In our texts and conversation the last couple of years, I often referred to Chasen Stevenson as “big guy.”  This was the time following his diagnosis with kidney cancer at the age of 29.  It was a period he and his wife simply called a journey.

He reminded me once that he wasn’t as big as he had been.  Perhaps the term “big guy” was a friendly reminder to him, in case he needed it, that a man is bigger than his circumstances.

His funeral was last week.  He was 31.  Many great tributes have poured out to him.  They said so much, so well.  I’d share a few thoughts of my own.

I once heard a priest give a homily on Doubting Thomas.  Thomas, the priest felt, gets a bad rap.  All he really wanted was the opportunity all the other apostles had.  Who’s to say how any of them would have reacted had they been the ones left out?

According to the priest, the real gist of the story wasn’t about Thomas and his doubts.  The real gist is that you and I, as best we can and in spite of our own faults, are to offer to others that same experience Christ offered Thomas.  We are to try and be His hands and feet.  It is clear in the tributes I’ve read that Chasen offered that chance to many.  He did to me as well.

We get hung up on Thomas and his doubts.  We get hung up on our own.  I think we make them more than they are.  Perhaps faith and doubt aren’t mutually exclusive terms.  Maybe they exist together.  Moments of our greatest doubts can offer opportunities for our greatest faith.

These are the things the big guy has me thinking about.

He was a leader.  When people think of leaders, they tend to think of someone finding a way when no one else can.  How often that actually happens, though, I’m not sure.

More often than not, a leader takes the route everyone sees, but no one wants to go.  They might not want to go either.  They simply understand the need so they persevere.  The perseverance is in the face of the very things that intimidated the rest of us from going to begin with.

This can leave us standing outside the ring, marveling at the big guy all day long.  I think he’s asking more of us than that.  Sooner or later, we’ve got to get in the ring with him so he can show us the ropes.

After Chasen’s funeral, I made the trek that afternoon into part of Iowa Farm Bureau’s Annual Meeting.  It’s where I had met Chasen a few short years ago.  A year ago we caught up in the hallways and shared lunch the last day.  This time, I would only be in the company of his friends.

There they were, leaders in their own right.  Some were being honored with nominations and awards.  Some offered encouragement to others.  All were enjoying the fellowship they found by being called to a noble way of life:  temporary caretakers of a little part of God’s creation.

In celebrating that fellowship something wonderful happens.  I was going to type that you meet the people that change your life.  Maybe you meet the people that inspire you to change your own.

I can’t help but wonder where their own journeys will take them all.  I wonder how many lives Chasen will go on to touch in having touched theirs.  In the end, the questions of doubt raised in me by his death were answered with faith in having witnessed a small part of his life.

I called him “big guy” because it was a term of love.