And everywhere I go, I see you (always)

I was editing a story on a Saturday afternoon in September in 1997 in the New Orleans Times-Picayune newsroom, a massive concrete structure whose greatest memorable attribute was (and is, I assume) a strange tall behemoth  that points to the newspaper's name stripped across the top of the stone structure in blue lettering, when the Associated Press story came across the wire.

It read in part, "Rich Mullins, a popular Christian musician, died this past Saturday morning in a car accident in Illinois. According to the AP, he was thrown from a sports utility vehicle after the car lost control and flipped over. He was then struck by a tractor-trailer as the trucker swerved to avoid the overturned vehicle. Mullins, 41, and Mitch McVicker, 24, who as of Sunday was in critical condition, were on their way to a benefit concert in his hometown of Wichita Kansas when the accident occurred near Peoria Illinois."

Just like that, the man who had begun to lead me through the bitterness and weakness of early sobriety and early Christendom was gone. Over the years since, I've asked God repeatedly why I'm still here and Rich was taken. The world, in my mind, would be a much better place if he was still writing, singing and playing music. I do none of that. I lift up a very small group of loved ones, but I do not touch the numbers this great man did. It's that simple.

But I've come to understand that His thoughts are not my thoughts, and His actions are not my actions. We live and act on different levels.

Mullins wrote, among hundreds of beautifully structured songs that were unlike any before or since in contemporary Christian music, these words in a song called "I See You"

"And the eagle flies and the rivers run
"I look through the night and I can see the rising sun
"And everywhere I go I see you (Ev'rywhere I go I see You)
"And everywhere I go I see you (And ev'rywhere I go I see you)
"Well the grass will die and the flowers fall
"But Your Word's alive and will be after all."

Yesterday came the news via Facebook that Robert Chance had died. Robert was a great guy, a wonderfully loving pastor, the kind of person some of us would hope to become one day. A part-time local pastor, Robert worked at St. Timothy's On the Northshore as an associate pastor. I don't know what he did, but I greatly suspect he did it well. In all my dealing with him, I never knew him to do something half-way. He was committed, to his secular work, his work with the church, but it truly seemed to me he was most committed to this man we've come to truly know who we call Jesus or Yeshua.

Robert had led or helped lead a St. Timothy's group to Israel when he had a stroke. The fight for life then began, with the power and grace Robert had been given by the God he so dearly loved committing itself. Words, my understanding is, were hard to grasp after the stroke, and the operation to help take the pressure off his brain like many a notoriously dry field in Israel or a vein difficult to find. Once a wonderful and thoughtful preacher and teacher, I understand those words he spoke so charmingly were all but useless to him.

Again the suddenness of death, the quickness of tragedy, the swiftness of loss seems overwhelming, even as it did what is now 15 years ago amazingly enough. It is shocking that more than a decade has passed since Rich was taken from us. It is even more shocking that Robert Chance has crossed that River Jordan, figuratively and literally.  In the end, he was in an Israeli hospital with a few friends surrounding him, awaiting his family's arrival. He was ready for the end, an e-mail read.

A couple months back, I came across a story about Rich, a wonderful Christian who gave so much from his earnings that he lived in a small trailer on an Indian reservation in Arizona when he died. He gave and he gave, till cold, even cruel, death took.

Robert, at each and every opportunity I had to observe his tendencies, his warm smile, his gifts from a caring creator, mimicked much of those Mullinsian actions. He came, he loved, he gave, he left us to deal with loss of another dear fellow.

And Mullins wrote, "Lord You're leadin' me with a cloud by day
"And then in the night the glow of a burning flame
"And everywhere I go I see You...
And everywhere I go I see You
And You take my hand and You wash it clean
I know the promised land is light years ahead of me

And every-where I go I see you...."

Robert saw the murky catfish-filled waters of the Jordan before his death, I think. He saw them after his death. He sees them now. He will see them as we race after him. That's the promise ... every-where I go, I see You. That promise keeps me going on these dark, cold days of grief. Every-where I go. Every-where.

I see Him.