It's not a shock, but it's a shame that we all grow older. It's not a shock, but it's certainly noticeable when friends our age start to die. It's not a shock, but it's a privilege and a gift that this morning I watched the sun rise onto our back yard through the French doors that separate a deck from our bedroom. Today, Butch John, a friend to the end whether he acknowledged that or not, did not see that sunrise.
And I grieve in a new way, as I did earlier this year for another friend, Orley Hood.
Today I want to talk about the past, all too much my favorite subject. Today, I want to tell you about a guy I knew all those years ago, and how we grew apart and how time changes and things that make you go hummm after all this time.
He and I spent one memorable trip together, truthfully a trip that was all too filled with alcohol and bluster, back when I had plenty of both before Jesus knocked me down so that I could be brought up again. We both wanted to conquer the world, and we both thought we had the talent to do so. He would work a story like few I ever knew, and as the only English major I ever worked with, could turn a phrase like no one else I knew.
Neither ever did conquer the world though he certainly had the talent to do so whereas my talent always had a lower ceiling. Towards the end, he blamed me for not getting him a job at the New Orleans newspaper I found myself at after we worked together in Jackson, Miss., eons and a different life ago. Maybe I should have worked hard to do that very thing. He might well have been right.
This is part of the last Facebook message between us:
"I'm glad you found your way and have entered the ministry. ... Now I'm in the process of shedding my own demons, the clutter in my mind that's been there way too long. ... I may not have been the sunniest guy in the room, but when it came down to it I doubt you ever had a second thought that you'd get what you needed. Now, being isolated as I am, I'm coming to grips with a lot of things and people, both good and bad, in my life. I have no doubt you are a good man. I never did wish you good luck with your ministry. That's one thing I never saw coming, but I guess that was true in many respects ... Time has passed and things have changed dramatically, but one thing will never change. If you need me, I'll be there for you. Old habits are hard to break. And old friends, even those thought lost, are hard to turn your back on. Maybe that was the whole point of this."
Butch was about as anti-religion, if not anti-Christianity as anyone I knew, though he never got that deeply into it with the last few Facebook entries we shared, but he was also laced with pain from numerous back surgeries and such. Then he came down with a case of brain cancer, and it's just flat hard to get past that, isn't it?
The difficult thing of being regenerated, of being reborn 19 years ago into a new creature as Paul says is that sometimes friendships seem to fall between the crack. In other words, I don't party like I once partied, to be frank. I was a different person and sometime that's hard to understand. I don't see some of the folks I once hung with and such. I'm simply different. We all change and grow along the way.
But I regret not talking to Butch near the end. I regret not talking to Butch about Jesus In a straightforward way. I regret not talking to Jana his dear wife, though I did message her my sorrows.
The point of this all is that we, those of us who follow the way, the truth, the life, have an obligation to remember what and who were in our past every bit as much as those in our lives today. We have an obligation, heck a commission, to be there for those who are in need. And it never, never goes away. How it is received, our message, our story, is up to the other person. Our obligation is to share it.
I failed Butch. I've failed others. I fear I'll fail more.
But maybe this sunny, wonderful day someone in this world will read what I'm about to share.
God saved me. I was a wretched sinner, the worst of sinners, and God saved me, by sending Jesus Christ to die for me. Just for me, as Wesley said. He saved me, then he called me. He called me to send this message around the world.
For Butch, and all the Butches out there this very morning, I send.
God speed, Butch. God speed. And I'm sorry.
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