The Dark Night Of The
Soul: On the 25th day of May our son Alvin Kerry Chadwick
went to live with Jesus. It was an accident, a “Zip Line” that took him from
us. He was a godly servant of God so we know where he is today. If I did not
know that he is in heaven I do not know what I would do. Death is hard enough
on us when a Christian family member dies but it would be so very much harder
to have to see a loved one die and know that he or she would not go to heaven.
I am no stranger to death. I wrote in one of my blogs about
the death of my childhood friend Crandfiel D. McGovern. This happened when I was very young.
The death of my grandmother who I lived with in my teens was a sad and a glad
experience. It was sad because I knew I would miss her but I was also glad
because she was suffering so much with lung cancer and wanted to go live in
heaven. My father’s death was because of a long time sickness and it was easier
on me when he died. My mother was in her late 80’s when she died and she had dementia
for some time before she went home to heaven. These deaths were hard but
nothing like when Kerry died.
A friend
who had buried his son when he was in his 30’s because of a car accident told
me it was the hardest thing that he had faced in his life. He said you will
never get over it. I have a settled peace because I know he served God so
faithfully in his life time. The bible says: “Laughter can conceal a heavy heart, but when the laughter
ends, the grief remains.” Proverbs 14:13 New Living Translation;
and “For his anger lasts only a
moment, but his favor lasts a lifetime; weeping may stay for the night, but
rejoicing comes in the morning.” New International Version
I
did not blame God for his accident. It was not God’s fault but Kerry’s. He was
the manager of a Christian camp and they were testing the Zip Line. He said he
was going to put a 300 pound weight on the line and send it down to see if it
cleared the roof of the building that passed over. He put a 60 pound weight and
it was no problem at all. To the naked eye it looked like it would clear the
building with no problem. His daughter who strapped him in begged him not to go
on it until he had tested it with the heavy weight but he was sure it would be
no problem so he went down the line and hit the building roof then the zip line
went crazy swinging from side to side and banging him against trees on both
sides. He never did regain consciousness and died before the emergency vehicles
could arrive. Human error and not God’s fault is my prognosis. Could God have
stopped him? God can do anything he chooses. He made man a free moral agent and
man can choose to drink and drive or text and drive and for too many it brings
death. If God had made us puppets on a string then we could blame him for everything
that happens to us. However, God wanted to give us choices thus He made us in
His image as free moral agents. As the
people of Jesus’ day said about Jesus when Lazarus died, could not Jesus have
prevented Lazarus from dying? Yes, he could have and he could have done a miracle
and kept Kerry alive or he could have raised Kerry from the dead like he did
for Lazarus. It was not his will to do
so.
It
was said of some people in the Bible that died full of years. It could be said
of Kerry that he died full of service for his Lord. He accepted Jesus as his Lord
at an early age and served him in his teen years. I took him through the Billy
Hanks disciple training; meeting weekly with him in a restaurant every Saturday
morning for six months. In college he worked as assistant Baptist Campus
Minister and pastored a small rural church in Southern NM. He went to Southwestern
Baptist Seminary and pastored a small town church on the weekends. After he
graduated he did Clinical Pastoral Training in a hospital in Harlingen, TX.
Then he pastored a church in Deming, NM. Then he worked as a Baptist Campus
Minister in Silver City, NM. He then went to Sitka, AK where he was a pastor
for 10 years. While in Sitka he earned a Doctor of Ministry degree from Golden
Gate Baptist Theological Seminary. In May of 2013 he came back to New Mexico to
be the Camp Manager of Inlow Baptist Camp. He called it his dream job because
he loved the camp that he had attended from early childhood through his teen
years and had made a profession of faith and surrendered to preach the gospel. From
there he went to Heaven.
