We are all confronted with the reality of death at different points in our lives. Some of these confrontations are subtle, others are life changing.
I lost my dad to cancer 33 years ago. He was a young man of 50. But it was through his cancer experience that he confronted the reality of death. This confrontation brought him to the cross of Christ. A hardened and scarred agnostic came to Christ through the witness of a work colleague a few months before his death. And his life was transformed.
I lost my mom 3 years ago. I had the privilege of being at her bedside as she passed from this life into the reward she was awaiting at age 78.
Last fall I lost a long-time friend and former colleague with The Navigators, Dick Miller, to heart failure at age 72. And in January I lost a close friend and former mentor with ACMC, Dr. David Mays, to heart failure at age 69.
For those who know Christ, death is simply leaving behind a worn out suit of clothes and moving into real life as God intended. Nonetheless it often creates a painful separation for those left behind.
For those who don’t know Christ, death is a tragedy of unspeakable proportions. 27% of the world’s people live among a people group who have little or no access to the gospel. Tragic! They have not rejected the gospel. They have been provided with no opportunity to respond. Bringing the gospel to these people should be very high on the priority list of every local church.
On March 14 death struck again. My mom remarried a few years after my dad’s death. Before her passing, she had been married for 24 years to Dr. W.R. (Ray) Corvin, a man who had also been widowed. I was already a married adult when my mom remarried. Ray never attempted to be my dad. But he was a great husband to my mom, a far better one than my dad had been. And he was a good and godly man.
Ray was born on Christmas day in 1921, growing up on a farm in rural Oklahoma. He served in WW2. He came to know Christ personally through his older brother on his wedding day. He was a well educated man with a seminary degree and a PhD from the University of Oklahoma. He served as a senior pastor in several Methodist and Pentecostal Holiness churches. He was president of Southwestern Christian University in Oklahoma City for 15 years. And was president of the University of Biblical Studies in Oklahoma City (one of the first large scale distance learning schools in the U.S.) for another 15 years. Ray also had the opportunity to proclaim Christ in China, Cuba, India, and Israel. At the age of 80, a head injury in a tractor accident sped the onslaught of Alzheimer’s. Ray graduated to heaven 10 years later. He left behind a mind with no short-term memory and no ability to recognize anyone that he had previously known. I am delighted that he is now in the presence of the One he served for many decades. He is no longer hampered by a used up body and a mind that no longer works. I am proud to have been his step-son.
