Further up and further in!

Three years ago last month my father-in-law passed away. A few days after the memorial service, sitting in his little office I noticed an old worn Bible on the shelf and opened it. Inside the front cover he had written these words:

"The will of God: Nothing more, nothing less, nothing else."

There, I thought, was the answer to what made Dick Cadd the man he was: His single-minded focus on serving God.

Someone else reading those words might have found them terribly restrictive; after all, the usual image evoked by the "straight and narrow" is one of sober austerity, self-denial, seriousness. Not Dick. He had stepped into God's kingdom as a young man and had found there a world far bigger, more glorious and wonderful than anything his former life had offered. Dick's life was full of adventure, full of laughter and fun, overflowing with a joy that splashed over everyone around him. He was the best model I've ever seen of what a daily walk with Christ looks like because his rock-solid confidence and assurance in God's love & goodness was based on a lifetime of relationship with God.

"The further up and the further in you go, the bigger everything gets. The inside is larger than the outside." ~C.S. Lewis, The Last Battle