A few days before I came across that passage from James 4 that I described yesterday, I encountered the very first Scriptural passage that would come to be written on my heart.
My friend Phil had died late on a Saturday night at the end of our junior year in high school. It was Memorial Day weekend and at church Sunday morning I heard rumors of the deaths of a couple of teenagers. A phone call after returning home confirmed that Phil had been the driver and that he and his neighbor were both dead on impact.
This rocked my world. I had experienced the death of a couple of my grandparents by this point in my life, but there is something about the death of a peer that will shake you to the core. Especially during the teen years when you assume you and your friends are immortal.
It was an incredibly odd day. Phil and I weren't so close that he had spent time at my house, so the rest of my family didn't really know him. The rest of my family set about enjoying a Sunday afternoon and anticipating another Indianapolis 500 Race on the radio. I was in shock.
I took a two hour bike ride. As I returned to the house, I prayed the most fervent prayer I had ever prayed: "Lord, give me some sort of sign that Phil is with you in heaven."
I should explain that Phil did not go to my church, but I knew he was a Christian. My prayer wasn't about whether or not Phil had "made the cut". I was certain he had, if there was a cut to be made. In truth, my prayer was questioning the existence of heaven itself ... and thus the existence of God Himself.
So, I prayed that prayer with tears streaming down my cheeks as I steered my bike into our backyard. I did not expect an immediate sign, but I determined to keep my eyes open.
We had just a few days of the school year left, and they were weird, mournful days. And the funeral was heartrending. Phil's dad was actually my chemistry teacher and one of the best and funniest teachers I had ever known. Watching him, a broken man, struggle to move his feet down the aisle of the church almost ruined me.
A few days after the funeral, I was ready to get back to my daily chapter reading in my Bible - the reading that my Sunday school teachers had encouraged. I opened my bible to where I left off a week earlier.
I was ready for Hebrews 11. I didn't make it past the first verse:
"Now faith is the substance of things hoped for and the evidence of things not seen."
All of a sudden, the Bible was no longer a dusty, irrelevant, ancient book written to some long distant audience. It was speaking directly to me. In my present day.
I had asked for a sign and this was God saying there would be no sign. That I just needed faith. And, ironically, this was the very best sign I could have gotten.
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