I did not know Larry well. He was a year ahead of me in high school. I knew his wife, Linda; she was in my high school class. She's even my Facebook "friend." But I didn't really know him, and, honestly, I barely know his wife.
After high school, Larry was "saved." He became a "new man in Christ." He would go on to pastor a local church, the Antrim Church of Christ. He and his wife would go on to have nine children; they even had some foster kids, I believe. He supplemented his minister's salary with a job at Kimball Physics; a few years ago he moved the whole family down to Texas so he could learn more about his faith in a Christian academic setting. He returned to NH to continue preaching the gospel; he worked at a local pizza joint to make ends meet.
And then his wife said goodbye to him at his funeral not much more than a week ago, on Saturday, May 1, 2010. Larry Warren was dead of a cancerous tumor to the brain. He was 49.
All this past week, Linda has posted scripture verses and other words of encouragement and gratitude on her Facebook page. One box beneath her profile picture said this: "God is now seeing fit to change all that I have known. My life is in His hands."
Yesterday morning, Saturday, May 8, 2010, Larry and Linda's 16-year-old daughter was killed in a car crash near her home. Their daughter, Bekah, by all accounts was a lovely, lovely young woman. I did not know her (I know none of the children, really). My wife taught Bekah; my wife thought her "a sweet, sweet girl." (My wife has taught or worked with several of Larry and Linda's kids; two are enrolled in my wife's school right now, with one on the way up from the elementary school in a few years.)
This is not my loss, nor is it my grief, at least in the strictest sense. But Christians are called to "weep with those who weep"; when one part of the Body of Christ hurts, the whole Body hurts.
Joy and pain: the unifying theory of the Body of Christ, bound together in love, hope, faith.
Pray for the Warrens, their family, their friends, and their little church.
3 comments:
Bill, thank you for sharing this with us. I concur, and have know many families such as Larry's which have undergone multiple sorrows in short periods of time. I recall one man I know looking at me and saying, "We must be doing something right, because Satan is obviously trying to destroy our faith."
There's no question that the problem of suffering in a universe over which an all-powerful, all-knowing, ever-present and loving God is sovereign, presents the greatest challenge to faith, not just for Christians but to the world as well. My only solace is to believe that on the cross, Christ suffered Larry's death, his daughter's death, as well as his family's sorrow, each of which were the collateral effects of Man's own sinful rebellion.
My prayers for them during this time.
While I don't subscribe to the Christian theology of Good and Evil, or why bad things happen to good people, I also don't think that debating differing faiths , or lack of any faith, belongs in a post which expresses grief at the loss of two loved ones suffered by a family. DM's posting is pretty much the same as on the webpages he mentiones in his rant, and makes just as little sense. A simple"I am sorry for the family's loss" would be far more appropiate to the situation, then whatever DM was trying to convey.
Danni Lee, hopefully Bill will delete the DM spam. DM is one of the reasons I now have comment moderation enabled over at my blog. His harassment is unending.
At first he just went after atheist blogs because he hates atheists, but now he also spams Christian blogs if he thinks any atheists are reading them.
To Bill, sorry to read of the tragic loss suffered by this family.
We all need to be more grateful for those we love while we have them with us.
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