![]() What’s important,” Rusty said, being very religious, “is what you want me to do.” What do you want to do? Rusty said the Lord asked. I will go where you want me to go, say what you want me to say and do what you want me to do.” Rusty said to God, “Lord, I’m your servant and today I give myself to you. Then I remembered a conversation Rusty told me he had had with God once early in the morning. Union Springs? Gumbo? Wouldn’t it have been better for Rusty to have died in a…well…a Key Life Board meeting or teaching his Sunday school class or counseling some of the many people he had touched for Christ? There is something sort of pedestrian about gumbo and Union Springs. When Rusty died, he was taking his special gumbo to a food festival in Union Springs where he lived. He enjoyed every minute of it by squeezing out of each moment everything that that moment could give. One of the best things about Rusty, though, was the way he lived life-not for what was going to happen tomorrow or next week but living life in the here and now. He gave me the freedom to be real and he modeled grace for me. He was sometimes profane, didn’t obey many of the rules, and loved God with all of his heart. He discouraged me when I started thinking of myself more highly than I ought to have thought. He affirmed grace to me and always told me not to “shilly-shally.” He encouraged me when I thought that I was ugly and my mother dressed me funny. One of the greatest tragedies to affect me was the death of one of my best friends, Rusty Anderson. I’ve even come to the realization that the “main thing” and the importance of doing the “main thing” isn’t the main thing at all. In other words, because we are always looking to “get through” something to the next thing, we miss what God has planned for the present thing. Did you ever think that life is something that happens while you’re heading somewhere else? So like the old joke about the Calvinist who fell down the stairs, I find myself saying, “I’m glad that’s over.”īecause I’m under conviction, I’m going to do what I usually do…spread some of the guilt around. I have recently become aware that I’ve fallen into the trap of thinking of my life as a series of projects, tasks and ministry efforts that I must get through without messing it up so horribly that I can’t fix it.
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