My friend Mark

     "And the Lord will deliver me from every evil work and preserve me for His heavenly kingdom. To Him be glory forever and ever." ( 2 Timothy 4:18) Many years ago in the Jesus People movement days, I met a brother named Mark, a big farm boy from Indiana. One of his jokes was that ketchup was Indiana hot sauce. Over the course of time we worked together in a Christian business called True Vine maintenance cleaning vacated apartments, lived in the same communal house, and eventually he asked me to be his best man at his wedding to  a sister named Judi. As with so many others we lost touch. He went on to congregations in Oregon and Denver while i was in San Diego and Boston. Through the power of the Internet we hooked up again, and I had an opportunity to see him briefly about two years ago. We sent e-mails back and forth on occasion, and I was contemplating a return visit.
      This morning I learned that he had passed away. His daughter and I spoke and she said that he had been doing very well with the Lord. ( She had been praying for ten years for this) While she misses him, we have assurance that he is in a far better place.
     "For we know that if our earthly house, this tent, is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens... For we who are in this tent groan, being burdened, not because we want to be unclothed, but further clothed, that mortality may be swallowed up by life." ( 2 Corinthians 5:1,4 NKJV)
      "Precious in the eyes of the Lord is the death of His saints." ( Psalm 116:15)