Notes From Jon

I got a message a few days ago about a friend in Birmingham who passed away, and it’s just now begun to dawn on me what has happened.  Dewayne was a good friend, a frequent study partner, and a very skilled and thoughtful minister.  He had begun work with a counseling center in the Birmingham area – a job I feel he was perfectly suited for.  He was about my age, and last week he had a completely unexpected seizure that took his life.  He leaves a wife behind.

A little more than a year ago, I heard on the news that a Beeson grad in Virginia was murdered.  I checked, and sure enough, she had graduated with me.  Nancy Copin was a Christian Church (Disciples) pastor in our area while she was in seminary, and we had a common link to the Mexico trip we both loved taking every summer.  I had hoped to contact her, since she was close by, about going to Mexico with us sometime.  But on Ash Wednesday last year, she didn’t show up at church for a special service.  Church members found her in the parsonage – she had been murdered, apparently in a failed robbery attempt.

There’s a part of me – and I imagine there’s a part of you, too – that wonders, “how could God let this happen?”  These were two very sensitive and compassionate friends, servants of God much better qualified and suited to ministry than I will ever be.  Their absences have left a hole that cannot be filled, and like most everyone, I have to wonder what their deaths might have accomplished – if anything.

I may never know, this side of heaven.  But their examples of service and faith remind me of the many things I learned from them, and I am surely better for having counted them as friends for a part of my life.