Thursday, July 15, 2004
Dust in the Wind- (Not the song by Kansas)
Yesterday I had a shock. I was reading the local newspaper, and a name in the obituaries caught my eye. Now I am not an avid reader of the obit section, I don’t think I am quite that old, but this name caught my eye, because it was the same name as I guy I knew in school. I opened the paper thinking surely it was his dad (he was a Jr.) but no, it was him. Forty-seven years old, dead of a heart attack. Now people my age and older (like him) are not supposed to die unless it is a tragic accident. Yet this is the second person in that age group who has died from heart attacks in the last two years. Both of them were good friends of mine at one time or other in my life.
This hit me harder than I was expecting. We kind of “went together” in Junior High School. That meant we went to church together a few times and held hands at baseball games, you know a serious Junior High relationship. He introduced me to the Baptist religion that kind of sang/shouted their sermons. I was scared out of my mind, but it was his dad doing the preaching. He would go to my mild mannered country Church of Christ and never complained about it. In those days he claimed to be an atheist, or at best an agnostic. Of course he grew up to be a preacher. He had actually sang at a funeral the day he died. We should never take to seriously the declarations of the young, but encourage them to research their belief system. He probably never shared his unbelief with his parents, maybe with no one but me. I remember telling him that he was crazy, of course he believed in God, just look around you. I am greatly relieved that he found his way.
Life is fleeting. We are here today and tomorrow just a memory. I pray that I will be the kind of memory I want to be. I pray for the family of Junior Rodgers, who lost him way too soon. I thank God for all the people in my life that I have known for a long time, or a short time, especially those that share faith in Him.
This hit me harder than I was expecting. We kind of “went together” in Junior High School. That meant we went to church together a few times and held hands at baseball games, you know a serious Junior High relationship. He introduced me to the Baptist religion that kind of sang/shouted their sermons. I was scared out of my mind, but it was his dad doing the preaching. He would go to my mild mannered country Church of Christ and never complained about it. In those days he claimed to be an atheist, or at best an agnostic. Of course he grew up to be a preacher. He had actually sang at a funeral the day he died. We should never take to seriously the declarations of the young, but encourage them to research their belief system. He probably never shared his unbelief with his parents, maybe with no one but me. I remember telling him that he was crazy, of course he believed in God, just look around you. I am greatly relieved that he found his way.
Life is fleeting. We are here today and tomorrow just a memory. I pray that I will be the kind of memory I want to be. I pray for the family of Junior Rodgers, who lost him way too soon. I thank God for all the people in my life that I have known for a long time, or a short time, especially those that share faith in Him.
