Love Letter 21

A friend challenged me to write 90 love letters in 90 days. I’ve written them to my wife, to my grandchildren, co-workers, doctors, even to Robert Muller, (yeah, I know, it surprised me too). I heard some news about your future plans and this seems like the kairos for me to tell you how much I love you and more importantly (so the words have some depth and meaning) why. This is a love letter that marks and celebrates a ministry characterized, that is in fact soaked in, the love of Christ. I worked with you for only 20 months or so, and that whole time, through thick and thin, (and there was plenty of thick and more than enough thin – ministry is like that nowadays), but through all that, I watched you do one thing. You loved 1500 people into the kingdom of God. I repeat, (and for those of you who don’t know how difficult this is, please hear it loud and clear), you loved 1500 people into the kingdom of God every week. I thought in the beginning, “Doesn’t he know that this is a big church? You can’t give this kind of care, this level of attention to this many people all by yourself.” I counted once, your call sheet was 3 pages long – with additions written in the margins. (It was sitting out on your desk as you went outside to show yet more love to a troubled guy who wandered into the office.) Turns out I wasn’t just wrong on the logistics of that, I was wrong on importance of that too. You inspire me. I’m not kidding; ever since the day I started working for you I knew that yours is the way to pastor a congregation. Even now as I struggle with issues of leadership, budget, and direction in my own congregation I can hear the voice you lodged so firmly in my heart saying to me, “You’ve got to love them into this community, love them into relationship with the one who’s name is Love.” I love that voice; it’s your voice. That endless call sheet represented a life so filled with Christ’s love that almost out of habit it overflowed you and poured into others. Your willingness to get up and get involved on someone’s behalf at anytime the Spirit called you, and all the out of the way, over the top, creative ways you would find to surprise people with love were and I’m sure still are, absolutely beautiful. They are what my friend Marc would call outrageous acts of love – sourced in the creative power of the One who said, “Let there be light.” What you have done all these years is to draw on Christ’s love and spoon feed it to the people who came across your path. I love you every time I think of it. I want great and wonderful things to happen for you every time I realize the gift you’ve put into the world. I love you my friend. The last fifty years or so have been a discouraging time to do the job you’ve done. The inevitable decline of the church in a modern culture sets people on edge. Hurtful things are said that would not have been said during another era, (my Dad assures me of this), but even in those moments you knew, you knew that the only way forward was to love and keep loving and so you prayed that your heart would stay open . . . wow, one wonders if they have any idea the gift they’ve received. (You could give them the url to this love letter if there’s any question at all.) I do, I know what a gift it is and I love you for it. In all of that though, the love that stands out most is the unbridled love you have for your family. Oh my God. Such dear, tender, steady, consistent, even relentless care and concern is a wonder to behold. And perhaps most astonishing, most glorious of all is that your loving heart lets you gain a glimpse of Christ’s beauty even at the most awful hour. There are moments when your love brings me to my knees. You can tell the love is genuine in its source because it cannot be contained within you. You know how when you connect a full glass and an empty glass of water with a rolled up paper towel the water is drawn from one glass and moves into other? It happens by capillary action. That’s how love works. It’s why I love you; at one point I soaked up some of your love and have always been the richer for it. So I’m hoping this little note might work just a bit in reverse, maybe the capillary action can move in the other direction – from me to you and that way you’ll be able to live for a time in what you have given to others so generously over all these years.

Love, Sam