This is not a plea for messages of consolation, nor does anyone need to feel sorry for my loss.  But there was sadness in the news that my friend had died.

I call him my friend and am glad to do so, for our friendship was hard-won. My friend and I served the same congregation, I as pastor and he as part of the staff I inherited when I was called to the church.  We did not agree theologically or about the hot-button issues of those days. Our conversations were sometimes heated and sometimes very personal. Partisans in the congregation sought to make the most of our disagreement and did their best to divide the congregation over it.  But we defied their schemes and became friends instead, our disagreements mostly intact.

It’s not that I think the issues between us were not important; they were hugely important: the nature of the gospel and faithful living. What I believed then I believe now, and perhaps with a heightened sense of the importance of it. My job, though, was not to change my friend. Rather I was to follow Peter’s admonition in 1 Peter 3:15, “in your hearts honor Christ the Lord as holy, always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you; yet do it with gentleness and respect…”

It had been 25 years since I had seen my friend face to face, and there had been only a handful of emails or text messages in the interim. But I thought of him if not often then with thanks for our friendship.

This past October I received one of those rare messages from my friend. He wrote of being hospitalized and, remembering our friendship, had found the Observations I had posted that week (This Our Hymn of Grateful Praise). He said:

Lying in a hospital bed…I was mentally searching for what it was God was trying to bring me to understand through this unexpected (turn of events).  Your name came to mind and flooded me with memories of you and your then young family. With two simple clicks, your message was here.  God’s message.

I would gladly drive __ hours to have coffee with you one day.  Thanks for speaking to me in ways neither of us expected tonight.

I answered immediately and expressed my delight at the prospect of sharing coffee and friendship.  I did not hear back, however, and now six months later word has come that he has died.  I don’t know the cause and it does not matter.  The sadness I feel in the news of my friend’s death is not the sadness of loss or regret.  It is, instead, a thankful sadness. We had become friends through disagreement and even hurt, but had never lost gentleness and respect.

In that October post I keyed off the old hymn, “For the Beauty of the Earth.” I wrote “The world of politics and international affairs, of public discourse and cultural posturing, has grown ugly.  Friends are defined as those who agree with us and coddle our hurt senses of self.” I am thankful for a friendship that transcended our disagreements and our differences.

One of the verses of the hymn sings:

For the joy of human love,
Brother, sister, parent, child,
Friends on earth, and friends above;
For all gentle thoughts and mild:
Lord of all, to Thee we raise
This our hymn of grateful praise.

Is my friend now a friend above?  Not mine to say.  But for that old acquaintance not forgotten I raise a hymn of grateful praise.