The last time I saw my brother alive was 18 years ago this week. This is a literal lifetime for my sweet nephew, born only weeks after and who bears my brother’s name. He turns 18 soon and will graduate high school. 

This time of year always seems to bring these kinds of strange and painful recognitions and is one of many reasons I hate August.

The oppressive heat always seems most unrelenting at this bitter end of summer. It grabs hold of the edge of your soaked-through shirt and pulls you back, keeping you from moving ahead.

East Texas heat won’t let you catch your breath. It’s different when kids can run and play in summer adventures, but instead, school starts and the heat just flops heavily onto us as we get up early, packing lunches and sweating it out under the strain of oversized backpacks and sticky football practices in itchy grass.

August days drag almost as unmercifully as January’s end. The hardest hanging on, not letting up. 

Death is like this.

We know it is coming for us all, and as we age, our weakened frames shrivel in the heat of the unrelenting misery. It grabs on like August.

As I thought through this week approaching that ugly anniversary, I studied my calendar and recalled another day, the same week, that held the death of a friend. I didn’t actually have to recall it. I knew it was there, but its unpleasant head still poked up off the page before me. He also had my brother’s name and suffered a seemingly untimely death that very same week, years later.

Three kids and one start-up company all took up that name of my brother who made it out of here early. This tells me he left a living legacy by way of the love he left all around. 

This brightens my hot day as I keep looking for what is good and happy—the silver lining of August. My youngest child was born on the early edge of the month, though we like to say he was born on July 32, and the other edge is graciously dotted with college football. 

But it is the bleak days that stretch out in that grinding middle that take the toll.

This seems like all of life in that those middle days often seem so hard. These are the days when the learning happens. It is the hard heart of the heat that purifies us in its fire. It is when the silversmith melts us down to find out what we are made of, and it reveals the dregs that will be left to burn. 

What survives? 

Only what is refined by the Great Refiner Himself. Nothing can stand but what was deposited by our King Jesus—that silver lining perhaps? 

Eyes of fire, Revelation tells us, these belong to the coming Conqueror. When the world burns and we can’t take another moment, He arrives. That purifying fire comes to sift through the nations with righteousness. His piercing and consuming gaze leaves nothing but what is His own, made pure by His victory.

On my recent sweaty evening walk, I endure the 98-degree “feels like” temperature. Then suddenly there comes a gentle wind as I reach the shadiest part of my street. For a moment, the misery, the heaviness, lifts. It is like a whisper of good.

The neighbor’s fallen tree has released a delightful fragrance that greets me in this almost cool moment of relief. The tree was broken open in a recent storm, felling the power line and sending us all into darkness. But here is the tree, still offering itself.

The gentle stirring of the Spirit reminds me that this is what He does best. This is life from death. That broken and dead tree sends out a beautiful aroma from the life it lived. 

The three young men who have taken the name of my brother and my friend, who have gone ahead of us all, are vibrant and growing and showing what life lived looks like. 

It is the reminder that the hard, stark middle days, the unyielding, harsh times, hasten death. But this is never where it ends. The fragrant beauty blossoms when the hard outer layer is finally laid down. 

The Returning King told us this when He walked among us: “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. Truly, truly I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.”

The Son of Man was on that miserable march to death, and He was whispering the good. 

The tree offers itself, and the death upon it can only release a pleasing aroma.

My pace quickens, and I move from the shade and back into the sweltering sun. I feel the beads of sweat drip down, and I embrace the road ahead.