Life Matters, September 22, 2021
It was a beautiful sunshiny June day in 1974, and I had just been dropped off at my new summer job on a dairy farm, not far from Newburgh, PA. I had stopped at the house first and had been greeted over the railing of the full-length front porch by a pretty slip of a cleaning lady. She informed me that my new boss, who is also my big brother John, was out by the barn or possibly checking hay. The “cleaning lady,“ I knew, who cleaned John’s house on Mondays, was John 17-year-old girlfriend, soon to be his wife. John was 26 and I was a months shy of 14.
John wasn’t in the barn, but as I stood outside by the barn door beside the milkhouse, a surreal-like, glistening, rippling palomino horse, with a rider, appeared from behind the barn and came down the slight slope toward where I was. Horse and rider stopped broadside in front of me, and my fascination level rose as the rider tapped the horses flank with his booted heels while simultaneously pulling back and slightly up with the reins, and the shimmering horse reared back and up as I had only seen Silver do in Lone Ranger books. The horse’s hooves came back to earth and my sun tanned, dark-haired brother John, with the deep dark eyes of our mother, chuckled as he slid off the palomino and explain how his horse was trained to do that.
My fascination continued that summer as John allowed me to ride Trigger, the palomino horse, numerous times across the rolling farmland interspersed with shaded acres of woods, to a friend’s house. The farm was hard work, but I had a pleasant boss, friends, clear creeks and the Blue Mountains, a part of the Appalachian mountain range, within easy riding distance.
But time has a way of changing things. In a series of events too numerous to mention here, John became a dairy farmer west of South Shore, SD, and upon retirement moved to Great Falls, MT, where some of his and Susan‘s children lived by now. Retired from farming, John remained active with an insulation business, grandchildren, and preaching wherever he was asked. John and I had our differences at times. Was John perfect? Indeed, not. Neither am I. Did John have faults? Yes, he did. So do I. And if times together can be called sweet for men, John and I had some really sweet times together in later years, reminiscing, laughing, confessing our faults to each other, weeping and praying together. I’ve often heard John say that he wants to finish well. He wants to finish strong. Over the years I’ve commended him several times for his love for people and the spreading of the gospel.
On September 15, 2021, at 4:38 AM mountain time, John finished well and he finish strong. His body ravaged by recurring, fast-growing cancer in his vitals, John face the eminent death of his body with dignity and strength in the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ. Almost to weak to continue, John completed his desire to lay hands on, pray for, and bless each of his grandchildren. And John preached one last sermon. On the Sunday before brother John passed on, brother David, who spent the last week and a half of John‘s life with him, sent this text to his three remaining brothers, besides himself: “He is very weak and this morning was a little confused for the first time. He kept trying to get up and I couldn’t convince him his work is done and it’s time to just rest. I put his arms over my shoulders, lifted him up on his feet and held him for a while. Afterwards I was reading from Revelation and when I read, ‘And He said unto me, it is done! I am Alpha and Omega, the Beginning and the End, I will give of the fountain of the water of life freely to him who thirst,’ he leaned forward as if he was leaning over a pulpit and said in a clear audible voice, ‘Amen! It is done!’ I thanked him for preaching for us one last time.”
Indeed Life Matters!