My dad was a clergyman and a missionary during the first ten years of my life. He left the clergy for health reasons, among others, and took a low-paying, low stress job as a funeral attendant at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Southern California. Many movie stars are buried there. It has been called “the Disneyland of Death.”

There were about 40 people in the department. Half a dozen were self-identified Christians. They loudly took offense at the use of foul language or the sharing of an off-color joke. They strode boldly into the lunchroom, a huge, well-marked Bible tucked under one arm. After ostentatiously blessing their sandwich, they would pop open the Bible and read while munching.

Dad knew the Bible as well as any of them, and they knew better than to challenge him on any matter of scriptural interpretation. At lunchtime, he read cheap paperback westerns by Zane Grey and others. When he entered the lunch room with his brown bag and a well worn volume, he carefully chose a seat from which he could see the door. Like a wise sheriff in a town full of rowdy drunks spoiling for a fight, he refused to sit with his back to the door. When he appeared at the lunch room door, his fellow workers would point mock pistols at him and make gunshot sounds. He obligingly ducked, with a big grin on his face.

His Christian friends disparaged him for reading such trash, but Dad never did anything for show and effect. He refused to make a public spectacle of praying over his food. He never read his Bible where he could be seen by others, but he kept one in his locker just in case.  He memorized the portions of scripture that he needed for conversations with inquirers and sufferers. He was reluctant to use scripture to make a point or win an argument. He talked little. He listened much. When a fellow worker was in pain and needed someone to talk to, they always went to Dad because they knew it was safe. He would listen. He never preached.

His life motto: I must so live a Christlike life that others will see Christ in me.

When he died, at work, at the age of 55, he was deeply mourned by his fellow workers. One of them, Howard Rouser, with whom he had worked for 15 years, came to me and said. “I never knew a man who I thought was a real Christian—until I met your Dad.”

Be prepared at all times for the gifts of God and be ready always for new ones. For God is a thousand times more ready to give than we are to receive. —Meister Eckhart