Yeah, another death, not wholly unexpected but a surprise for nothing hinted at a sudden departure.
I really did not know the guy, he is the husband of a good friend, the father of two friends, the grand-father of many munchkins I have entertained in recent vacation bible schools. But, I only knew his name and that if I said "Hi", so would he. The entire time I have been here, he has been in a home due to his health - which was horrible.
So, his birthday was Saturday, many in his family from out of town were traveling to join with him in celebration. A good evening with friends and family on Thursday, he went out to the car to ride back to the home. But, he was struggling with the seat belt, his brother-in-law walked around the car to help him and he was gone! Just that fast!
I think it surprised everyone. But when I saw the family photo from only moments earlier - well, sudden memory of the death of my friend Robb Barr - same look. There is a medical name for it but who knows what it is?
Monday was the memorial service. I went for those I knew in his life, not to be a comforter but to be an affirmation of his Christian witness and presence now - somewhere I would long to be, were it possible. I was surprised that there was maybe 250+ in attendance!
He had a long history as a pastor of several churches and encourager - not to mention just a really nice guy.
The real reason I bring him and this incident up - was something the Pastor said during the service:
" ... he lived in the real-time, Paul encouraged us to ... ". The sermon ended for me there.
I wrote massive amounts of the operating system for the IBM real-time operating system. It was a brilliant concept and I ate the idea up. Up through 1992, I was still spending about 60% of my time traveling around the world attempting to correct operator errors that had crashed an IBM OS (at a cost of about $5m per downtime hour!). Yeah I was popular and only one of six in the world licensed by IBM as an 'expert'. (So, MicroSquish suck lemons over your attempt to write a pretend RTOS!)
So, I rolled this around in my mind ... living in the real-time as an aspect of our Christian lives? That statement has some real implications, whether the pastor was aware of this or not.
A RTOS runs under the concept of STATES. I save what the STATE of the computer was when I finish a task, I reload it when I need to restart it. In the meantime, other processes are running under their own STATE identifier, saving and loading as needed.
That means if you are a Sunday School Teacher, you access what you need when you need it and put it away when done. Seems elementary - but it means that your being a Sunday School Teacher is a only temporary STATE. You need to be ready to not ever do Sunday School Teacher again. When your queued to start up Counselor mode, you have ready access to all you need ... etc, etc, etc.
But, this means that you have done all of your background work! Everything you need has been done and is ready - you have gained the education that you need! You have the resources you need. You understand what you task is.
My now dead church member spent many years in school. He taught, he preached, he counseled, he loved his wife and raised his children. He faced today, the now, always ready to switch roles, step out of his comfort zone, to do what was needed when it was needed for God ... not himself. He rarely talked about the past, today was what he was interested in.
Yeah, I could understand that now, I doubt anyone else could, but then, perhaps God meant that message to me - to get me out of my comfortable well worn ruts and prepare for what comes next.
I know, you are going, "Well DUH Kris!" But, remember I am in rebuild mode, year 2. So much to learn, it is like I am being hit with a firehose at times! And this, Tim, is a lesson I will remember, because you talked my language. Probably another lesson in that last statement as well.
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