Sad day today

I went to church Sunday morning and came home in a good mood. I had no sooner walked in the door when I got a phone call and my mood was dramatically changed. I discovered that one of our most beloved employees had unexpectedly died overnight. “How can this be?”, I muttered , “he is just 33 years old”. It was as if someone had sucker punched me as I sank down in my chair, and I am still numb from the shock of it all.

As of this writing no one knows what caused his death. We do know that he was in excellent physical shape, he played amateur soccer and was from all appearances seemingly in excellent physical condition. He did not smoke and had even quit drinking alcohol four months prior. Just Friday he remarked to one of my sons that he was in the best physical condition of his life and he felt great.

He and his wife had spent the previous day with friends and family enjoying an afternoon of boating fun and barbeque. He went home early because he was not feeling well and died in his sleep later that night and was found the next morning by his wife when she awoke. My heart goes out to her as I can only imagine how terrible that experience had to be.


I do not know of a single person that did not instantly like this young man including so many hundreds of our customers. He had been with our company over ten years. He was always smiling, full of energy, he was very bright and as motivated a person as I have ever known. He joined Horizon right after graduating from college and as far as I know, Horizon is the only job he ever held.

When something like this occurs, we always ask the question, “Why?” Why would God allow it? Why not some scum bag? (After all, the world is full of them.) Why not some evil murderer or pedophile, instead of such a wonderful person? I remember asking the exact same question when my brother’s sweet little five year old son suffered horribly with excruciating pain from brain cancer for months before looking my brother in the eyes and saying, “Daddy I want to go home”, and then he mercifully succumbed to death while his tiny body that had been ravaged by cancer was being held in my brothers arms. I remember asking it when another of our beloved employees was cut down in her early twenties by a drunk driver.

In a word it is “impossible” to understand why God allows such horrible tragedy to occur. In regard to my brother’s little son, I was asked by someone, “Can you imagine what heaven would be like without children there?”; I got his point but it did not remove the sick grief that I still feel to this day. My poor brother did not ever get over it and I’m sure his grief played a role in his suicide years later. I can only put my blind faith in God’s word that there is a perfect purpose for everything and one day we will understand.


We know from the Bible that God temporarily allows evil and its worst manifestation, death, to exist in this world. We do not know why, but we know that God’s original creation did not include death. Sin entered the world through satan and death was born as a result of it. Sometimes people feel tremendous resentment towards God when something like this occurs. I have always been baffled by this attitude as the resentment should be aimed towards satan who brought death and destruction to this world and introduced it to humanity and not towards God for creating us with a free spirit.

God did provide a way back home to our original state and He did so at tremendous cost. God gave His only Son Jesus Christ to be crucified on a cross at the same young age of this young man, (just 33 years old). Jesus loved us so much that He voluntarily left His throne in heaven and came to this earth and suffered terribly on the cross as payment for the world’s sins in order that evil and death might be conquered for all believers once and for all. Now we need only place our trust in Him in order to take advantage of His grace. Although no one can know another man’s heart, it is my belief in knowing and talking with this young man that he did accept Jesus as his Savior and is at this very moment walking on streets of gold with His loving Savior with that captivating smile of his fixed solidly on his face.

We can know from this act of giving His Son’s life in order that we might once again be reunited with Him, that God loves us more than we can imagine. We have been given glimpses of heaven in the Bible and it appears to truly be an awesome place. We are told in Psalms that even though we walk through the valley of the shadow of death that we should fear no evil for God is with us always, even to the ends of the earth, forever. This passage tells me that when we die that death is like a harmless shadow that we boldly walk through and forever leave behind us as we walk towards God’s eternal light into paradise. No one should fear a shadow! Shadows are harmless and I do not think that choice of words is an accident. The Bible tells us that there is no need of a sun or lamps in heaven and that it is illuminated by God’s glorious presence.


Soon God will permanently remove all tears, sadness, sickness, pain, and death from us and we will never have to deal with it anymore as we will be in our new homes in heaven living with God. I am confident that this young man has already arrived in heaven and heaven just got even brighter as a result. It is heaven’s gain and this world’s loss. We will miss him more than can be verbalized.

I would ask everyone to take a moment right now wherever you are and pray that God will draw close to his wife and the rest of his family and also to his many friends who are suffering today and for the weeks and months ahead of us. I ask that God will bring comfort to us as we grieve and mourn his loss. God alone can do that seemingly impossible task and I pray that He will send His comforting Spirit to all of us who grieve and bring with Him the peace that surpasses human understanding when faced with such seemingly senseless tragedy.

God we know that you watched Your own Son die and that You know exactly how it feels to grieve and mourn the loss of a loved one struck down in the prime of their life at the young age of 33. Even though You knew that He would rise again in three days, it still had to deeply hurt as we hurt now. I pray that You will heal this deep sorrow and remove our pain. We can only find solace in looking ahead to that day when we will be reunited with You and this young man and others who have gone on ahead of us and pray that you will be with us every minute of every day until that time.

Rev. 21:4
And God will wipe away every
tear from their eyes; there shall be
no more death, nor sorrow, nor crying.
There shall be no more pain,
for the former things have
passed away.