How do I live a life that matters?

Three years ago today, we were getting ready to fly North in a snowstorm for the funeral of my father, David Herschberger.  I can't think back to that day without reflecting a bit on what makes a life that matters.  Like many of us, my dad's life was one of big dreams and "small" accomplishments. He never quite did what he dreamed of doing, but ironically some of this greatest accomplishments came in the middle of his deepest pain.  Dealing with his own hurts helped him to enter others' hurts.  Isn't this the irony of Christmas as well?  Big events in small stables.  Amazing love among common people.  I pray I can live a life like that, a life that matters.

Here's an excerpt of the Eulogy I wrote 3 years ago.  Perhaps it will be an inspiration for you today as it was for me. 

David’s life was one of service.  As a young man he served briefly in Chicago, Arkansas, Germany, and Austria before settling in Northwestern Ontario where he served as pastor, counselor, and bookstore manager for 49 years.

Several months ago, David said he would not consider himself to have been a successful person.  He always had dreams far beyond what he accomplished. By some measures, he was not successful, but I think he was a great man. His greatness was not in buildings, or money, or organizations. After having worked on David’s life story this past Fall, I am convinced that David’s greatness was in his brokenness and his response to pain. He did not run from shame, hurt, guilt, and loss. He didn’t try to distract himself or blame others.  

He was pushed by his pain through brokenness all the way to the Gentle Healer. He learned who alone could bear the full weight of his heart, and he allowed many of you to be God’s agents of healing in his life.

It happened over and over and over again.  

Beginning with abuse, mental illness, and spiritual emptiness in his childhood, his first 18 years included much brokenness.  His father told me that sometimes David would just lie down and cry and cry as a child. In his pain, he became hungry for God and began seeking spiritual wholeness.  While he was working the night shift at a mental hospital in Chicago, he read all types of Christian books.  After that, he knew he wanted something more.  He traveled to several different states until he found God in a little band of Christians in Northern Indiana. This led to his first stint of Christian service in Arkansas, and that is where he was truly discipled for the first time. His brokenness had led him to the Healer.  The core message of grace that he found there would become the mantra of his life.

Several years later when his dreams of church planting seemed to fall apart, he felt broken again and wanted to give up.  Amazingly, God met him in his little cabin north of Lac Suel. “That was where it all happened,” he told me once.  The Gentle Healer arrived and showed him a glory that surpassed all of the brokenness.  Soon afterward, a dear friend went with him to attend the Canadian Revival where he could continue his journey to wholeness.

At age 60, he went to college.  “I have a good twenty years left in me,” I remember him saying.  Now, over 20 years later, we know how right he was.  Once again, though, this journey brought a lot of pain and revealed brokenness. He almost didn’t graduate, but, again, his pain pushed him closer to the Healer, and, in turn, he became a conduit of healing in the lives of others.

Then on a cold night in January, all his plans came to a crashing halt as Esther passed away.  He wanted to give up, curse God and die, but again he didn’t cut corners. He walked the valley of the shadow of death, and again, the Gentle Healer brought healing and love into his life again.

On my last visit, Dad said that he was working on one more message.  He said that Jesus died to forgive our sins, but the way that He died illustrated how he wants to heal our shame.  He was spit on, publically rejected, and exposed -- a death of shame to take away our shame.  The Bible says, ^“Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows . . . with his stripes we are healed.”

For dad, those words weren’t just nice words for a song or liturgy.  He had been to the bottom. He knew pain, shame, loneliness and hurt, but the Gentle Healer had come and that was what made all the difference.