Monday, November 03, 2003

Peter Bigg just sent me this from- I don't know who- who expresses himself like I feel:-


I never knew Mike. My only true contact with him was a handshake in a cigar shop in Colorado, but I've lost my pastor and my wife and I have lost the only person who understood us.

He made it ok that we were different and strange. He celebrated the things that others called us to grow out of; he took all the unfairness and hurts of youth ministry and hurled them away.
He was our bold hero, he was someone who I knew would always stand for the right. He was imperfect, he was plain, he was beautiful. He never stood between me and my Saviour but he magnified everything that drew me to God.
Mike never knew my name or my face. I don’t pastor a large youth group or speak well or have fantastic new ideas for youth ministry, but I knew without a shadow of a doubt that I was as important to him as any of those do.

I haven’t lost my Saviour, I haven’t lost my God, I haven’t lost my faith. Don't deluge me with posts telling me not to worship the man or put my eyes on Jesus. I don’t need to be challenged, corrected or encouraged.
I need to sit in the back of a dark auditorium and feel the hot tears run down my face as the hands of God embrace me through the voice of a Monday morning convention speaker who wasn’t trying to fix me or improve me but to just love me