She’s Not Gone
Hi, I’m Joni Eareckson Tada with a whole week of my favorite poems, and isn’t it amazing how a poem can sometimes hit the mark, doesn’t it? It touches your heart, and reaches you in a place where nothing else can. As someone has said, “Poetry is not an assertion of truth, but the making of that truth more real to us.” With an economy of words and a hint of rhyme, a poet is able to convey so much truth. That’s why I often like to send poems to friends who are in the hospital, or who are going through depression; and I often send one particular poem to those who grieve the loss of a loved one. Because, really, what can you say to someone who’s lost a child to cancer, or their husband, or their wife has died? What do you say when your friend loses her mother or father? Well, like I said, poetry has a way of making God’s truth more real to us, and that’s why when I send a note of condolence or sympathy, I like to include this particular poem by Henry VanDyke. It’s called “She’s Not Gone.” And this is how it goes:
I am standing upon the seashore. A ship at my side spreads her white sails to the morning breeze and starts for the blue ocean. She is an object of beauty and strength, and I stand and watch until at last she hangs like a speck of white cloud just where the sea and sky come down to mingle with each other.
Then someone at my side says, “There she goes!”
Gone where?
Gone from my sight … that is all.
She is just as large in mast and hull and spar as she was when she left my side and just as able to bear her load of living freight to the place of destination. Her diminished size is in me, not in her.
And just at the moment when someone at my side says, “There she goes!” there are other eyes watching her coming and their voices ready to take up the glad shouts “Here she comes!”
And that is dying.
– Henry VanDyke
Wow! My goodness, I can hardly recite that poem without coming to tears because it so aptly conveys a blessed truth about the death of a Christian. When a believer in Jesus passes away, that friend is merely gone from our sight. He is not diminished; his soul is just as large as ever, if not more so. And just as there are people who, at one’s deathbed may say, “He’s gone,” that’s not the final word. For scripture tells us there is a great cloud of witnesses on the other side of that bed; perhaps all the heavenly hosts who shout, “Here he comes!” I mean, after all, scripture tells us that a host of angels rejoice when one sinner comes to repentance; so doesn’t it make sense that a host of angels should rejoice when that redeemed sinner comes home? Look, there is celebrating in heaven when our loved ones enter glory—a lot of celebrating! And the pangs of death a person may wrestle through here on earth are, in a way, birth pangs—the pain and groaning of being born and spilled out onto heaven’s lap when, at that blessed instant, we breathe our last on this side of eternity and inhale the fresh celestial air of heaven.
This poem by Henry VanDyke describes that moment so well. Maybe you have a friend who’s lost a family member and you’d like to give them this poem. Well, you can write me at Joni and Friends, P.O. Box 3333, Agoura Hills, CA 91376 and we’ll mail it to you; or you can go on-line today to joniandfriends.org and click on my radio page. We’ve got it posted right there on our website for you to download and print out and give to a friend. It’ll be a blessed way to express your sympathy. So visit me today at joniandfriends.org for this poem and others.
Previously aired as program #8079, 4/18/13
© Joni and Friends
