On Sunday evening, August 8, 2010, my beloved Grandpa passed away.  He had been failing throughout the summer as a result of an aggressive lung cancer, so one could say that we were prepared.  But you’re never really prepared for these kinds of things.  You wake up every day and you pray that God would be in control, that God would do his will, that he would either heal him or take him – whatever he chose, to spare Grandpa the suffering.  And so you always hope, because God does do miracles, and he does sometimes choose to heal.  And so, death is hard because it is suddenly the realization of how God chose to answer your prayers.

But what surprised me more than anything, as I heard the news that Grandpa had fallen into a coma he would not recover from, and ultimately that he had passed into glory, was the sense of peace that I had over God’s choice.  A peace that stemmed from the Gospel.

For I was sure that my Grandpa knew Jesus Christ as his Lord and Savior.  I had seen his faith.  I had heard him challenge others’ faith.  He was not one to be dazzled by religious credentials or seminary degrees.  Upon hearing that my future husband hoped to be a pastor, he said firmly and clearly, “Young man, I hope that you believe that Jesus Christ died and rose again for you and that that’s your only hope of salvation.  Not every pastor does.  And if you don’t believe that, well, you’d better give it up.”

And in the cancer center, as he visited day after day for treatment and saw others also facing death, he was never afraid to ask them if they knew what their hope after death was.  He was a light to those around him, an unashamed beacon of gospel truth for Christ.

And it wasn’t just as he went through this valley of illness that he fought for Christ.  At his funeral service, in his little tiny church in the little tiny town he’d lived in for over 50 years, there was an endless stream of people who wanted to stand up and say just how much my Grandpa had blessed them, had prayed for them, had meant to them, had shown Christ to them in all his love, patience and kindness.

In Grandpa’s faith, and in my own, I found peace and hope and comfort.  For I knew that Grandpa was in glory, peaceful, happy, free from pain, and praising the God that he loved best.  And everything was okay, because as much as I grieved, the grief was really just for me and my Grandma and my family and the prospect of long years on this earth without my Grandpa.  Because Grandpa, experiencing what he was experiencing, would never, ever want to come back to us – but he was waiting excitedly for when we would all join him.

And so, as he shared him in life, my Grandpa shared Christ in death.  And he did not just do it by a passive example.  He knew what his family and friends would need after he left them.  Two years ago, at another funeral service, he took his pastor aside and he said, “Gary, when I die, I want you to give them Jesus.  Because they don’t need me.  They need Jesus.”

I have Jesus.  And in him was all the comfort and joy and surety for life and death that my Grandpa wanted us to have.

Do you have Jesus?