The Noble Character: A Tribute to Miss Jane - Part 3, The Travel Agency.

This is a tribute to my dear friend Miss Jane. I’d like to tell you about her because, by God’s grace, she didn’t waste her life, and that’s probably the highest compliment any of us could ever hope to receive from anyone. This is partly about some of the events and people of her life, but more than that it is also about some of the things she taught me and how she influenced me, to the Glory of God. Thus, in reading about her un-wasted life, may you receive God’s grace to make the best use of yours. 

For decades after college, Miss Jane lived a good life, the life she had been raised for. The bulk of these years were spent as a business partner in a successful travel agency. She bought 50 percent of the company with Dr. Adam Miller, an American World War II veteran who spoke Japanese and helped interpret for the signing of the armistice that ended the War. 

I’ll give a word about Dr. Miller’s character: Miss Jane could not have worked so long with just any old chump; her standards would have required her business partner to be a gentleman. She just wouldn’t have put up with it any other way. He was proper, and, naturally, she respected that about him. He had a few mannerly quirks that she even made fun of a few times, but she still admired him. For example, if ever the two of them had to drive somewhere together by themselves, he would always make her drive while he sat in the back seat, just to avoid any question of his integrity to his wife or anyone else. Dr. Miller was an accomplished historical theologian in his own right and had even written a book on Church history. Miss Jane always acted surprised whenever I would remind her that I didn’t use his book in any of my college classes. She would say things like, “No one could possibly know what they’re really talking about on Biblical history unless they knew what Dr. Adam Miller said on such-and-such a subject.” This was her admiration for her business partner.

She loved the travel agency – the charm and the research it required, the regular customers, remembering names, finding bargains, sharing mutual travel stories, and booking a celebrity from time to time. (By the way, Miss Jane used an advanced paradigm to determine celebrity. Our culture evaluates celebrity by how many people know about a certain person; Miss Jane evaluated it by how much a person deserved to be known. Ours is based on marketability; hers was by remarkability. You may laugh because she had never heard of Katy Perry, but she’d laugh at you because you don’t know your own mayor. Thus, she was always talking about unknown people as though you were the one with your head in the sand. And she was right.) The travel agency gave her that deep, abiding satisfaction that fewer and fewer of my generation experience: she loved her job.

It was in working with that business partner, in that town, with that type of business, that Miss Jane built a small fortune and traveled the globe. Almost every continent. Multiple countries within each continent. She toured this planet with zeal, as if to familiarize herself with her Christian inheritance. Just think of that for a moment; I hope it stuns you. God granted world travel to this dirt-poor, Depression-born, only-child-of-her-mother little girl from Alabama. By the time I had met her, she had seen things I haven’t yet read about. She would mention these travels every chance she got. Her stories were frank, yet she could never quite conceal her delight in bringing them up. It is, perhaps, like how I imagine the children of some mega-celebrity would try to blend in in public, “Oh yeah, I was at the game when Michael Jordan won his sixth championship. He happens to be my dad, so...ya know.” She would often hunt for people’s travel stories in conversation – searching for the shared landmarks, the cultural oddities, the local dishes that only people who had been to that corner market could have tasted and all the places fellow travelers also held sacred.

As one of her church’s pastors while she was in her 80’s, I saw this scene unfold several times, and I was always quite in awe of it: her aging frame would frequently land her in the hospital, and I’d get to sit with her in an ER hallway as she’d tell foreign doctors about her travels in their home countries. We all knew she was showing off, and we loved it, nobody minded. Many nurses and doctors listened intently as if to learn. Some simply patronized her with a bubble-gum-type of interest whose sweetness wore out just as soon as it began. Others were clearly distracted with the million other things nurses have on their minds. Then there were some nurses and doctors, aside from distraction, who were clearly dismissive and apathetic to her relentless charm. And as I reflect on it all, I’m amazed – it’s shocking when you think about it – that all your best adventures will soon be treated like checkmarks on some nurse’s clipboard.  Not all nurses, but some nurses. He’ll let you ramble about the old days while he’s more in tune with the numerical biology of your vital signs than with you. She’ll treat your proudest moments with the same malaise that she checks your urine bag. You. It is coming, and it is close. Your face will shrivel and your joints will fail, but worst of all, your stories will be uncherished; your words will be simply tolerated by some young person rushing in to the same old destiny.

You might never let yourself think of this reality, but you know you know it. And when it overtakes you, when your stories give way to silence, when there is no more audience, only one question will matter: Who? Who saw your tales unfold, and who will hear them now? Who accompanied every journey? If the only people who would be interested because they lived out your times with you are dead, and all the young people who owe you an ear don’t care, then to whom will you turn? It is the question everyone always cares about at the End. But this haunting question has a great solace if we add just a single, triumphant word: For. For Whom? And such a bold question can be satisfied by only one gracious answer, the only One who has seen every human face perish from the face of the earth from Abel to you: the One Immortal, Invisible, only Wise God. The One for whose sake every day unfolded will be your best companion when your last day enfolds you. Miss Jane, even amid her ornery boasting and shameless name-dropping, really did live every day from, and to, and in, and for Jesus Christ. When death seized her like an owl’s claw and the Last Question demanded its final response, Miss Jane could reply with gentle repose, “Thee, my Lord. None but Thee.”

Perhaps, in view of these weighty things, we are ready for the ever-timely and ever-tender word of the Psalmist, “Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of His saints.” (Ps 116:15)