November 19, 2007

• Dedication

  Let me tell you about a friend…
  

  A friend from college wrote this in their ‘about me’ section on Facebook. Take a moment to read if you would.

  Well let’s
  see … I’m an easy-going fellow, laid-back and mostly worry free. I’m
  right on the edge of introvert/extrovert, either at the right times.
  But my true self is more on the quiet side. I keep a positive look on
  life because I’ve got Jesus or rather He’s got me. My life is in His
  hands and He knows what He’s doing with me. I seek to live in the
  abundance of eternal existence that Jesus promised and is already
  accessible right now. My heart has been set free, so I look for
  adventures ’round every corner. Life is a story, a great novel God is
  writing, full of suspense, excitement, sorrow, happiness, love, loses,
  gains, good, evil, swift turns and hard curves. What seems to be the
  end of a chapter could very well be only the beginning. I believe
  blessings come in disguises sometimes, so I try to be careful to see
  them. My faith in and relationship with Jesus is why I am alive from
  the past, alive and well now presently and looking for life in the
  future. I am what I am by the grace and tender mercy of God-Almighty.
  If I had to describe myself in one word it would be passion. Speaking
  of passion, I am so in love with an amazing woman of God, Leanna is her
  name and we’re getting married!!! God is sooooooooo good. My life has
  never been the same since she came into my life.

  When I was in college, there was one person that was always floating around campus. For someone without much experience interacting with the handicapped, I have to admit with shame that I got a little nervous at first being around him- mainly, because of the fact that I have unusual trouble hearing people clearly sometimes with background noise and his speaking was kind of hard for me to get. I was always worried he’d talk to me and I wouldn’t understand everything- and I refused to be false and just nod and pretend I understood, so that meant asking “Could you repeat that?” about five times and feeling awful for it. But after some time passed, I got to be comfortable around the man Joseph Dennie. It was clear his love for the Lord. For the many who might read this who do not know of him, he went to Columbia Bible College for many years (more than four) and was bound to a wheelchair from what I believe was birth. He had some trouble moving and his speech took was, embarassingly for me, a bit hard to understand at times. I have to say I got to know who he -was- more through his words online than face-to-face: the amazing gift God gave us of the internet allowed me to see into the man more online than off.

  He worked hard for far longer than most would go through college, to graduate CIU. His electric wheelchair zooming around campus, and friends eager to come up and say hello to him was pretty much a sight that if it was not seen regularly you wondered where he was.

  I am honoured to say that I graduated alongside Joseph. They made clear to everyone there that there was to be no clapping for individual people- a rule that occasionally was slightly broken by a small few. However… Joseph rode on stage after something like six years in school…

  Everyone stood up. They gave him his diploma… EVERYONE cheered, and clapped, and stayed cheering and clapping for what seemed as long as we could get away with. Nobody cared about the rule then, and the Provost didn’t have the heart to interrupt and try to put the cheering down as he did with others.

  I found out today, through Facebook, that Joseph just recently died. He had met an amazing woman to be his wife, and from what I heard it sounds as though she is also going to have his child (if not already). Tears came to my eyes- I went to his facebook site and read his profile again, a bit closer this time. He wrote, in his very own words, the summary of his life and what he valued. And on the graffiti application for his Wife’s facebook, still remain the words painted from Summer: “I love you”.

  What a man. Someone just seeing him could have made the sad, sad mistake of feeling sorry for him. I think of him, and I wish I could be more like him- where his body was weak and disabled, his SOUL was strong in the Lord and passionate about Jesus, about the lost, and about all the RIGHT things.

  

  Joseph’s favourite quotes-

  The Bible is no mere book, but a Living Creature, with a power that conquers all that oppose it.
  -Napoleon Bonaparte-

  We are so outnumbered there’s only one thing to do. We must attack.
  -Sir Andrew Cunningham-

  Going to church doesn’t make you a Christian anymore than going to the garage makes you a car.
  -Laurence J. Peter-

  In times of affliction we commonly meet with the sweetest experiences of the love of God.
  -John Bunyan-

  The world is moving so fast these days that the man who says it can’t be done is generally interrupted by someone doing it.
  -Harry Emerson Fosdick-

  Faith,
  like light, should ever be simple and unbending; while love, like
  warmth, should beam forth on every side, and bend to every necessity of
  our brethren.
  -Martin Luther-

  Nothing worth having comes without some kind of a fight. Got to kick at the darkness ’til it bleeds daylight
  -Bruce Cockburn-

  If you judge people, you have no time to love them.
  -Mother Teresa-

  Work as if you were to live 100 years; pray as if you were to die tomorrow.
  -Benjamin Franklin-

  I
  believe the Bible is the best gift God has ever given man. All the good
  from the Saviour of the world is communicated to us through this book.
  -Abraham Lincoln-

  The Bible is worth all other books which have ever been printed.
  -Patrick Henry-

  It
  is impossible to enslave mentally or socially a Bible reading people.
  The principles of the Bible are the groundwork of human freedom.
  -Horace Greeley-

  The
  existence of the Bible, as a book for the people, is the greatest
  benefit which the human race has ever experienced. Every attempt to
  belittle it is a crime against humanity.
  -Immanuel Kant-

  The greatest use of life is to spend it for something that will outlast it.
  -William James-

  Heaven is above all yet; there sits a judge that no king can corrupt.
  -William Shakespeare-

  So
  great is my veneration for the Bible that the earlier my children begin
  to read it the more confident will be my hope that they will prove
  useful citizens of their country and respectable members of society.
  -John Quincy Adams-

  There are more sure marks of authenticity in the Bible than in any profane history.
  -Sir Isaac Newton-

  It is impossible to rightly govern the world without God and the Bible.
  -George Washington-

  The New Testament is the very best book that ever was or ever will be known in the world.
  -Charles Dickens-

  When the solution is simple, God is answering.
  -Albert Einstein-

  The
  Bible is the truest utterance that ever came by alphabetic letters from
  the soul of man, through which, as through a window divinely opened,
  all men can look into the stillness of eternity, and discern in
  glimpses their far distant, long forgotten home.
  -Thomas Carlyle-

  • 7:49 am
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