Finding faith, hope, and love in a very personal loss

Many of our longtime readers know that Rev. Jeff Byrd has been my ministry partner for thirty years. He and I served three churches together before co-founding the Denison Forum nearly ten years ago.

Jeff and his wife, Billie, have two sons and a daughter named Morgan. Janet and I have known her since she was born. We rejoiced with their family when she married a fantastic young man named Caleb Scott nearly two years ago (I was privileged to conduct their wedding ceremony). Caleb was a firefighter with a true servant heart and deep love for Jesus.

Tuesday morning, Caleb was found unresponsive in his North Richland Hills fire station. Paramedics were able to revive his heart and rushed him to the hospital, but he died around 5:30 that afternoon. We have no idea what caused Caleb’s death and are in shock over this tragedy. He and Morgan both turned twenty-nine last month.

Please pray for Morgan and her wonderful family, and for our ministry team, as we grieve this sudden and tragic loss.

Tomorrow is promised to no one

Caleb’s death brings home the fact that tomorrow is promised to none of us. Our ministry team had no idea Tuesday morning that we would be grieving his death that evening.

Paradoxically, our culture makes death more imminent but more remote than ever before.

The 24/7 news cycle reports tragedies from all over the world in real time. There is more violence in movies and on television than ever. Video games and virtual reality technology make violence more realistic than ever.

But this accessibility to suffering inoculates us against its reality. When you learned about the YouTube shooting last Tuesday, was your first response something like, “Here we go again”? Violence and death are so present in our world that they have lost much of their impact on us.

It’s therefore easy to ignore the fact of our mortality. Satan would like nothing more.

He wants us to overlook the reality that we will live forever, either with God in heaven…