Jesus said, ‘When I go and prepare a place for you,
I will come again and take you to myself,
that where I am you may be also.” John 14:3
September 2007
Gratitude
Thank you for the cards and emails you have sent since my father’s passing on to his eternal home. The obituary of John Ker Munro is on our Interim Ministries-ABC website if you had missed it (www.interimministries-abc.org). Again, as I was two years ago when my mother died, I am overwhelmed by your expressions of sympathy and condolences. It is my privilege to work with a “congregation” of caring people, and it means a lot to me and my family.
The two services for Daddy were done well and were times of celebration of the life of a faithful disciple and servant of Jesus Christ. We gathered with extended family (including some cousins who had not seen each other for 30 years), congregants from my parents’ former churches, and former students and faculty colleagues. None of my brothers nor I had the privilege of sitting under Daddy’s teaching, so we were interested in hearing stories from his former students. These were touching and often humorous.
A Challenge
The President Emeritus of Columbia International University was a student in Daddy’s first year of teaching in 1944, and later became President and Daddy’s boss in 1970. He told a story that humbled and challenged me. Daddy was Dean of Men from 1944-54, which, in those days, meant he had to enforce the rules on the men, some of whom had fought for the US in Europe and the Pacific, and had led men in combat. One young man broke too many rules too often and the school had to release him. Years later, another former student reported to Daddy that that man had become the pastor of a leading church of his denomination. Daddy smiled and said that prayer had been answered. He had prayed daily for him from the day he told the student he had to leave the college.
His prayers at the breakfast table always went around the world for all our extended family. I’m sure his prayer times at 5 a.m. in his study included a long list. And I always knew, when I was going through rough times that Daddy prayed daily, probably many times a day, for me.
Daddy told me last year, “I have lived in houses made of canvas, sod, wood, stone, and brick.” Now he lives among that great cloud of witnesses, in a place prepared for him by our Lord. Is it really made of gold and precious gem stones? I don’t know. But a curious soul has entered there who will surely poke his fingers into everything and check it out!
Jamie