“The Best Thing That Could Happen to Anybody”

My friend, Carl Sheffield, died yesterday. He lived a life of little fame or notoriety. However, he was “famous” to those who knew him. Not in a “Hollywood” way….but in the way he made you feel like you were a “celebrity” in his world.

He was everything “great” about “the greatest generation.” He was more concerned about the needs of others than his own personal comfort. This was most manifested in the way he treated his wife. He was wrapped up in giving her everything she wanted and being everything she needed up until the moment he died.

By the time I met Carl a few years ago, he had already fought and won one round with cancer. He became a teacher to me in a very non-traditional way. He never set me down and said, “Here is the way you do this….”. His sermon was his life. Charles Spurgeon said, “A man’s life is always more forcible than his speech. When men take stock of him they reckon his deeds as dollars and his words as pennies.” Carl was rich in good works.

When I think about the “sermons” that Carl preached to me from his ushers station in the back of our church, the following lessons come to mind:

1. He taught me to suffer with grace. When I suffer, I like to complain. I enjoy sympathy. Carl was so strong through suffering that you almost never knew he was in terrible pain. He was full of joy even during times of personal agony.

2. He taught me to love my wife. Oh how he loved his wife. She was his treasure. He loved her like Christ loved the church.

3. He taught me that you are never too old to do the right thing. He changed churches well into his senior years. Not because he had to, but because he felt it was the right thing to do.

As I was thinking about his suffering through the last days and trying to be a comfort to his wife, I remembered a story that I read about a conversation between a preacher and his sister…

I called my sister who has terminal cancer and we were talking on the phone and I said to her, “Well, Julie,” I said, “look,” I said, “the worst thing that could happen to you is the best thing that could happen to anybody.”

She said, “I know that, I’ve never questioned that.”

I said, “You know, the worst is that you’re going to be in the presence of the Lord, in the glories of heaven.”

She said, “And that’s my confidence.” And she said they sent a psychiatrist in here today in the hospital with somebody and they said we’re going to put you in group therapy and we’re going to put you under special therapy because we want you to get in touch with your inner child. And she said, “No thanks.” She said, “I don’t need to get in touch with my inner child, thank you. I’m in touch with my Lord Jesus Christ, everything is fine, everything is fine.”

Carl Sheffield is pain free and in no need of any therapy or chemo….he is in touch with Jesus!