(edited)
There are men and women in every generation that the Lord raises up to lead us into the things that will awaken our souls and help us grasp onto the richer meaning and purpose for which we were made. The world is hungry for this kind of leader. Yesterday we lost one of them. Dorothy Miller passed into the presence of our Lord and Savior. As envious as her position is now…the blessed image of her dancing before the throne unfettered by the bondages of this world keeps dancing in my head…her influence was so profound in so many lives that she leaves behind an abyss of loss. Many tears are being shed, many hearts are crying out for comfort, all over the world in these hours as the news spreads. Lord Jesus, comfort them.

The best way I know how to honor her is to honor her calling. Dorothy’s passion for the Word of God was unparalleled among anyone I have ever known. Literally. I don’t know anyone who enjoys and saturates in the Word like she did…or was able to get everyone else into it with lively discussion and fascinating insight. The concept that Scripture could be boring was unthinkable in her presence. She believed in it’s Truth, in it’s power to transform, it it’s clarity to speak to any person who attended to it’s content. She created ways to explore the Word that astounded us with it’s beauty and broke the boundaries of the wooden ways we often approach the love letter of God to His beloved. She taught us to love the stories and the characters in them by helping us know them as our friends and brethren…and know ourselves through them. The servants of God in the Bible that we often, in truth, relate to as if they are dusty myths, came alive as our true heroes…men and women that we could relate to in their rich psychological complexities…complete persons with epic victories for God, devastating failures, and everything in between. All except Jesus, of course. He was all victory. Dorothy’s fierce love for these characters and (often breathtaking) understanding of their stories showed us how to own them for ourselves, in our own spiritual heritage, and in how we want to live our lives. And she gave us the remarkable gift of a teaching method that equips us to pass that passion on to others.

There are so many who were loved by Dorothy and who love her with the depth of those who feel they have been rescued…from shallowness, from darkened understanding…from the unfulfilled desire to be engaged in something meaningful for the Gospel of Jesus Christ. I have never met a group of people so fully awake to the things of God as those who were drawn into Dorothy’s world of Bible storytelling.