My friend Josh

He was back! Joshua was tall, dark, and had an easy going smile that gleamed with health and love for life. We shared a couple of classes together in college, and he loved missions! Jim Elliot and Nate Saint were his heroes. We’d have long conversations about him becoming a missionary pilot and bringing clean drinking water to obscure native villages. I didn’t know Josh very well. But he was my buddy. He was everyone’s buddy. I don’t think he ever knew a stranger.

Before I’d met him, Josh had had some health issues. At one point, he’d been in the hospital, his family preparing to lose him to the heavenly life. Miraculously, God brought healing and Josh was able to return to school and resume his flight training. But his health complications and need for hefty insurance kept him in school longer and always one step away from obtaining his pilot’s license and qualifying with a missions agency. One wouldn’t know it from talking with him though. He was one of the most positive and joyful people I’ve ever met.

In 2009, I graduated from Geneva. Periodically, I received Josh’s facebook note updates. They were always permeated by excitement for what God was doing and the new opportunities that were opening. In March 2010, he reported that he’d finally finished all his flight qualifications, found a missions agency to go with, and was rearing to go! I didn’t hear from him for a while after that, but I knew I would eventually. He was the type who exuded news and exciting updates whenever there was something to share.

Then, in April, 2010 Josh died. His plane crashed in a routine flight practice. I was stunned. Just when he had finally finished school, obtained his pilot’s license, and was on the brink of obtaining his dream! Why? What could God have been thinking? In the Geneva Magazine, Summer 2010 issue, his sister wrote that many people asked her the same question. She responds by saying, “I’ll tell you what Josh would say, and I know because God let us face this when we thought we’d lose Josh to disease. He’d say, ‘Don’t take me slowly when I’m doing nothing for the kingdom. Take me when I’m at the top. Take me when I’m on fire for Christ.’” Bekah wrote, “ Josh wasn’t on his way to becoming a missionary. He was a missionary already. He was at the height of his dedication and devotion to doing God’s work. Shouldn’t we all want to meet the Lord like that?”

I think about Josh a lot. I think about the kind of person he was. Josh’s dream wasn’t becoming a missionary pilot; it was life. It was living each day in the knowledge that he was saved and loved by his Lord. Josh’s joy and hope was in the journey of loving the Lord each day, serving Him, and touching others with that love every opportunity he could. Josh WAS a missionary. He DID realize his dream.

Josh’s life reminds me not to put my hope in going to the Saffron Land. Although God keeps confirming and opening doors in that direction, I have no promise that I’ll ever set foot there again. My dream is here. Now. It is living the journey of loving God daily and serving Him with joy. I do hope and pray fervently to go to the Saffron Land, but if I die tomorrow, my dream will not have been lost. God gives it to me every day. It is life and joy with Him today.

“Let him who glories, glory in this: that he understands and knows Me.”

Jeremiah 9:24