It was a typical sweltering July day in Alabama. The clock had barely surpassed nine am and already you could feel the humidity pushing down on your skin like a hot blanket fresh out of the dryer. It’s the kind of weather that drives you indoors for exercise. Too hot for walking or jogging or pretty much anything.
I had driven to the gym, gotten out of the car and begun to walk through the parking lot. Let’s get this workout out of the way, I thought. This kind of weather seems to make exercise an unpleasant chore, even indoors. As I approached the double doors at the entrance to the facility, I heard a voice calling “Ken! Hey Ken!” I turned back toward the parking lot and saw a tall man with graying hair and Manchu moustache flowing into a full graying beard. He approached me and thrust his hand out in greeting, flashing a broad smile. “Do you remember me?” he inquired.
As with so many other encounters of this kind, I knew the face was familiar. I knew him from somewhere. But my mind raced for context, and came up blank. It must have shown on my face. “It’s Mike,” he revealed, clearly sensing my struggle. “Remember? We used to be in Sunday School together.” Yes, that was all it took. It came to me now. When we moved to this town back in 1989 we joined the local Baptist church and quickly got involved in Sunday School. We visited a rather large class and felt a bit estranged because we didn’t know anybody. Mike and his sweet wife were among those who befriended us and made us feel welcome.
Every time you move to a new city you start a new life in a way. And that life is not usually a positive one unless you get connected with the community, which almost always starts with making new friends. Mike was one of the first. We had a lot of great times with that group.
But a productive church membership is usually dynamic and fluid. Eventually I left that group to teach my own class. There followed a thirty-five year path spanning several different church ministries and groups, meeting new people, taking on new challenges, reworking Sunday morning schedules and tasks. Along the way I saw Mike and his wife less and less as they followed their own trail in our large congregation. Our church is of a size that couples can be mutual members forever and yet never see each other. We can debate whether that’s good or bad, but let’s leave that for another day.
At some point, I didn’t see Mike at all anymore, nor almost anybody else from that original Bible study group. Many years had passed. Ten, fifteen, maybe twenty years? I have no idea. Suffice it to say it was long enough that I could no longer place the name with the face until he helped me. Yet here we were, in the parking lot of the local civic center, trying desperately to catch up.
The timing was not great for either of us. He had spotted me as he was getting into his car, and clearly had somewhere he needed to go. I was kind of anxious to get on with my workout. But we tried to make the most of the moment we had. He told me his wife was doing great, filled me in on the career success of his son, and updated me on a couple of old acquaintances. I gave him a quick summary of my family and what I was doing to stay out of trouble in retirement. After this brief exchange, we shook hands again and wished each other well as he got into his car and I turned into the gym.
This chance meeting happened just short of two weeks ago. Yesterday I opened up a church prayer list email. I gasped as I read that Mike had taken what was described as “a freak fall” at work and was on life support at the downtown hospital. The email asked for prayer for Mike and his wife. It ended with this ominous sentence: “Mike will be taken off life support on Thursday”.
I was stunned. It was like a psychological punch in the gut. How could I have known that my brief conversation with him a few days ago would be the last time we would meet on this earth? If I had known, how might it have changed my priorities? It’s a hard way to be reminded of the fragility of our existence, of how grateful we need to be for each morning we open our eyes to greet a new day.
My friend’s name is not really Mike. I wanted to protect the privacy of his family. But God knows about him, and now you do too. Hopefully we can all learn something instructive from this story.
Mike would have liked that.