In Tune With Heaven by Vance Havner

Every child needs a grampa: someone who has learned enough from life to be trusted. However, when a guy reaches my age grampas are difficult to come by. That is why, when I get the “where’s grampa” hankering, my mind turns to one of the grandfather’s of the faith of recent years – Vance Havner (1901-1986).

Recently I pulled from my shelf a compilation of his thoughts, In Tune With Heaven. Whenever I do that I find myself sitting next to a man who had a great start as a child preacher, got caught up in the liberal theology of his day and eventually returned with vigor to the freshness of the “old” Gospel. 

Today, as we walk in the theological wasteland of the early twenty-first century with its sign posts pointing in all directions except to the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, this is a reinvigorating opportunity to come up on the porch for a spell.

I wish my conversations with this grandfather of the faith could be give-and-take. Yet, in a way they are. The conclusions he reached after stumbling badly in the world’s philosophies, often resonate like those of a respected granddad who, having let me sigh awhile, would tell me some of his stories and give me handholds of truth to take with me when I have to get on with life in the noisy vacuum of as-it-were and after-a-fashion.

They tell me we are prosperous, he writes. So I’ll agree just to be sociable. Suppose we are prosperous? I wonder if that is anything to brag about. “To have is to owe, not own” and we should take it seriously as a sacred trust and responsibility instead of something to crow about.  (p. 174)

We are raving about assets that may be liabilities.  (p. 175)

While our emotions make life rich and full and interesting, they are not supposed to boss the deck.  (p. 100)

I am not saved by understanding Jesus but by trusting Him. (p. 24)

Simple words. Ah yes! Simple words. No hyper-syllabic contortions of thought that pass as insight while souls whiz by the exit signs on the highway to hell.

 Divided in twelve parts, the chapter titles invite me to linger.

The Middle Mile

The Delusion of Leisure

Our Modern Nimrods

Yes, I enjoy Grampa Vance; and I would highly recommend this collection of his thoughts as well as other publications from his study. His is not the writing of the old school Fundamentalist except in places where that old school and the Word of God intersected. In fact, his is the writing of a man who, in my younger years, helped me to grow old-er on a different track.  That makes me think. Maybe I should also pull his book, Three Score & Ten off the shelf.

 
My grandfather

Grover Cleveland Hamilton

1891-1968