I began to look through my mental file cabinet under "S" where I had filed Tommy as strange. (It seems as though everybody I try to reject by classification God sends back into my life to educate me.) "But what I really came to see you about," Tom said, "is something you said to me on the last day of class." (He remembered!) Tom continued, "I asked you if you thought I would ever find God and you said 'No!' which surprised me. Then you said, 'But he will find you!' I thought about that a lot, even though my search for God was hardly intense at that time." (My "clever"line,he thought about that a lot!) "But when the doctors removed a lump from my groin and told me that it was malignant, then I got serious about locating God. And when the malignancy spread to my vital organs, I really began banging bloody fists against the bronze doors of heaven. But God did not come out. In fact, nothing happened. Did you ever try anything for a long time with great effort and with no success? You get psychologically glutted, fed up with trying. And then you quit."

Well, one day I woke up, and instead of throwing a few more futile appeals over that high brick wall to a God who may or may not be there, I just quit. I decided that I didn't really care...about God, about an afterlife or anything like that." "I decided to spend what time I had left doing something more profitable. I thought about you and your class and I remembered something else you had said: 'The essential sadness is to go through life without loving. But it would be almost equally sad to go through life and leave this world without ever telling those you loved that you had loved them." "So I began with the hardest one: my Dad. He was reading the newspaper when I approached him." "Dad". "Yes, what?" He asked without lowering the newspaper. "Dad, I would like to talk with you." "Well, talk." "I mean. It's really important!" The newspaper came down three slow inches. "What is it?" "Dad, I love you. I just wanted you to know that." Tom smiled at me and said with obvious satisfaction, as though he felt a warm and secret joy flowing inside of him. "The newspaper fluttered to the floor. Then my father did two things I could never remember him ever doing before. He cried and he hugged me. And we talked all night, even though he had to go to work the next morning. It felt so good to be close to my father, to see his tears, to feel his hug, to hear him say he loved me." "It was easier with my mother and little brother. They cried with me too, and we hugged each other and started saying real nice things to each other. We shared the things we had been keeping secret for so many years. I was only sorry about one thing: That I had waited so long." "Here I was just beginning to open up to all of the people I had actually been close to.

Then, one day I turned around and God was there. He didn't come to me when I pleaded with him. I guess I was like an animal trainer holding out a hoop, 'C'mon, jump through. 'C'mon, I'll give you three days...three weeks.' Apparently God does things in his own way and at his own hour." "But the important thing is that He was there. He found me. You were right. He found me even after I stopped looking for Him. "Tommy," I practically gasped, "I think you are saying something very important and much more universal than you realize. To me, at least, you are saying that the surest way to find God is not to make him a private possession, a problem solver or an instant consolation in time of need but rather by opening to love. You know, the Apostle John said that. He said "God is love, and anyone who lives in love is living with God and God is living in him'."

"Tom could I ask you a favor? You know when I had you in class you were a real pain. But (laughingly) you can make it all up to me now. Would you come into my present Theology of Faith course and tell them what you have just told me? If I told them the same thing, it wouldn't be half as effective as if you were to tell them." "Oooh...I was ready for you, but I don't know if I'm ready for your class.""Tom, think about it. If and when you are ready, give me a call." In a few days, Tommy called. He said he was ready for the class; that he wanted to do that for God and for me. So we scheduled a date. However, he never made it. He had another appointment, far more important than the one with my class and me. Of course, his life was not really ended by his death, only changed. He made the great step from faith into vision. He found a life far more beautiful than the eye of man has ever imagined. Before he died, we talked one last time. "I'm not going to make it to your class," he said."I know, Tom." "Will you tell them for me? Will you....Tell the whole world for me?" "I will Tom. I'll tell them. I'll do my best."

So to all of you who have been kind enough to hear this simple statement about love, thank you for listening. And to you, Tommy, somewhere in the sunlit, verdant hills of heaven: "I told them, Tommy, as best I could."