Thursday Th(ink)s - February 12, 2026

When the Math Changes

Let’s talk about the age 73. It’s a Thursday age if there ever was one—not young, not ancient.

Not too young to die, not too old to live. But we are not the ones doing the deciding. God is.

Last week, the math of my family changed. We are no longer who we were. I am one of seven

siblings. Ten years ago, I became one of six living siblings. Last week, I became one of five. We

have been rearranged.

Yes, a 73-year-old brother has died. Suddenly—very suddenly—we became fewer: fewer old

people making our way, however slowly, toward the shores of the Jordan.

This is not a eulogy. It is not a rewriting of history. It is not a reckoning. It is simply an

acknowledgment that death will always surprise us. And that there are things I must place into

the sure keeping of God’s mercy, God’s knowing, and God’s ability to hold what I cannot

resolve.

Brother Les, left side of photo, now with the Lord.

The sibling line has shifted. There is silence where once there was noise. There is a thinning of

this generation.

I will grieve him in my own way, in my own time, with my own thoughts—without explanation.

And my thoughts are many. Sometimes I am like the one Jesus silenced, when chaos needed an

end. Sometimes I am like the sister, to whom Jesus spoke peace. Both are me. Both are human.

Both bring me again to the quiet knowledge that God will make all things right.

I have not been asked to complete a story that death has interrupted. I have not been asked to

resolve what remains tangled. I have been asked to let go of the work—and to rest instead in my

Savior, the Redeemer of all stories.

Big Brains: "The past is our definition. We may strive, with good reason, to escape it, or to escape what's bad in it, but we will escape it only by adding something better to it." Wendell Berry

Old Souls: "The life of the dead is placed in the memory of the living." Marcus Tullius Cicero

The Ancient of Days: "In your book were written, every one of them, the days that were formed for me, when as yet

there was none of them.” Psalm 139:16 (ESV)

Norma Jean: 
God holds unfinished stories.

Thursday Chat: Jesus did not meet every soul the same way. This Thursday rests in the hope that He knows how to meet my brother now.