So Much To Process......So Much To Reflect Upon

I will be age 62 next month. I guess I am to some extent on the backside of my involvement in the workplace and in the community. It does not seem that way. Be certain, my goal is to stay engaged and involved, and to move forward in all aspects of my life. But reflections, more often than not, surface.

Today I attended the funeral of the most Christlike person I ever knew, Al Lineberry Sr. He was a member of the Greatest Generation and he was certainly one of it's greatest. His accomplishments are too numerous to name. He can best be summed up as an effective, kind, superb Christian example....... a tremendous representative of God's kingdom on earth. He was a great businessman, a pillar of the church, a philoanthanplist, a great family man, a state legislator, a wise rock of a school board chairman during the years of racial desegregation, on and on.

Al was also uniquely connected to my family. As an young apprentice mortician at Rich and Thompson Funeral Home in Burlington in the 1930s (before becoming one of America's most successful funeral directors), he took his meals and stayed at my Grandmother's boarding house. As she transitioned her boarding house to Greensboro to become a pioneer in the nursing home business, she and Al forged a lifelong friendship and business relationship. Al knew me and my brothers from the time we were small boys.

To have attended the celebration of his life today, to process the life he led, his vast contributions to humanity as they relate to God's great commission, and to ponder his important tie to my dear Grandmother, is alot to process. It prompts serious reflection on my life, to say the least.

Tomorrow I will be meeting a group of friends from grade school and high school at a minor league baseball game, some whom I have seen only at high school reunions over the past 45 years. This should be a joy and very interesting.......and more to process and reflect upon.

Bunny's health, our children's futures, my business, America's challenges, all make for so much to process and to reflect upon. I am thankful for a solid, eternal, and firm foundation from which to reflect and from which to seek direction, guidance and assurance.

One Al Lineberry's favorite scripture passages: "Finally, beloved, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things. Keep on doing the things that you have learned and received and heard and seen in me, and the God of Peace will be with you. Philippians 4:8-9 NRSV