My Friend John 

I attended a memorial for a friend of mine this Saturday.  His name was John.  He was a few months younger than I, but he had many health problems.  I met him in 1985 when I was the chaplain at Santa Clara Valley Medical Center in San Jose.  A car hit him while he was walking across the street.  The accident was so severe no one really expected him to live.  His head broke the windshield and he was carried along until he flew off the car!  There are so many details about this accident that I cannot possible tell you.  But at the end he was so broken and twisted that his head was literally facing the wrong way.   

This “accident” happened just days after he had truly committed himself to God at a retreat.  

John survived after many specific answers to prayer.  He then faced the long ordeal of rehabilitation.  After something more than a year he kept his commitment to God and WALKED back into the hospital and came my office.  He asked how he might serve as a volunteer with me!   It seems to me that John is a living example of 2 Corinthians 1:4: “who comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God.” 

He ended up working as a volunteer chaplain for several years, and then as a staff chaplain for about fifteen years!  He went through many struggles, but he would not stop.  The lessons John learned through his painful ordeal he used to comfort hundreds of others.  Many in John’s circumstances just end up living a life of leisure, for lack of a better term.  They watch TV waiting to feel better.   John would not do that.  He got up and got going!  

So many of us with very few difficulties are allowing those we do have to derail us.  This is a shame!  Listen to the words of God to Joshua: “Moses my servant is dead. Now therefore arise, go over this Jordan, you and all this people…”  While it is day let us arise and go!  

Another friend of mine, Sue, spoke a John’s memorial.  She was one of his ICU nurses back in 1985.  She admitted to not expecting him to live.  She was shocked to meet him twenty years later still going and serving other people!  After this meeting they became co-facilitators of a wonderful prayer and support group.  Sue said that sunflowers, which she brought to the memorial, reminded her of John, because they always turn toward the sun.  She said only that in the case of John he turned toward the Son!  

John had a wonderful faith in the Son of God.  It is comforting to know that John has completed his course and is with the Son now!