\u00a0In thinking recently about how sometimes when we face trials we get the sword, like James, and sometimes we get the angel, like Peter, I was reminded of a tough conversation I had had with one of my supervising teachers during my student teaching days.<\/p>\n\n\n
Mr. D was a an upright and conscientious man and a good role model for me in the classroom. I appreciated his guidance and valued his judgment. That’s why I was stricken with shame for making him terribly angry one day.<\/p>\n\n\n
You see my grandfather passed away in the midst of my student teaching and, when I entered the classroom the next day, Mr. D kindly asked about the circumstances of his death.<\/p>\n\n\n
I explained that it had been a bit of a surprise since Grandpa had been incredibly healthy – he had even received a rowing machine to keep up his exercise routines as a gift for his 80th birthday. Now, it was a few years later and he had simply fallen asleep one night at home, without so much as a common cold, and he had passed away in his sleep.<\/p>\n\n\n
Mr. D agreed with me that it was the ideal way to go, but then he passionately and angrily disagreed<\/b><\/i> with my assessment of why God granted a peaceful passing: “Grandpa lived and loved well, serving God his whole life, and I think the ease of his death was God’s way of saying, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant.'”<\/p>\n\n\n
Mr. D got red in the face and I thought maybe he was going to leap over his desk at me.<\/p>\n\n\n
Puzzled by his reaction, I was about to learn “the rest of the story”, as Paul Harvey used to say.<\/p>\n\n\n
Mr. D’s father was a lifelong faithful pastor and his mother a devoted pastor’s wife. Both of their lives were cut short as a result of a chance encounter with a drunk driver one dark night.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n
Both parents, their bodies mangled, were rushed to the local hospital, where each lingered in excruciating pain, one for weeks and the other for months. Mr. D watched his parents suffer greatly before passing, one after the other, leaving him with a load of tough questions for God.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n
Thus, to put it mildly, Mr. D did not care for my na\u00efve theology of earthly rewards for faithful living.<\/p>\n\n\n
I only remember apologizing and crawling away as quickly as possible.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u00a0In thinking recently about how sometimes when we face trials we get the sword, like James, and sometimes we get the angel, like Peter, I was reminded of a tough conversation I had had with one of my supervising teachers during my student teaching days. Mr. D was a an upright and conscientious man and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4036","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4036","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4036"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4036\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4037,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4036\/revisions\/4037"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4036"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4036"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4036"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}