Yesterday was a day of beginnings. I began classes; I met for the first time with my girl's rec league soccer team. I love my students, and I've had the joy of coaching some of my soccer players for 4 years already. The pastors of the multicongregations shared together, and decided to meet monthly for sharing and prayer. Beginnings. From God, through God.

I returned home around 9:00 to find a message on my phone from Laura Krebs. Laura has taken much responsibility and care for Mike Patterson as he has weakened. Laura left a message that, according to hospice, Mike probably will not be with us much longer. To God. Pray for him as he makes his final journey in this life.

Before my meeting with the pastors, Deron and I met with Dave Harrison. We've known Dave four years. Dave told me that I was the second person that he met here in San Diego, down on the lot at 13th and Broadway. Last week Dave got a diagnosis that he has bone cancer in his legs. As he just had other medical procedures, chemo or radiation therapy is out of the question.

Dave has decided to go back home to Missouri. We convinced him to stick with us one more week so that we can help him make the transition to the VA hospital there, and get other connections. The congregation has put Dave and Bob up for a week in a hotel so that he might rest and prepare for the transition. We will send him as a congregation on Sunday. To God.

As I awakened early this morning, I've been praying for Mike and Dave, how thankful I am for the gift that they've been for me in my life. As many of us know, Dave drinks a bit, if that's not an understatement. But he's taught me so much about life. I don't know if I've laughed any deeper about the absurdity of the way society treats the poor than I have with Dave. I deeply love him, and God has given me great joy when Dave came into my life. It hurts to experience the transience of life with friends when they move through our lives. I will miss Dave horribly, and would love to be able to share these coming months of his coming struggles and sufferings with him.

Mike has taught me so much about human dignity and wisdom and honor and love. I guess that I knew in the back of my mind that his condition had so worsened last week that the progression of the cancer might take him this week. I woke him from his sleep last Friday, and we laughed at the shock of waking up to see my face looking at him! We've looked for the butter pecan Ensure for him that he likes, but it doesn't seem necessary now -- it's a little harder to find than we anticipated. I look forward to seeing him today and spending time in his final journey together.

The world's ills, the ravages of sin, are so prominent that, in abstraction, the suffering, the transience of everything is hard to take. Anger seems the appropriate response. Both Dave and Mike have suffered greatly by this absense that is evil and sin, as well, with the rest of us, contributed to that void that is sin. Yet in personal interaction with them, in friendship with them, God's love has seemed to transform even the evil of the world -- such as when the police tried to confiscate Mike's pick-up truck in which he lived from him by searching through it in the middle of the night, waking him from his sleep -- into something different, something beautiful, something indescribable. Through making the journey together, God teaches us the nature of the redemption in Christ, the solidarity with each other that is really possible, and that transience really is okay as we journey in Christ together. For we are from God, and through God, and moving to God.