Remembering D--

I said a prayer for Dick before I ever met him. This was about five years ago. Dick was going through his heart problems and the Pattersons added him to the prayer list at church. But he didn’t remain an anonymous name on the bulletin for long. It wasn’t but a few Sundays after that that I got to meet Dick in person, with his brother Jimmy in tow.

Dick was one of the funniest people I ever met. He was pretty fast on his feet when it came to one-liners, and could give the impression to the unacquainted that he was a real curmudgeon. But it became apparent that he wasn’t that way at all when I took the time to get to know him. Dick had a real passion for the human services field and loved to talk about the people (he didn’t use the word “clients”) that he had the privilege of helping. And certainly his relationship with his brother is one of the greatest pictures of love between two people that I’ve ever seen. Wouldn’t the world be a lot better place if we all treated each other with such compassion?

Read the newspaper. Turn on MSNBC. It doesn’t take too long to figure out that something has gone terribly, terribly wrong with people. The Apostle Paul wrote about the condition of mankind in his letter to the church at Rome: “They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice. They are gossips, slanderers, God–haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful; they invent ways of doing evil; they disobey their parents; they are senseless, faithless, heartless, ruthless. Although they know God's righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death, they not only continue to do these very things but also approve of those who practice them.” (Romans 1: 29–32) Would we deny that our condition has improved over the last nineteen-hundred-and-some years since Paul penned those words?

A terminal illness makes a guy think. And Dick had two or three of ‘em. He didn’t just see that things had gone terribly wrong in the world—he recognized that things had gone terribly wrong in himself. And Dick came to the conclusion that Jesus Christ could help. In Saint John’s biography of Jesus he states: “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.” (John 3: 16—17)

One of the things I liked best about Dick was that he didn’t put on airs. Dick was the real deal. His newfound Christian faith was authentic. His beliefs didn’t cause him to ignore the realities of life—these last few years of his life were hard—but he did experience a new kind of hope in the midst of his daily pain, and was comforted by the promise of a new life to come. He neither excused his past nor glorified in his previous indiscretions. He had this almost childlike sense of wonder about the love he found in the person of Jesus Christ. Dick would shake his head in amazement and say, “You can’t comprehend what a vile, wicked person I’ve been.” Dick experienced what the Psalmist wrote when he said that the Lord is “a compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness.” (Psalm 86:15)

Everyone always says that they want to go in their sleep. I can’t say that I disagree with them. But Dick knew that the end was coming. He kept saying that he was going to fool everybody and walk right out of that hospital, but that was born out of desire to comfort his family and friends rather than out of any conviction that it was actually going to happen. We’ll never know what Dick went through in those last couple days. I bet he felt the full range of emotions. In the midst of this crisis, he began to doubt if Christ had really forgiven him.

People have a hard time putting their trust in other people—that’s why we have laws, contracts, lawyers, and lie detectors. And for a few days Dick questioned if he could entrust his soul to Christ or if he was sins were so bad that they disqualified him from his offer of eternal life. Remember that old TV show, Fight Back? David Horowitz would say, “If it sounds to good to be true, it probably is!” And forgiveness of sins sounds pretty good.

I ate lunch the other day in the hospital cafeteria. When I got to the checkout, I realized that I had left my money lying on my desk at work. But then a nice lady offered to buy my lunch for me. It only cost two bucks, but I still offered to pay her back. I hate the idea of someone having to bail me out. I’d much rather find a way to take care of everything myself.

But some things are beyond our ability to take care of. It was true for my lunch that afternoon. It’s also just as true about the sin in our lives. We may try to tow the line or keep the rules, but at some point or another we bungle it up. There’s no amount of restitution that we can perform to undo the damage that we’ve caused to the people around us or even ourselves. In other words, we need bailed out. Hear these words of Saint Paul: “For what the law was powerless to do in that it was weakened by the sinful nature, God did by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful man to be a sin offering.” (Romans 8:3)

We try being religious. We try being a good person. We try to excuse our own bad behavior. But deep down we know that it’s not enough—our own consciences accuse us. There’s only one bridge between a screwed-up mankind and God. That bridge is Christ. If He can’t take on your whole burden, he can’t take any of it. Dick, his fiancée Eileen, and I had a chance to talk about these things a few hours before he moved on. Then I said a short prayer and headed home for some shut-eye. (I just noticed that the first and last thing I ever did for Dick was pray for him.)

When Dick moved on, he was most definitely at peace with His God.

I’d like to finish with a few words from the book of First Timothy in the Bible. This was Saint Paul’s testimony, but somehow I can hear Dick saying this: “The grace of our Lord was poured out on me abundantly, along with the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus. Here is a trustworthy saying that deserves full acceptance: Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners—of whom I am the worst. But for that very reason I was shown mercy so that in me, the worst of sinners, Christ Jesus might display his unlimited patience as an example for those who would believe on him and receive eternal life.” (1 Timothy 1: 15—16)