Tom Hodge Revisited

His family held a celebration of life last Saturday at the church Tom and Ronda attended. It was streamed live on facebook.

Carol and I watched it; it lasted about an hour and a half.

First of all it seemed like a very cool church. Not your typical church. No organ. Instead there was guitar, a drum kit and keyboards. It was founded in 2000, and has churches located around the U.S. and outside the U.S.

Under "mission" on their website it says, in part: "Our vision is to establish Global Pervasive Hope; every street and every person." I can dig that. They believe that God's word as laid out in the Bible is true, they believe in the Trinity, and that humans need to believe, repent and follow Jesus. That gets a little heavy for me. But overall I get a good vibe from this place.

The clincher as far as coolness goes is that on their website there is a big window with rotating messages, one of which is "No 6PM service, Super Bowl Sunday, February 3."

I knew Jesus was a football fan.

Faith is a powerful thing.

One of Tom's brothers spoke, his son spoke. It hit me that there was no suffocating feeling of sorrow in the room.

They told stories of Tom that rang so true; Carol and I kept saying "Yeah, that was definitely Tom."

Stories with laughter, stories of love.

My opinion of religious people has evolved over the years. Early on I thought of them as zealots. Over the top. Preachy. A little further on I began to accept the fact that people needed religion, but I still felt it a bit silly to put all your eggs in the basket of an afterlife.

Last Saturday I watched in awe at this assemblage of people, who felt with all their hearts and all their souls that Tom had died and gone to heaven. That he was with God, who would accept him and love him unconditionally. They believe that Tom is happy.

Belief like that takes the sting out of death. That is a huge relief, the most amazing elixir anyone could ever mix up. And whether or not it is true, it just cannot be a bad thing to soften the blow of the death of a loved one.

I will never have that kind of faith. Can't happen. I have cast my lot with the sinners and unbelievers in the world.

But I feel good about Tom's family, knowing their sorrow is sweetened by faith.

If you can have that strong a belief and not get in my face about it I have enormous respect for you.

And maybe a little jealousy.