I still don't have the words. On the other thread, TG lost a good man..., I was stunned. I had seen the header, and so was a little warned, but it still shocked the hell out of me.
It was a bolt from the blue. I searched my photos, and found a picture I had taken of a tree that sits on a ridge about a hundred yards or less behind my tent at camp. It is a magnificent red spruce, maybe 50 or 60 years old. Straight, strong, and surrounded by its progeny and comrades in arms. It was struck by lightning one stormy night, with a roar that sent me up in the air from my flat-butt seat on the floor of my tent. My feelings on learning of Chris' death were much the same as that night, and the following day when I went to see what had happened. The strike had ripped down the entire length of the tree and blasted earth from over its roots.
God's work is awesome, often sudden, and to us, incomprehensible. Powerless, I pray for strength, and that His will be done. But the sadness, the wrenching loss of something so grand and good, is so hard to take. May Chris' goodness and giving ways persevere in all of us who look upon his example. May we be worthy of being his friends, and praise God for showing us the good qualities that a man is capable of.
Killdeer