It is better to go to the house of mourning than to go to the house of feasting, for this is the end of all mankind, and the living will lay it to heart. (Ecclesiastes 7.2, ESV)

Because we didn’t follow our original plan to drive to my daughter’s lake house in Arkansas for the eclipse, on Saturday, I was able to attend the memorial service for my friend Mike Schmid who passed on his 72nd birthday, March 5, 2024. I’ve written about Mike before.

Mike Schmid with his wife Lorelei.

Here are some highlights from the memorial service, conducted by my friend Tom Anthony. When Tom moved back to the Colorado Springs area after a few years on staff at Max Lucado’s church in San Antonio, Texas, he was on staff at the large church Mike was attending. I’m proud to say that I connected them, and it became a fruitful relationship for both.

• Mike became a believer at the Air Force Academy, and one of his colleagues there was Harry Durgin who spoke. Harry pulled out a Navigator memory verse card and said, “We’ve always been big on scripture memory. Here’s the scripture; I’ve lost the memory! Sorry Mike.”
• Jerry White, President Emeritus of The Navigators explained how Mike came to Christ:

Mike came to my Navigator Bible class at the Air Force Academy, thinking it was on navigating an airplane. Then he saw me, as a young major, teaching the Bible. He soon came to faith, influenced by other cadets.

• Jerry also said something that could be an answer to a question I’ve asked frequently lately: “Why does God take the good ones so early?” Jerry quoted Genesis 5.24:

And Enoch walked with God; and he was not, for God took him. (Genesis 5.24, NKJV)

• Finally, Tom led us in a meditation on Paul’s prayer in Ephesians 3.14 – 21, which I’ll share shortly. He said Mike’s main takeaway from his four-year battle with cancer was that God loved him. We often say something like “We serve God because we love God,” and that’s true. But Mike came to believe:

God wants my love more than he wants my service.

Paul’s prayer for the Ephesians was that they experience God’s love. As Tom said, “A deep, relational, down-to-the-core love.” I close with Paul’s prayer, which was read at the beginning of the service and three times during Tom’s remarks:

For this reason I kneel before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth derives its name. I pray that out of his glorious riches

• he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being,
• so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith.
• And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people,
• to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ
• to know this love that surpasses knowledge—
• that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.

Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen. (Ephesians 3.14 – 21, NIV, parsed for clarity)