Loss?

I lost a good friend this week. He passed away after several years battling cancer. He was a great guy. His name was Pat. He was a few years younger than me and his main work was feeding people. He was the food service director at Delta Lake Bible Conference, which is where we met. The food he made was always really good and while I spent most of life in recent years trying to lose weight, I never accomplished that goal at Delta. Pat did a lot more than serve food though. He was a bringer of joy. I used to love to watch him interact with the campers I served. They all loved him and his joy was infectious. I remember once early on, I left my newly acquired plate of food on the table to get a drink. I came back to find a bite had been taken out of each piece of food. It was a little prank, but in that prank I felt something precious. I was no longer just a hired speaker, I was becoming part of the family. Pat had a way of making you feel welcome and I am going to miss him, a lot. Today I feel a great loss, but did you notice, I put a question mark behind the word in the title. That was deliberate. Because you see, Pat wasn’t just my friend. He was my brother in the Lord and so today there is a void in my life, but my friend is not lost. He is just somewhere I can’t go right now, but I trust I will see Him again. In the mean time, my journey continues and so does yours. I need to take what I learned from my friend Pat, and in my own way do some good in this world. I need to bring the kind of excellence to my calling that Pat brought to his and hopefully along the way, I will also be used to make some people feel a little more welcomed and maybe even part of the family. Thank you Jesus for putting this friend in my life. Thank you even more that he has life in you. Please be with his wife, kids and all the other people whose lives he touched.