Warranties, Guarantees and Thoughts of Frank Wall

When you purchase an item it often has a warranty. New cars, five years or 60,000 thousand miles, high definition televisions a year or two, even something as small as an electric mixer has some kind of guarantee that it will work for a certain amount of time. Some homes even come with warranties. The roof is guaranteed not to leak and the electric, plumbing and septic system is supposed to be in tip-top shape. But sometimes there just are no guarantees.


We have no warranties on these old bodies of ours. Our days on this earth are numbered, and we?re not guaranteed one more. I often wonder about life and death. What will the days to come reveal and how many more sunrises will I see? How will I respond to life?s bountifulness, or lack of? Have the years of living and dying molded me into a statue? Immune to whatever sorrows come my way? I?m afraid not.


This has been a hard few days. My husband?s eighty-one-year old uncle was buried on Saturday and a dear friend passed away on Sunday. Our friend went in for a simple knee replacement and died of cardiac arrest. There was no guarantee attached to his knee surgery. I am so saddened by his departure. His passing leaves a huge void in the lives of so many.


Frank Wall will be remembered and mourned by all who knew him. If Frank liked you, you had a friend for life. I will always remember his big bear hugs. There was never a time in the thirty-some odd years that I knew him that he didn?t wrap me up in his arms and plant a kiss on the top of my head. Frank had a way of making you feel special, even if you weren?t. The only good thing about his passing is the fact that God gave him eighty-four blessed years.


Frank was loved deeply by his family. The days ahead for them will not be easy. What do you do when someone that you love is suddenly not there? For one thing you cry a river of tears, tears that well up from your soul and pour out from your heart. You feel a longing for what was and will never be again. The days will pass and sometimes you won?t remember them. Why? Because your thoughts are all tangled up in your pain and sorrow.


If Frank could talk to his family he?d tell them to buck up and get on with life. Yes, Frank loved to live and he wouldn?t want you to stop living just because he graduated to a better place. A spot where there is never a rainy day to ruin a golf game. If Jesus plays sports I?ll bet Frank has already set up a tee time with Him.


A few days ago I got a message from another friend. We grew up in the same community and went to school together. Over the years we sort of lost track of each other, families and jobs pulling us this way and that. The past few years we?ve been able to reconnect and kindle our friendship.


In my friends message she started out by saying, ?I want to tell you before you hear it somewhere else.? That in its self is a bad, bad sign.


?I have cervical cancer.? Were her next words. ?I don?t know if its spread to other areas or not.?? Cervical cancer is nightmare enough for a 52-year-old woman, but my friend also has MS and about three years ago she had breast cancer and went through some major reconstructive surgery. See what I mean about wondering about life and death.


I can?t help but think of Job from the Bible when I think of my friend. He was tortured and diseased. Everything was taken from him, but you know what? Job never faltered, even when his very own wife told him to curse God and die. But Job didn?t curse God; he praised Him knowing He was his only guarantee in life or death.


No, God doesn?t assure us we’ll have eighty-one years like Uncle Charlie, or eighty-four years like my friend Frank, and he doesn?t promise my friend with cancer another day or me either. But he does have a lifetime guarantee waiting for each of us. Written out and stamped in blood.


John 14:1-3 says:

1)??? Let not your heart be troubled: ye believe in God, believe also in me.

2)??? In my Father?s house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you.

3)??? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto myself; that where I am, there ye may be also.


If you hold this promise in your heart and believe these words of Jesus then you have all the warranty you?ll ever need, a guarantee of eternal life.



{ 1 comment… read it below or add one }

debbie November 8, 2011 at 2:54 pm

Sarah,
You have truely been given a wonderful gift… of writing beautiful words and these words written about Frank will help heal Matt and her family’s heart. Thank you for sharing.

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