Golden Footprints

Last week we lost two dear friends in a plane crash. They were such an amazing couple, always doing for others!!! I was honored to speak at their Celebration of Life ceremony along with three others. Here is what I had to say.

Scripture tells us that one day one of the teachers of the law came and heard Jesus visiting with some of the Sadducees and then asked Jesus, "Of all the commandments which is the most important?"

"The most important one", answered Jesus, "is this: 'Hear O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one.  Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.  The second is this: Love your neighbor as yourself.  There is no commandment greater than these."

Today's language -- Love God, Love One Another!

And you see, loving one another is just the natural flow of our love of God.  This is how we 'flesh out' our declared love.

Ivan and Adina did this.  They indeed loved God and family and friends and employees and community.  Their examples for all of us remind us that we do well to care for others, care for one another.

One day a few years ago I was visiting someone in the nursing home.  While walking to her room, I glanced up and saw Ivan coming down the hallway.  I said, "Hi Ivan! What are you doing here?" He was visiting a dear lady whom he had known as a child.  He had heard her health was failing.

I knew this woman and stopped by after my other visit.  She smiled and said, "Did you see Ivan? He was here and prayed with me." She was so pleased.

Ivan was a very busy business man! Yet, he made the effort, took the time to bless others. And he did this without fanfare, without desire of recognition, without wanting a pat on the back.  It just was who he was.

Adina was just as benevolent.  Quietly, she did for others without requiring attention for doing it. Both of them were involved with serving causes that helped those in need.

Many years ago I was giving chemo to a cowboy patient of mine, one of my favorites. He got quiet and then asked me if I'd thought about what kind of footprints I wanted to leave on Earth. He said he had been thinking about this since he had been diagnosed with cancer and then again when he and his wife attended a funeral service for a neighbor. He said that man was always doing something for somebody else: giving them milk from his dairy, giving them fresh tomatoes from his garden, stopping to help anyone who had a flat tire...the list goes on. He said there were so many wanting to get up in that service and tell what this man had done for them. He said he started thinking about who might stand up for him.

He went on to tell me about how he would go to church and sit on the back pew and only give a couple of dollars and then 'high tail it out of there' before the preacher reached the back pew after the sermon was over. And that he imagined that his neighbor to the west of his farm only heard him cussing his cows and that he wasn't too good about telling his wife or his children that he loved them or appreciated them. He said he would hide when his mother-n-law came over for a visit.

He said, "Becki, I think I'm going to drive over to my neighbor's house and thank him for chopping the ice on my pond last winter when I didn't have the strength to swing an axe. He just got out there in those freezing temperatures and did that for me without saying a word. I hope I'd done the same for him. And I'm going to start having supper with my kids and my wife at the table instead of eating on my Roy Rogers TV tray in front of the television. They are good kids and I need to tell them so and that goes for the wife as well. But to be honest with ya about warming up to my Mother-n-law real soon. That'll take some time. And I'm going to go to that church house and sit up closer to the front and give that preacher more money and let him shake my hand."

I pulled him up close after I finished giving the chemo and told him that I thought he had just left Golden Footprints in that outpatient oncology unit that day. All the other patients and their families were blotting their eyes. Samuel just got up, put his sweat stained cowboy hat on, nodded at each family and headed to the elevator.

In my eyes, Ivan and Adina also left Golden Footprints here: in our little hometown of Pryor, Oklahoma, across the continents to a mission they supported, and in all our hearts. They especially left the best of examples to their four sons. I can already see they will continue leaving exemplary footprints as well.

We, dear ones, are beautiful souls who are here for a very brief time even if we live to be 110.  We are here learning how to love one another more, continue growing ever nearer to God.

 I couldn't help but wonder what they would say from their new vantage point.

Perhaps:

Love one another unconditionally!

Cling to nothing in this material world.  For the only thing we take with us is the love woven into our soul's DNA, if you will, of how we have treated one another. 

Never doubt that you are here with great purpose.  No one is accidentally born.

Forgive others, forgive yourself.  It's healing.

Get to know God!! You will never regret that.