Greetings in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, who with the Father and the Holy Spirit are only worthy of eternal praise and glory! Dear brother, my words cannot begin to express the joy that the Lord has brought to my family by the actions your recent seminars fostered, and twofold for myself, by providing the impetus for a wonderful conversation about the love my mother had for her “Uncle Case” [Dr. Cornelius Van Til]. A love I suspect you share because of the impact his writings have had on your life. He was a man who not only loved God with all his mind, but also loved his neighbor, my mother, as himself. It is my prayer that the Lord would bless you as I recount her words, as the Lord has blessed us through your ministry.

Just to give you little background on mother’s relationship with Dr. Van Til. At ENOCH [New Jersey Home School Conference] I had told you that Dr. Van Til was my aunt’s grandfather. He was actually her uncle. My aunt Carolyn Veenstra (Van Til) was my mother’s dearest friend growing up. Her father was Sidney Van Til, whom my mother states was an interesting and godly man in his own right. It made me think about what type of father and mother these men of God had, to have impacted multiple generations. Though my mother said that my aunt’s grandfather died before she was born, she knew her grandmother. I will be sure ask my aunt about them. My mother told me that the Van Tils were family to her, and that she would often see Dr. Van Til, who insisted on her calling him Uncle Case. He would come up from Philadelphia to preach at their local church in Prospect Park, New Jersey, the Second Christian Reformed Church. She also recounted with fondness the two times that she was invited down to Dr. Van Til’s old colonial brownstone in Philadelphia for dinner, and that one time he gave them a tour of the seminary.

My mother, when reminiscing about this man, told me several times about how much she loved him, not because of his great intellect or the fact that he was a great professor that “wrote those books that were so hard to understand,” though she said that that gave her an extra measure of respect, it was because, as she said over and over again, that he was so warm, so sweet, and so friendly. Asking her what she meant by that, she went on to describe how he would not simply greet her, but greet her with a hug. He always provoked such a warm feeling. He “cared enough to bring you into the conversation ... looking you [a child] in the eye” (I cannot help but imagine the look of joy and interest he must have had in his eyes when he spoke with my mother as a young girl) and that “he would never talk down to her ... but speak at her level.” She told me how he loved fun, and would laugh and joke a lot, chasing them around.

My mother told me a wonderful account of how she would walk with her grandfather Van Dyk on the way to church each Sabbath day. One Sabbath day when walking to church with grandpa, she recalled that she had been complaining, and that it was a day that Uncle Case was preaching. She told me that the sermon was called count your blessings and that grandpa whispered to her “are you listening, are you listening?” She still remembers and takes comfort in this lesson that impacted her so long ago. Even today when she is feeling blue she says to herself “Count your blessings.” I remember her saying this very phrase growing up. To hear the joy from my mother’s mouth as she remembered the simple joys of having known “Uncle Case” in her youth was a great blessing to me.