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Requiescat in Pace

27th February, 2011 - Posted by Wolf Paul - No Comments

A number of years ago I was involved in a situation where a number of men I liked and highly respected acted in a way I still believe to have been objectively wrong, sinful, and injurious to a brother in Christ (whom I only got to know better in the wake of that situation).

One of these men, who at the time was particularly forceful in defending their conduct but who subsequently found himself at odds with the others, has recently gone to be with the Lord.

It was a blessing to attend his memorial and to learn from tributes and testimonies that the conduct that led to our falling out was an aberration and did not reflect the whole of his life. These testimonies restored -albeit posthumously – my respect for the man and vindicated my earlier liking for him.

Why had I never sought him out to be reconciled?

Well, for all I knew he still felt that he had been in the right, and I still believe that he had been grievously wrong – considering how strongly we held our respective convictions, renewed contact would only have renewed our rather painful dispute.

After all, none of the other men involved on his side of the dispute, with one of whom circumstances have brought me into regular contact again, have ever expressed to me any misgivings about their actions, and there seems little point to renewing an old disagreement.

On the other hand, some of the testimonies I heard at his memorial service suggested to me that this man had changed in the course of the past few years in ways that might have allowed him to rethink his role and position in that dispute, and if so, that certainly was the Holy Spirit at work.

This has been a wholesome reminder to me that where we may give up on someone who fails in some way, God never gives up on His own. He pursues them and keeps working in their lives to turn any failures into opportunities for His grace. This gives me hope for my own life, for I certainly fail all to often.

So may you rest in peace, my brother, and these past disagreements will not stand between us in eternity.

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