A Celebration Of Life For My Brother-In-Law

Today I will be attending my brother-in-law’s funeral. We drove about 400 miles yesterday to get to this small Oregon town where the funeral will be held so we had lots of time for remembering.

It probably will not be a sad day for my brother-in-law has been a quadriplegic for more than 35 years. My sister has had the total care of him in that time and deserves some kind of special award in Heaven for her patience and caring spirit.

What I wanted to tell you though, is that my brother-in-law was a minister when he was injured and remained one until the day he died. He was no longer the pastor of a church, but he had his own unique congregation of hundreds who paraded through his bedroom to find Christ over the years.

You could not visit this man without leaving feeling better about yourself and about life. If you had a problem of your own, it paled in comparison to what he and my sister had faced and just that knowledge made our own trials much easier to bear.

In the early years of his disability, he was interested in rock collecting and my sister would pack him and his wheelchair into their van along with boxes of rocks to exchange with other rock collectors and head for various rock shows held around the state each summer. He even turned his customers and interested passers by at these events into a small congregation to tell them that Jesus loved them. Curiously, no one ever seemed offended by his direct approach and seemed even more willing to listen, because of the severity of his handicap.

He will be sorely missed.