Poured Out

Okay. It’s time to write.

I have had very many thoughts over the past 5 days, in light of recent events. Just so we’re all on the same page, let me fill you in briefly so you can have a context for the thoughts. This past weekend, Lance and I were taking 11 people to a youth ministry conference in Ohio. The weekend had been planned for some time and we were looking forward to the time away and the focused conversation of “talking shop.”

The weather turned bad on Thursday afternoon, forcing our Friday morning departure date to leave on Thursday evening, to get ahead of the coming storm. Lance and I picked up the rental van at 4:30pm Thursday, and made plans to leave town with nine of us by 9:00pm. I made a run to Target to get Rachel’s prescription and then headed to the house to pack. About 5:45pm I decided to watch a little news while waiting for Rachel to come home. As soon as I turned the news on, I was confronted with a Breaking News bulletin. The reporter showed a map of our county and began to make report of a bad traffic accident that happened on Route 91 that involved five children including one being life-flighted. Due to the report’s proximity and detail of an SUV, my heart sank. I knew a family that lived very close to the location and had six children. Long story short, I made a phone call and waited. Soon a return call would confirm my fears. The SUV involved was the exact family that I suspected; only the news was much worse than expected. The father of the children had been killed. I didn’t really know how to respond. I was in shock. This was only supposed to be a nightmare that takes place in movies, not in the lives of my friends, and certainly not my own life. His name was Kevin. Kevin Lawyer. He was an orthodontist. Therefore, he was a doctor. So they called him Dr. Lawyer. Kind of confusing.

Anyway, I knew Kevin and his family and was shocked by the events that were unfolding. I quickly made some phone calls to confirm the stories and hoping beyond hope that is was rumor, but I soon found the unbearable news to be the undeniable truth. I called Lance to inform him. He had not heard anything. We quickly decided that we had to cancel our trip to Ohio. I made a trip up to the church to be with some students that were having drama/band practice and then came back home to get Rach and go to Johns Hopkins in downtown Baltimore to be with the family.

Lance and Amy introduced us to the Lawyer’s not long after we moved here. I got to know them more and more over the last couple of years though dramas at church. The very first drama I was in at LifePoint was with Kevin and his wife, Suzie. Rachel started to get to know them by teaching their kid’s Spanish in the summer time. Kevin and another friend Lou Sabad, invited me to golf with them at the Annual Men’s Summit. I wasn’t much of a golfer, but they insisted so I went. I was bitten by the golf bug on that trip. Those were the seeds of getting to know the Lawyer’s.

Kevin was an incredible man. His life was overflowing. Life just bubbled out of him, you know, like opening a 2 liter of Dr. Pepper. He was involved in so much at LifePoint. He taught and acted in children’s ministry, worked on dramas that the main service was hosting and would lead a community group. His life touched so many people at LifePoint and beyond. In addition to his ministry, his professional work was as impressive. He was known for his fun-loving spirit and passion for helping people.

Okay, now for a few thoughts in light of the circumstance. I watched so many things this weekend that were hard to watch, yet fascinating. I saw the people of LifePoint pour out love on a family. Not just the immediate family, but everyone that was close to Kevin. I heard words of hope given to people who had no hope. I saw faith in action. I watched Suzie rely on her faith in Christ as she was forced to move from wife to widow. I heard story after story of how much Kevin’s life had impacted them to give their life to Christ. I watched about 2500 people come out to support Suzie at a visitation and another mass of people come for a celebration memorial. I could not believe the atmosphere. It felt much more like a wedding than a funeral.

The Church

I watched so many people sacrifice so much toward the memory of Kevin, out of their faith in Christ. Now, I think the cynic might say, “People just did that as a way to cope with their own pain.” However, I would argue that watching the church be the church was so much more than selfish people working to provide selfish relief. Watching the church this past weekend was supernatural. I watched so many people striving to commemorate Kevin’s life by serving each other and the community in a sort of biblical, spiritual triage. The idea of hope coming out of something so broken is so much the nature of God. The church is such a mystery. There seems to be nothing quiet like it. The mystery of perfect strangers becoming family, bound by the love of Christ, is so counter to our nature. Our nature is to serve self. The nature of Christ is to love others. When we become persuaded by the gospel, we surrender our lives to Christ and take on His nature, we become different. We want to reach people with the same love with which we were reached. Our collective counter cultural lives become the church. I love the diversity of it, the worldwide size of it and the message that is common to it; that Christ came to save that which was lost. Without Christ I truly would be without purpose and aimless. Evidence of this love was so vivid this weekend. Christ and His nature were seen in so many places, from Kevin’s life and Suzie’s faith to loving friends reaching out to each other and a community in pain. It was an incredible sight to see. What a joy to be part of God’s people.

Offering

My final thoughts during the memorial service were occupied with something my pastor, Joe said a few weeks ago. He explained what Paul, while on house arrest in Rome, meant when he said his life was like a drink offering. The drink offering was used as a means of making an offering on the altar that would essentially be wasteful. No one was allowed to drink from it, as it was only to be used to pour on the altar. Therefore it was seen by outsiders as a waste. Paul used it as a means of analogy to say that outsiders may see his life as a waste, just because he was in prison. I couldn’t help but think back to that analogy. I could see such a picture of Kevin’s faith being poured out as an offering to Christ in every area of his life. And then even in his death, what we might call a waste was no waste at all. God even redeemed Kevin’s untimely death to bring more people to Himself through the life and death of Kevin. It makes me wonder in what ways I can waste more of my life on others?