In Memory

 I had lessons in the meaning of grace this week as my brother went home to be with the Lord.  Sometimes we forget about the power of God’s grace to redeem—maybe we take it for granted, or perhaps we wrap his grace inside a box that fits our hat size.  

I received word that my Brother had a stroke and was in a coma just a few days ago.   This past Tuesday he passed into eternity with his family at his bedside.   Adventure and risk characterized everything he did from being the highest paid plumber in the US, to wrestling with ocelots on his ranch along an Amazon tributary.  I never knew what turn his life might take and I have never met someone who could create as much joy in the people around him as my brother, Deron.  His family and mine were intertwined much more in our earlier years, and our kids would disappear with his for hours, enjoying each others company.  Each visit with him was like stepping from my mundane world of the ordinary into a forgotten realm of hilarity and discovery.

As I think about my brothers’s life, I have some new perspective on the unique gifts of God’s grace and his redemption in our lives: 

Everyone who knew him has stories to tell.  These memorable moments could happen anywhere, while sharing some extra work on one his plumbing jobs to just going to the grocery store.    It was almost impossible to spend any time with him that would not result in a story to be remembered long after the day was past.  Some snapshots:  New years eve with two Elvis’ at his home, firing really big guns in the desert, driving a race car to work even though racing fuel is hard to find around town, helping with the largest sewer replacement in Portland history and discovering an illegal sewer dump into a community stream, listening to his family rock band play home-made tunes about their goldfish in a Vegas Casino—you get the idea.

He created a wake wherever he went.   Much of that happened because of courage.  He never met a challenge he wouldn’t meet, and it almost always meant dragging someone along while he learned how to: scuba dive, feed elderly families, raise chickens in the Amazon, recover drowning victims in Lake Meade or fix up people’s homes who couldn’t afford it.  I wonder how much of a wake my life creates—and how much just going along with the status quo is really such a great idea?  Living in grace doesn’t always mean being graceful–sometimes it means believing in the strength of grace to give us courage and forgiveness.

He was hard wired for adventure and risk.  Like so many men in our culture, Deron was hard-wired for adventure.  He would find a challenge, conquer that challenge and then look for a new one.  If he didn’t have a challenge he grew restless.  How many boys and men are wired this way, and cannot find any challenge in our conventions about church.  We want them to show up every Sunday, when they should be smuggling Bibles into China.  What happened to the risk in being a believer and where are our heros?  How many young men fall into trouble rather than express their faith through daring ventures for God.  I want to make room for outrageous goals and impossible adventures in my life.

Grace is not just for good people.  Grace is for messy people who screw it up—over and over again.  God can redeem the most lost and most failed of people and circumstances.  Deron found them wherever he went and didn’t see the same thing that I often did when I looked at a homeless man or a broken down house.    God can repair and restore even what we think is long broken.   He can re-establish the lives of those who have exhausted the patience of their families and friends, make a new beginning and create a new life.    My brother grabbed hold of the miraculous power of grace in both his own life and for those around him.  None of us are exempt from the need for ongoing grace to redeem our mistakes and to empower our days.

Joining the Cowboys of Grace.   I guess I just need to be in the company of church planters and faith based social entrepreneurs  who are risk takers and adventure makers, like my brother.   They are not just addicted to adventure, they are explorers on a mission.   And yes, they do seem a little crazy at times–but  I think we need to have their backs as they take grace to places where normal just doesn’t fit.   My brother ‘s last season of life found him in the company of men such as these, and I know that many will greet him beyond the gates that have entered Heaven because he risked enough to reach them.   Perhaps these Grace Cowboys aren’t crazy after all.  Perhaps the greatness of God’s grace is enough for those who try and fail as well as those who try and suceed.  And just maybe, risking enough to fail and then get back up again is the real test of faith.

I hope I learn these things well, since my brother’s lessons for me now have to live on in the stories that I ponder and apply as I look toward a future reunion—no doubt he will have started the party long before I arrive and will have already completed new adventures which now expand beyond just the earthly plane.  It was my honor to ride alongside a real cowboy of grace.