Trips to Tyler

I just figured out how to put a titile on a blog. There's always some obscure setting in the background and the title function was turned off on my blog. I may leave it off because I'm not sure coming up with a title is a productive use of my time (as if blogging were) but I'll give it a go.

I was in Tyler last week and attended church with my parents. So much has changed there since I grew up that it doesn't really seem like the congregation I knew as a youth. The building is different and most of the people are different. When I was in college, I would go back and see friends and people I knew. I was the person returning home to people I knew. Now, I am the visitor, the guy people see and introduce themselves to not knowing that I spent 18 formative years there. Still, there are things about it that remind me so much of my early years. The preacher is the same man that was there when I moved away. My parents friends and even a couple of my old friends are still there. Yet, there is always a memory of one person who is not there anymore but who is emblazoned in my mind and in my heart.

I used this story for a communion thought once and will probably use it again. Hillard was my youth minister, my basketball coach, my best friend's dad, a cut-up extraordinare and a friend. He baptized me, he helped raise me and train me. He convinced me to preach during a youth-led Sunday night service when I was in Junior High. Hillard was a lively, encouraging man who had a profoundly positive impact on many, many people.

Hillard passed away suddenly a few years ago. He was coaching one of his grandchildren's youth basketball games when he passed out. They rushed him to the hospital but there was nothing the doctor's could do. He had been to the hospital earlier in the week, not feeling well, but he was checked out and sent home. Just days later, he was gone.

I got the church bulletin about the same time as the funeral for Hillard. The bulletin, referring to his first hospital visit, stated that "Hillard is feeling better and has gone home." The statement was just as true the day I read it as the day it was written. Hillard was feeling better and had gone home.

While I miss seeing Hillard and know his family misses him greatly, Hillard knew what we all know - that Heaven awaits us and that we do look forward to the day we are feeling better and get to go home. Jesus' death and resurrection gives us that assurance. Jesus paid a horrible price for us just so we could one day feel better and go home.