A Very Difficult Four Days

We were at AutoZone Park, worried only about the score of the Redbirds game against Tacoma in Game 3 of the PCL Final. My phone rang, and it was my brother. Our uncle, Bill, had gone into cardiac arrest, and the doctors were not giving any hope of getting him back.
Before we could get to the hospital, he was gone. While he had been an insulin-dependent diabetic since age 2, he was only 55. He had married just 14 months ago, and now, Teresa was a widow. And in my mother's family, just as happened in my father's family a few years ago, the baby had died first.
We gathered at Memorial Park last night for the visitation. Then, today, the funeral was held at Aldersgate UMC, where Bill and Teresa married in the summer of 2009. Finally, he was laid to rest at Memorial Park, just five feet from his parents, the people who had saved his life, and pointed him to the life he enjoys today.
Bill was just six years older than me. He was 11 years younger than his next sibling. He always seemed more a part of the generation with my brother, sister and me than that of my mother and other uncles. Bill only beat me into the family by two years. He was adopted by my grandparents when he was four. He had come to live with them at 2; at 4 he came in one night to my grandfather's room and asked if he could become a Fisher. The adoption process started the next day.
Bill was funny. He was brilliant. He was passionate about life. And given the work that my grandparents did in teaching their adopted son what it means to be chosen, he committed his life to ministry. He understood fully that just as he was chosen to be part of his family, so does God choose us all to be part of God's family. He needed to communicate that opportunity to other people. He did it in a variety of ministry settings, from running our Conference camp, to serving as pastor to the poor and elderly in our retirement homes, to the Singles ministry at our largest church, to all of his more traditional assignments as pastor of several churches in the West Ohio Conference, as well as here, at home, in West Tennessee and western Kentucky.
Please keep Teresa in your prayers, and my mom and uncles. And all the people whose lives Bill touched as pastor and bearer of God's good news.