When Your Mentor Goes to Heaven

You think a lot about dying

When your mentor goes to Heaven, you think a lot about dying.

The night I found out, my pastor had preached from Titus 2:11-13, a wonderful passage about salvation, godly living, and glorification.

“For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation to all men, instructing us to deny ungodliness and worldly desires and to live sensibly, righteously and godly in the present age, looking for the blessed hope and the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior, Christ Jesus.”

This is what I’d been meditating on when I got in the car and opened the text. My friend had sent me a picture of a long Facebook post. All I saw was “My precious daddy has at last…”. I didn't need to see who wrote it or to finish the sentence. I knew who it was about.

Did he pass?

He did. I know you loved him!

This wasn’t an out-of-nowhere-sudden-death. I knew it was coming. He’d been sick with Parkinson’s since 2008, when I still worked for him.

I knew it was coming, since the last letter I received from his wife told me he’d broken his hip, declined a good bit, and was mostly non verbal.

Now it had come, and I had to picture the man with the biggest smile, a poster face for his profession as a dentist and orthodontist, who brought life into every room he entered, lifeless—dead. Flashes of memories flooded my mind. Words he’d said to me. Stories. Scripture. Advice. Encouragement. Letters and emails he’d written. One moment where we’d prayed together—for God to heal him—alone in the space upstairs after everyone had left the office for the day.

I don’t think God will heal me—he said after we finished praying. My heart broke a bit then, but I didn’t rebuke him. I knew God doesn’t always heal us or others when we ask him to. And I didn't assume his comment came from doubt but from contentment—a trait someone further along in the faith learns.

When your mentor goes to Heaven, you mostly think about dying because they died so well. Dr. Lee Cope trusted a Sovereign God, one who gives health and takes it away. He lived 16 years with the disease and while I can be quick to say, “Why him, Lord? Why someone so good, so godly, so faithful? Couldn’t you have used him for many more years? Think of what he could have done his last 16 years if he’d been healthy!”

But God knew exactly what he was doing. He used Dr. Cope in ways surpassing everyone’s understanding.

Perhaps it’s true that God chooses his most godly children to endure the most suffering. Job, Paul, and countless missionaries and fellow Christians come to mind. It is the godly ones who will glorify him the most in suffering—all the more while growing in godliness until the end of their lives.

I opened Facebook to finish reading the post my friend had sent me through text. I read through the 900 plus comments as a way to celebrate his home-going.

He was the best man I knew!

He ran the race of faith to the end!

Everyone knew he loved Jesus!

Again, I think about dying. To die well, we must live well. For people to say such things about us once we’re gone, we must deny ungodliness and worldly desires. We must live sensibly, righteously, and godly in this present age. And we must look, continually, for the blessed hope and the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior, Christ Jesus. This is what my beloved mentor did, and now he is running on the streets of gold with a Parkinson’s-free-glorified-body, praising his Heavenly Father for all eternity.