Old Friends and Small Butts

I received news today that an old acquaintance of mine is dying. I have not seen Karen for 33 years. In my mind she is still a beautiful, 19 year-old… off to try and save the world.

Apparently reality is once again different from my perspective.

The old adage says if you want to live you have to die. Of course, old adages sound better if you have a real chance to live long enough to put them in practice.

I am aware that dying is part of our lives. From where I sit it seems my parents’ main social outlet is attending the funerals of their friends. A few years ago I asked my mother not to send me the obituaries of everyone who has “passed.” I think I may have offended her. Close friends have died and I haven’t heard a thing.

You don’t have to be older to have death be part of who you are.

One of the formative experiences of my youth was the death of my friend, Steve. Although Steve and I met through some kind of church activity, we both imbibed heavily in what has come to be known as the “60’s”. I remembering returning home from a trip and my father telling me I should watch the news. The reporter said Steve’s body had been found in a small river and police were investigating. I knew it had to be drug-related… and it was.

One day we had both been alive, talking about philosophy, politics and music. A few days later I was standing next to Steve’s coffin.

It didn’t seem right.

I have thought of Steve a number of times over the years. I have also visited his gravesite. Every time I go there the marker tells the same story… Died September 3, 1970.

I think of everything that I have done since 1970 and realize that Steve never had a chance to experience real life.

In 1971 I became a Christian. I married Susan in 1975. On May 10, 1978, we landed in La Paz, Bolivia, and began an adventure that has still not ended. Krista was born in 1979. Norma came to us in 1983 and, not long after that, Kari arrived.

Over all those years I have ministered in 46 countries and visited a few more.

Of course it hasn’t all been good.

I remember riding on the back of a motorcycle in Bolivia with bullets flying around me. I believe my prayer that morning was one of the most profound and sincere ones I have ever uttered. “Small butt. Small butt. Make it small, God.”

He did.

I have been sick with enough diseases that Red Cross volunteers laugh at me when I offer to donate blood. All of those sicknesses have made me happy for each day I am alive. They also make me very respectful of the process of dying... it takes real courage to do it right.

Jesus likened the experience of being His disciple with dying. In Luke 14:25, 26, and 35 we read the following.

Now great crowds were going along with Him, and all at once He turned and said to them:

"If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, and still more, his own life too, he cannot be a disciple of mine. Whoever does not persevere in carrying his own cross and thus following after me, cannot be a disciple of mine… Just so, no one of you who does not forsake everything that he has, can be a disciple of mine…”

Sometimes old adages are right. They are just hard to live out in what we call life.