April, 2024

REMEMBERING CLAY HARRISON

For we are the product of His hand, heaven’s poetry etched on lives…” (Ephesians 2:10, TPT)

On the evening of March 17, Olive Branch Christian Church lost its poet. Clay Harrison, our friend and brother-in-Christ, passed away peacefully in his sleep. He had fought the good fight, spending the last four weeks of his life in Hospice care at home. Clay died surrounded by his family that loved him dearly, especially Shirley, his partner for 57 years. As she wrote in her announcement of his death, “Our lives will never be the same, but thankfully we have the promise of seeing him again in heaven.”

As you know, it is my practice in remembering one who has passed to pick out a passage of scripture that, incompletely of course, lifts up a quality where I saw God revealed in his or her life. There are so many that come to mind when reflecting on Clay’s life! But then I read The Passion Translation (TPT) of the passage from Ephesians, and it spoke perfectly to a part of Clay’s life that I experienced time and time again: “For we are the product of His hand, heaven’s poetry etched on lives…”(Ephesians 2:10).

The Passion Translation in this verse builds upon an older translation from The Jerusalem Bible which reads, “We are God’s work of art, created in Christ Jesus to live the good life as from the beginning he had meant us to live it.” The art that God planted in Clay’s life was poetry.

Clay had a gift I have never seen before, not in my 44 years of ministry. His poetry was inspired. He could sum up the highest qualities of a person’s life in 12 lines, a task that would take me pages. And it wasn’t just people he wrote about; Clay captured in verse our fears, our loves, our relationship to God, our relationships with others. Before he passed, I asked him how many poems he had written in his life. His answer: over 6000!

Clay was able to take a simple item like paper and make it far more than ordinary. He made that paper the media for his poetry. In pen and ink with the most beautiful of handwriting, he declared the person he was writing about was loved and of great value. I think Clay, if asked why he wrote poetry, would agree with the verse from Ephesians I used earlier. He would have said heaven is simply writing poetry on the lives of others, and using me as an instrument to reveal it.

So here is a lesson to learn from Clay and his gift: we are called by God to take ordinary things, even ordinary people, and by affirming them that they matter, and by loving them as Christ would, help them to see that they are of great value. After all, if heaven is writing poetry on the lives of His children, who am I to step in and deface the work of Christ? Clay spent his life affirming that all people are of value to God and should be treated as works of art. May we live our lives in the same way.

Thank you, Lord, for allowing me in my life’s walk to travel with Clay Harrison. It was far too short a walk. Amen.

Blessings ~ Pastor Richard
April, 2024