Serving a Risen Savior

On Sunday mornings, when my sister and I had spent the night at my cousin’s house, we would often awake to the sound of my uncle cranking out the morning’s church bulletins on his mimeograph machine. My sister, my cousin, and I folded the pages, and I thought my uncle must have been a very important man in his church to have had his own mimeograph machine. He was.

My uncle was killed in a car accident on a Sunday afternoon just four days prior to marking his sixtieth wedding anniversary. A quiet man, this uncle had been present at the family farm most Sunday afternoons among all the aunts, uncles, and cousins. These were God-fearing people whose Bible was King James and whose theology was black-and-white. They stood on the promises and served a living Savior. At my uncle’s funeral, the sermon he had lived required the combined efforts of four pastors to preach.

We gathered at a funeral home in Fryburg, PA, a tiny, rural community on the outskirts of places like Sawtown, Fertigs, Coal Hill, and Venus. Built to hold roughly fifty mourners, the building was quickly filled to overflowing. Over two hundred crowded inside as others waited out in the January cold. These were working men and farmers, some dressed in camouflage or their coveralls and work boots the way my uncle would have known them. Some dug out suits which had rarely seen the outside of a closet. Poorly fitting suit jackets stuck out beyond the sleeves of red NASCAR coats.

These mourners knew my uncle from church and from his machine shop. One of the pastors mentioned that, if my uncle couldn’t find a part to fix something, he made one. Many of those crowded into the funeral home had spent hours in his well-ordered shop watching a master craftsman at work. He fixed broken things with his hands and welcomed broken people into his shop. Sometimes he employed some of these local folk, people who were out of work because of bad economic times or because of bad choices they’d made in life.

My uncle was a pastor’s friend. Serving often as the peacemaker and voice of reason at church meetings, my uncle made a point of visiting his pastors to encourage them in their work. He prayed for them, and they knew it. They sought solace with him in his shop. One pastor spoke of the number of times he’d been on his way into the hospital to visit an ailing church member, only to cross paths with my uncle already on his way out. Another had had the opportunity to attend graduate school because my uncle had paid his tuition.

One of the pastors said that when there was work to be done at church my uncle was there, even in advancing years, declining health, and debilitating pain. He showed up even when young, healthy, able-bodied members didn’t. When asked why he continued to work so hard, he responded, “God gives me grace to endure.” He said it in a way that didn’t sound trite. It didn’t sound like a platitude. It sounded true and made things like grace and endurance and service seem like things that really are true and really are gifts from God. He said it in a way that made me want to desire them more and want to complain less.

News of my uncle’s death reached one of his former pastors just as he was about to step into the pulpit for the Sunday evening service. Members of his congregation had never met my uncle but, after hearing testimony of his life, felt as though they had. One woman said, “I didn’t know men like that still existed.” I will never craft a machine part with my hands, but I pray for grace to serve my risen Savior as he did.

Writing in community with Jennifer @ Getting Down With Jesus and The High Calling. This post is a revised version of an earlier piece I had written and then removed because it contained details which weren't my story to tell. I'm grateful for this opportunity to retell my memories of the life of a godly man.