I was processing with Ray Bandi the recent homegoing of friend and Navigator colleague Mike Schmid, who passed on his 72nd birthday, March 5 after a four or five-year battle with cancer. A complete obit is here, including the fact that he was able to speak to all of The Navigators Military Ministry staff in Dallas in November. An encouraging friend. A good man.

Anyway, back to my friend Ray who knew Mike when they were both at the Air Force Academy. Ray is class of ’72; Mike, ’74. Ray was talking about another Academy graduate who was in the Navigators’ ministry there, Gary Combs, class of ’69.

Ray said that Gary contracted a fatal disease in his 20s, not that long after graduation, and set up a reunion of Academy grads who had been in the Navigators ministry while they were students. This would have been in the early to mid-1970s, 50 years ago, and Ray still remembers clearly what Gary told them:

Don’t be sad for me. I know the Lord, and he used me. What more could a man ask? What more could a man ask? – Gary Combs, US Air Force Academy, Class of 1969, shortly before his death as a young man

I don’t know if Mike Schmid was at that meeting, but he would have said the same thing. “I know the Lord, and he used me…” for 50 years to disciple men who are following Jesus and discipling others. Mike’s was a life well-lived.

He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain that which he cannot lose. – Jim Elliot, journal entry, October 28, 1949.

Jim was killed in Ecuador by the very people he and four others were trying to reach, the Huaorani Indians of Ecuador, on January 8, 1956.

For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain. (The Apostle Paul, Philippians 1.21, ESV)