A Friend Like Steve

 A friend loves at all times,

    and a brother is born for a time of adversity. Proverbs 17:17

 That’s Steve.

 At Steve’s funeral his son, Chad, offered three words to the large gathering of Steve’s family and friends which sum up Steve’s character:

Kindness, Respect, Love. 

 My experiences with Steve through his too-brief life proved those words to be true. Our last meeting gives you an idea. As I walked to the first tee for my first competitive golf match since my stroke five months earlier, Steve greeted me with his trademark smile and soft voice with the kind of welcoming words that put my nervousness at ease. Now I knew that if my first shot went sailing across the road, well, Steve understood. It was my second shot that sailed wildly into the ditch, and off he went, hunting through weeds I couldn’t traverse. “A brother is born for a time of adversity.”

 I am blessed to have many friends like Steve, but Steve was a model friend. In losing a friend like Steve I learned anew how important it is to have and to be a friend like Steve, born to be with friends in times of adversity.

"Are You Catholic?"

 John 17:20-21a “My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, that all of them may be one…”

 Friday closed with a nurse’s call, asking if I could pray over a dying man.

 I entered the hospital room to the greeting, “Are you Catholic?” I told the grieving family, no, I am a Protestant minister, but I was the only available minister/priest. The dying man’s wife looked in my eyes, ‘Well, I guess God hears your prayers too.” My heart-felt reply was, “Yes,  God doesn’t have all these barriers that we have erected between us.”

 The family looked at each other, then nodded.  Together we prayed their dying husband and father into the arms of his Savior, Jesus Christ.

 Why has the Church of Jesus Christ so miserably failed to live into Jesus’ final prayer? Why do the ‘people in the pews’ understand the truth that in Christ we are all one so much better than the religious leaders who teach them?

 Truth is, I am ‘catholic’, believing in ‘the holy catholic (of all times and places) church.’ (Apostles Creed) May human-bound denominations learn to live what we profess.