He Was a Friend of Mine

Today would have been the birthday of one of my best friends. He would have been 65 today. He didn't get this far.

On a Good Friday, just days before his 43rd birthday, he died of AIDS. He had needed a blood transfusion a number of years earlier before there was any way of knowing if blood was contaminated.

We had thought we were going to grow old together, keeping up by phone and letters(at that time they were the only ways we could have done so.)

(I posted on this six years ago (link) but had the date one day off.)

It's now been 22 years. Incredible how time flies. Incredible that today AIDS is more often than not another chronic illness and not a fatal disease. I think of him often, especially at Good Friday and Easter. I am reminded of the promises of God in Jesus. And I pay attention to the prophet Isaiah: 28-31

Do you not know?
Have you not heard?
The Lord is the everlasting God,
the Creator of the ends of the earth.
He will not grow tired or weary,
and his understanding no one can fathom.
He gives strength to the weary
and increases the power of the weak.
Even youths grow tired and weary,
and young men stumble and fall;
but those who hope in the Lord
will renew their strength.
They will soar on wings like eagles;
they will run and not grow weary,
they will walk and not be faint.

Thanks be to God at this Easter season- and for all those in that amazing great cloud of witnesses who have already received that promise.