A post from a couple of years ago popped up on my Facebook the other day. I reread my words and felt all over again the same level of intensity. I pray that I will never ever forget.

This is what I wrote…

In the last two weeks, I have been on the scene of nearly 40 deaths in the Reno – Sparks area. I have removed suicide victims ranging in age from 14 to 70, who used every method possible to end their lives. I have been in fancy homes and seedy hotels. I have seen people die with family all around them and those that were only found because they were late on their rent.

To say that I am changed is an understatement of enormous magnitude. As a human being, I am disgusted by my lack of concern for, or maybe it is a lack of awareness of, people that are different than me or that do not run in my “circles.” As a father, I am amazed at the impact the culture and peers have on children – children like mine. As I helped a father put his teenaged son into a casket, I was convinced that no parent should ever have to do that or help do that. As a husband, I have become aware of the incomprehensible pain and fear that comes from, often without warning, becoming a widow or widower. As a pastor, I am convicted. Our community is desperately seeking something and, as it seems, dying with nothing.

I am no longer satisfied with church as usual. How can I be? I preach every week about a world that I thought I knew and yet, right outside my door is a world that I had never ventured into. Please forgive me if somehow I seem uninterested in the rantings over the weather or unmoved by what now seems like frivolous, bumper-sticker God quotes. The trivial problems of my life are trumped over and over everyday by people that I have never taken an opportunity to know. I have become thirsty for the deeper things of God, unsatisfied with simple answers but instead searching for purpose and personal responsibility.

I am changed and pray that my soul will never settle again. When I close my eyes, I see their faces and I pray, not just for them and the family that mourns but for myself, asking God to let me see people the way that He sees people and love them with that same intensity.