaimed, and in that I rejoice.

To Live Is Christ

Yes, and I will rejoice,  

Being there for three days, what struck me most was this – and I know it will sound chauvinistic, so forgive me if you need to – was the women with whom we had no direct contact.  To get from Point A to Point B, we had to walk by the Visitor’s Room.  There was just something very, very sad about seeing children having to go to prison to see their mother – or even worse, their grandmother.  We encountered women whose children were babies when they came to prison and those babies are now having babies of their own and those babies have to go to prison to visit Grandma.  What a terrible price there is to be paid for sin – not only for the sinner him or herself, but for those who are affected by the consequences of sin.

My wife and I were quite touched by our experience and reminded again just how kind, generous, gracious and merciful the one, true, living God is toward His people.

(I am in the second row, third from the right)

Philippians 1:9–11 (ESV)

⁹ And it is my prayer that your love may abound more and more, with knowledge and all discernment, ¹⁰ so that you may approve what is excellent, and so be pure and blameless for the day of Christ, ¹¹ filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ, to the glory and praise of God.