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Jan Harper

O the Deep Deep Love of Jesus

O the deep deep love of Jesus,
Vast unmeasured boundless free;
Rolling as a mighty ocean,
In its fullness over me… — Hymn

Loving Jesus. The phrase transports Jan Harper back a few decades. She was living in Minnesota, working with the organization Young Life. People of faith love to sing, and often Jan’s voice joined with the high school youth in her care. The words have stayed with her: “...Underneath me, all around me, is the current of Thy love.”

Looking across the landscape of her life, Jan reflects, “At times when it’s hard to stay centered, I envision that God is holding me from underneath with loving arms. God is underneath me, all around me. There’s an element of safety and security that surpasses explanation.”

Jan grew up on Spaulding Boulevard in Davenport, surrounded by a Catholic college and two Catholic churches. Jan was the minority in this sea of Baby Boom Catholicism. Of the 70 neighborhood children, 67 were Catholic. Mom came from a Catholic background too. But Jan’s newspaper-editor father was a champion of Lutheranism for his only child.

In the classrooms of St. Paul Lutheran Church, just a few blocks to the east, the stories of scripture took hold of Jan. But with the tug of two faith traditions in the Jurgens home, Jan was not baptized until age 12. She remembers well the self-consciousness and meaning of the moment, standing in the center of St. Paul Church with Rev. Emerson Miller.

Dad narrowed Jan’s college choices to Lutheran ones. At Augustana in Rock Island, attendance in weekly chapel and convocation gatherings was absolutely required. Grades were docked if you failed to show up. But Jan soaked up the message and music.

“My whole life, I have loved to sing,” first in church and then in college. “It was very inspiring to be in Centennial Hall, packed to the gills with people your age all singing the hymns we grew up with. My faith is so rooted in the words Iím singing and in that overwhelming community.”

Jan loved the church. “I loved what the church stood for, I loved the people of the church, I loved how I felt in church.” It was only natural that she’d seek a vocation in the church. But in those days, the church was not ordaining women. With a major in “parish work” and a concentration in adolescent counseling, Jan found her way back to St. Paul for a senior-year internship. During that time, her mother suffered a brain hemorrhage. The people of St. Paul surrounded and supported their young parish worker.

Jan loved the church. She loved the people. But it was in the post-college years that she discovered the “deep deep love of Jesus.” She credits Jeanne Olsen — also young and single at the time — for “taking my Sunday School faith to a deeper level.” In the supportive environment of a St. Paul study group, Jeanne’s friendship helped expand Jan’s “spiritual life beyond biblical and academic understanding.

There was “no ah-ha moment, no Damascus Road experience” for Jan. Only the love of God incarnate in relationships. That has been a pattern. That has been enough.

Gradually, Jan has grown to trust her life to God. She has lived into beloved words from her Bible: “And may you be able to feel and understand, as all God’s children should, how long, how wide, how deep and how high his love really is; and to experience this love for yourselves, though it is so great that you will never see the end of it or fully know or understand it.” (Ephesians 3:18-19)

Married and then single, married and now single again, Jan is sustained by the depth and height of God’s love for her. Through challenges physical or emotional, she experiences this love through the people who surround her.

“At every juncture of my life,” says Jan, “God’s love has been shown to me in concrete and physical ways by people who have helped me in faith and nurtured me.” Grounded in the deep deep love of Jesus, Jan thrives in relationships.

Grandchildren. Blessed not by biological children, Jan took others into her heart as family. She treasures the grandchildren from her second marriage. And when she lived next door to Heather and John Gosma, the three Gosma girls became like daughters to her. Now she is “GranJan” to their children. “Our family lives became entwined,” she says.

Friends. “I invest so much of myself in friendship. When you’re loved and in a loving relationship, it’s natural to be able to show that to other people.”

Faith community. At her lowest points, Jan has kept connected to the church “so you can let people love you. I wanted to hide. But you lose the potential for grace if you don’t stay connected.” In the midst of chaos, she found “peace acknowledging that God was still in charge and that I would be okay.”

Vocation. She retired, the economy tanked, physical challenges scrambled her employment outlook. But recently, two jobs have fallen into her life. And they’re both based in relationships: one counseling senior adults and the other connecting with people who are planning celebrations.

Confident trust. Jan comes back around to God. “When you’re in a loving relationship, you respond lovingly,” she says of her faith in God. “God puts people in your life and path. If you are physically present in the midst of others, you can receive blessings beyond your vision. When you’re wrapped up in your own world, your vision is short-sighted.”

At the end of worship each week, Jan receives the sending words: “Go in peace to love and serve the Lord.” As she turns to leave the sanctuary, her eyes drift upward.

“I love the placement of the Ascension window at the back of the church. I see more than Jesus rising; I see four people left below. They’re supported to now go and live their lives, reflecting Jesus. We say, “Thanks be to God,” and we go out — empowered by the community of worship and faith to serve.”

Empowered by the “deep deep love of Jesus.”

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"What we call doubt is often simply dullness of mind and spirit, not the absence of faith at all but faith latent in the lives we are not quite living, God dormant in the world to which we are not quite giving our best selves." ~Christian Wiman