Armando wrote out the following, hours after getting the phone call from the coroner’s office:

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“My joy is gone; grief is upon me; my heart is sick within me.” – Jeremiah 8:18

I wish I could just see his smiling face. Go to the gym one more time, eat pizza and hot wings with him. Watch our favorite episodes of the Simpsons like we did every week. I have lost today the best friend I’ve ever had, he was always around when no one else was available to hang out. He would be 21 this November 27th, and I would have drank a beer with him to celebrate. Seems now I will be having that beer in remembrance of him.

The first memories that come to mind was when my mom was pregnant with him, and my parents were explaining to us who we would be staying with while my mom was in the hospital. After he was born, as a baby, me and my brother Gregory would argue who would hold him and read the bible and other books to him.

I remember how we had the nook set up in our house that we called the “Sammy Corner.”
I remember how as a little kid he would sing “Jesus Loves Me,” and other songs we learned in church and in Sunday School.
I remember the family trips we used to take to New England and Texas.
I remember when he went on a short term missions trip to Mexico with me.

He always wanted to go on camping trips with me, but other events seemed to always get in the way of him.

Most of all, I remember him as an individual who loved the lord, who faithfully helped my mom in her Sunday school class at Riverlakes church. A man who grew frustrated with the Lord for not opening the hearts of his friends and classmates to receive the gospel. A man who knew that his Saving Grace was in Jesus Christ, and not in the things of this world. I don’t think, in the 20 years I have known him, have had a single argument with him whatsoever.

Now, he stands before the Lord, unashamed, for he was bought with the blood of Christ, and he will dwell with him forever. And until I join him, or til Jesus comes, I will miss his company every day of my life.
I am blessed for having so much time getting to know him, his likes in techno/electronica music, his interest in Geology and Philosophy, his kind, gentle nature.

The days will only get tougher for me and my family. Your prayers and condolences are greatly appreciated in this time of trouble. And I am glad to have the Lord, and my brothers in sisters in Christ to draw strength from.

“Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God.” – 2 Corinthians 1:3-4

All praise be to God our Father in heaven, who sacrificed His Son on our behalf, so that there will come a day when there will be no pain, misery of mourning. But at the moment, I have too much of it all.

-Armando Steven Gonzalez
In Memorandum of Samuel Joseph Gonzalez
My loving brother, and brother in Christ
(Nov 27 1990 – Nov 9 2011)
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I’m reminded of the line in the famous hymn, “It Is Well With My Soul” by Horatio Spafford, penned after all four of his daughters died on a ship that sank while crossing the Atlantic in 1873:

“When sorrows like sea billows roll; Whatever my lot, Thou has taught me to say, It is well, it is well, with my soul.”

Where does the strength to go on even come from? The author of Psalm 46:1 makes it clear:

“God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble.” (ESV)

We can look to a man named Job in the Bible for another example of suffering well. Upon receiving news from a messenger that his sons and daughters were killed in a natural disaster, he said,

“Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return. The LORD gave, and the LORD has taken away; blessed be the name of the LORD.”  (Job 1:21)

How can a Christian deal with pain and suffering? Though I have not personally experienced the tragedy Armando is in the midst of, in recent years I’ve began to learn how the key lies in recognizing that this earth, with its disease and death as a result of man’s fall in Genesis 3, is not truly home for the true Christian. Heaven is our real home, where,

“Death will be no more, neither shall there be mourning nor crying nor pain any more, for the former things have passed away” (Rev. 21:4). There will be no temptations to face, no burdens to bear, no guilt to grieve over, no sickness to battle, no unanswered questions to baffle us, no ignorance to humiliate us, and no unsatisfied desires to frustrate us. Nothing that has scarred and stained our lives on earth will be there to shame us. There will be no regrets, no remorse, no second thoughts, no disappointments, and no lost causes. Best of all, there will be no indwelling sin to plague us. As J.I. Packer puts it, “There will be no sin in heaven, for those who are in heaven will not have it in them to sin any more.” Small wonder that David cried out to God: “In your presence is fullness of joy; at your right hand are pleasures for evermore” (Ps. 16:11)  -John Blanchard [full article here]

Here are a few additional quotes to consider, mentioned in last month’s issue of Tabletalk Magazine centered around the topic of dealing with death and disease:

We know that we are going to die, but we don’t know when. We know that others we love are going to die, but we don’t know when. Neither do we usually know how. What we do know, however, is exactly what we need to know. What we ought to know is this: knowing more details about our future should not radically change our present.
“What would you do if you knew you had only a year, a month, a week, a day, an hour to live?” may make for an interesting parlor game, but the answer ought to be “The same thing I have been doing, hoping that I have decades left to live.” -R.C. Sproul Jr [full article here]

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Obviously, I do not delight in the fact of someone’s death. But I rejoice in the opportunity that the death of a believer opens for communicating the majesty of Christ and the glories of the gospel while comforting the family and friends and presenting salvation by grace to those who are lost but have come to “pay their respects.”
-Harry Reeder [full article here]

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“For the believer, death does not have the last word. Death has surrendered to the conquering power of the One who was resurrected as the firstborn of many brethren.” -RC Sproul [full article here]

Please keep in your prayers Armando and his family, as well as those around all of us who are dealing with death.

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What I’m saying is that in the free time we have, we make time for what we really want to do. This may not be true in all parts of our world, or in all past generations, so I’m speaking to myself and other Americans that can relate to this, for the most part, comfortable lifestyle. I can’t tell you what to do with your time, but I can certainly examine my own daily life, diagram my evenings and weekends, filling in notes as to what made me choose that particular activity or even what made me say “no” to something. Sadly, my natural tendency is to take that assessment and compare it to those around me, and although there may be some value in that, there’s definitely a danger when I make assumptions that turn out to be judgments. Take for example the owner of an expensive boat, who takes his prized possession out on the water every weekend of the summer. To some that may appear on the outside as a selfish use of time and money. They might be right, but they’ve put themselves on the throne as a judge. Now let me throw in a twist, saying that what if that boat owner purchased the boat for the purpose of building stronger relationships with those around him, AND for every one of those weekends took friends with him to encourage and challenge them with whatever they were dealing with in life? He seems like a really caring person to me now… and who did I think I was to assume exactly what was going on in his situation?

Now I must say I know few people living by that principle of owning a lot of nice things for the purpose of being generous… It’s something I heard Randy Alcorn quote a Romanian pastor on Twitter the other day, and this is in the context of Christians, so I wouldn’t want to give off the impression that I expect it out of those who do not call themselves a Christian. Please keep that in mind if you’re not a Christian yourself. Alcorn cited the Biblical passage in Deuteronomy 8:10-14, where there is a strict warning to God’s people that they take care when they’ve become wealthy, so as not to forget God. You can see a similar warning over and over in the Bible. Here’s what Romanian Pastor Joseph Tson said: “90% of Christians pass the test of adversity. 90% of Christians fail the test of prosperity.” … Wow.

Back to the idea of time being linked to priorities, I think now that I’m aware of this issue, it’s important that I’m honest with myself the next time I turn down an opportunity to go out of my way for someone where there may be zero repayment. A very genuine guy at my work has a note that he wrote himself as a reminder on his mirror, saying “Bless someone today.” I want to keep that on my mind as well, so I put it in the form of a post-it note on the edge of my computer screen.

Stopping to care about someone doesn’t have to be big and fancy. It might be as simple as keeping an eye out for a stranger that has a dead car battery, while having a set of jumper cables in my car ready to help them. I’ve met some nice people with that one. It might mean actively looking for the person outside the pizza place that looks hungry, and buying them dinner for a couple easy bucks that I might’ve spent on my dessert anyway. Sometimes these things fall in my lap; other times I really need to go out and look for them. And there have been times when I’ve missed opportunities (countless times, actually), which might be followed by disappointment in myself. I often fail at things. But the key is that a good pattern is developed over time ONLY IF I take action. There’s always tomorrow to start again. No action would still mean a pattern is developed; it just becomes a pattern of ignoring the needs of my fellow man! As with other things we do in life, we become better at it the more consistently we do it. Can’t get around that. To bring in an illustration: I’m a drummer, and after the first few years of playing drums, I looked back and realized I could not have just skipped the early practicing stage. The 30 minutes straight repetitious pounding on one simple practice pad, which is nothing compared to a serious drummer, but it was a start. And to keep the skill up or improve upon it, I must still see it as a work in progress. My goal might later become either avoiding long periods of inactivity with that musical instrument, or to practice X amount of time per X amount of days, depending on what’s realistic and what the long-term desired result is. The connection I want to make with that simple analogy is that as a Christian, I can’t expect to pass Tson’s “test of prosperity” if my weekly routine ignores the small things that I tell myself there’s no time for.

It’s already obvious that time goes by quickly. I never feel like I have enough of it. I just hope that when I’ve finally run out, those around me can see it as well spent. We all run out, sometimes very suddenly. Michael Jackson just died the other day before starting his 50-concert tour. That’d be the last time I would’ve expected someone to die. Farah Fawcett, Steve McNair, and Billy Mays just died too, a little unusual for that many celebrities at once, but thousands of people are dying every day. I could be next. My 22 year-old cousin recently found out she has a serious cancer that the doctors somehow didn’t catch for a year, and I hope and pray it’s not serious enough to end her life, but it brings the real possibility of death down to a personal level. Tonight I was at a concert for the band Death Cab For Cutie (I know, ironic), and I sat next to a girl whose mother just died in a car accident. The car accidents seem too frequent. A really sweet girl named Bethany from my college was killed in a car wreck one summer, and I still remember that big, contagious smile of hers.

I don’t like closing on the sad subject of death, but sometimes it takes the harsh reality of death for us to examine what our priorities are when we’re living.

   Back to the topic…  many of us have what we need here in our life, such as food, shelter, clothes…a car for most of us… probably some friends, and usually a little extra spending money. So… what was it we needed God for?

   Not only is there the disadvantage of thinking we’re doing just fine without God in our life; there’s the second part of actually living for those things. I find it too ironic that we even die for those things; I read a news article this week of a world famous skier (which happens to be my favorite sport) that was filming for one of his videos where he did base jumping on skis, but things didn’t go as planned when he went off the cliff, and Shane McConkey ended up dying. Completely tragic. Left behind a wife and 3-year old daughter. But I’m not singling this one guy out; there’s example after example of tragedies in extreme sports. You could even use me as an example if I get run over by a semi on my motorcycle tomorrow, because I could’ve used a safer form of transportation but wanted the enjoyment of riding.

   So I think the problem is that these thrills, new things, even casual and serious relationships fill up the hole inside of us. It’s a temporary fix to the longing within when these right here and right now are all we have. They’re not true peace. You won’t get that from them. You’ll get some happy memories, sure. Excitement for the time being; of course! But look again in a few years. Or even the end of your life. It’ll be an interesting death-bed conversation, wondering what happens next, if all the thrills and stuff doesn’t matter anymore.

   I guess that just takes me to my disagreement with the whole idea of just adding a little Jesus to your life. I’ve even seen the bumper sticker “Give Jesus a try!” and it saddened me. Maybe my mind took me straight to the account of the Old Testament times of the Israelites becoming like their neighboring countries that worshipped various things and put God in there as one of those things. As if giving Jesus a try were like joining his facebook fan group, or supporting him like our favorite sports team. That’s pretty far from what Jesus actually talked about in his teachings, when he spoke of taking up a cross the same way someone would write their own death sentence, because following him was that serious.

   One of the best examples I’ve seen of someone purposefully choosing to not let himself get caught up in being rich is Francis Chan. This guy leads a church over in Simi Valley that I used to go to, but here’s a quick example of what he does. Last year he published a book called “Crazy Love” (let me know if you want it but can’t afford it; I bought a bunch of them to hand out because it’s one of the best books I’ve read, otherwise you can order here), and the book actually shot up the charts, bringing a lot of money in for him in royalties. When he was informed that he’d be getting a couple hundred thousand dollars from this book, he was excited but immediately considered what would happen if he put his security in this money instead of in God. He decided the right choice was to give all the money away; simple as that. Set up a fund for charities called the Isaiah 58 fund, and he could direct where the money should go. His friends assured him that it would be fine to keep a little for himself to set aside for emergencies, and his reply was just to point at these other needs across the world of hurting and dying people: what do you mean set aside for emergencies? So he and his wife started praying for a specific need to come up that the first royalty check should go to. Within a couple days of creating the “Isaiah 58 Fund,” a lawyer and pastor were sitting in Chan’s office explaining how they needed help over in Thailand to fight the sex trafficking going on. Get this: they told Chan that they had just started the “Isaiah 58 Project” and were wondering if there was anything he could do to help them. There was his answer, so that’s who the first check is going to.

   Well now that I’ve typed this out, it’s time for me to go think about it all some more. Serious implications for those of us who call ourselves Christians. I hope my words are not taken as “Don’t be rich,” but instead a warning at how much harder true Christianity is for us as Americans, or even Southern Californians if you’re here near my area. You could argue with me that it’s the love of money that gets condemned rather than money itself, which I agree with, but that wasn’t the point. It’s a lot easier to love money and the things it buys when you actually have it (and plenty of it, as I feel like I do).

(inspired by: matthew 19:23-26)