Faith Expressed In Love

This week our community lost an extraordinary young man after a tragic bike accident.  How do I even begin to describe him?  Sean Stanton was the type of kid everybody wanted to know with his quick wit and easy smile. He was an incredible friend, and always made people feel relaxed when he was around. I had the extreme privilege of having him as part of our youth ministry family and he was a member of our student leadership team.

I remember fondly evenings in my living room with the Stanton boys, dreaming about how to build a better ministry, Sean jokingly (or maybe not so jokingly) insisting that attractive interns were the key to reaching his generation for Christ.

There are so many thoughts and emotions that arise after suffering a loss like this.  How could this happen? Sean was robbed of so much life. So many dreams and so much potential that will never be lived out. There's something incredibly unnatural about the passing of someone so young.  But I have to remind myself that all death is unnatural.  Death wasn't a factor in the garden and death is a symptom of us living in a broken world. Situations like this give us yet another reminder of this fact.

But as believers we have an incredible promise through Christ. A promise that this broken world is not all there is.  A promise of an eternity that is so much better than we can imagine.  A promise that the present sorrow that we are experiencing pales in comparison with the glory to come!

Sean's faith was a natural part of him. He carried it with him wherever he went and with whoever he was with.  I have complete confidence that Sean is with his Savior experiencing perfect joy in heaven.  Many of us who were praying for Sean right after the accident were praying for a miracle, for God to heal his broken body and keep him with us.  And while God is more than able to heal, I believe Sean experienced healing in a whole different way. In an eternally superior way. This week Sean experienced perfect healing. And when he left this world, he went to be in a place of full completion.  A place with no more tears, no more sickness, no more death.  We now grieve, not for Sean, but for us. For his family, his parents, brothers and sisters, and friends, who will miss him more than we can even begin to imagine. 

In my role working with students, most of this week has been processing Sean's passing with many of his friends. There's a hard lesson in this significant reminder for any young person that we aren't invincible.  That life is so fragile and our time will pass like a vapor.  A reminder that we should embrace each day with joy and every relationship as an incredibly valuable gift. With Sean's passing I'm reminded that I should take time to smile more and embrace life, traits he seemed to exhibit so easily. And in doing so, we honor Sean.  We honor his memory and continue his legacy by holding tightly to the light he brought to our lives and sharing it with others. 

I cannot even begin to imagine the grief his parents and siblings are experiencing. As a church family, a group that isn't specific to any particular congregation in central Michigan, its now our responsibility to care for, listen to, cry with, and love the Stantons as we say goodbye to an incredible young man.