Farewell, Steve -- A Good Friend

Last Wednesday, I drove 2 1/2 hours south to Gulfport, to attend the funeral of Steve Burnett, a friend of mine.

Funerals are always a sad occasion, but this one was particularly poignant, for two reasons. First, Steve was only 54 years old, and second, he was a significant presence in my life.

Taken Too Young!

When is one NOT too young to go home to the Lord? Steve had a beautiful family, wife, five children, and two grandchildren, but should have been looking forward to decades more of enjoying these delights of life.

Steve's funeral, although necessarily sad, was also a time of rejoicing, for Steve was one of the most Christ-centered people I've ever known.

There were probably 400 people at his funeral, a testament to the respect in which he was held, and there was not a question in the hearts of any of us that Steve is now safe at home in the arms of his savior.

A Significant Presence

Above, I mentioned that losing Steve was particularly poignant for me, because he was a significant presence in my life.

I'll explain. Please bear with me for the background; the testimony is worth it.

More than twenty years ago, I had it on my heart that I really needed to be tithing. So I went to my wife Jan, and said, "We need to start tithing," and she responded, "What do you want to give up?"

I didn't have an answer for that, so we just went on as before. Not tithing.

We moved from Montgomery, Alabama, to Biloxi, Mississippi, where I met Steve Burnett.

Steve was a Tech Sergeant, who worked for a Master Sergeant, who worked for a GS-12 civilian employee, who worked for a GM-13 civilian employee, who worked for me.

So, technically, Steve was in my chain of command, but not close enough that I supervised any of his operations. However, his duties did bring him around my office fairly frequently, and I noticed he always carried a Bible. I spoke to him, and we began a good series of short discussions, mostly about religion in the military, but also about families and prior duties and many other topics. I very much admired the strength of his faith and his Christianity.

Steve retired from the AF about eight months before I did.

Ten years after my first stumbled attempt at tithing, and only a few months before I retired from the Air Force, I was listening to some mentors (on cassette tapes), and heard more about tithing, including the fact that tithing is the only area in the Bible in which God invites us to test Him. So again, I went to Jan and said, "We need to start tithing!" and again she responded, "What do you want to give up?" but this time, I said, "I don't care. It's not our money."

And so we began tithing.

When I retired from the Air Force, I sold a couple months' leave back, and got a pretty nice check for that. I took ten percent off the top of that check and put it into the offering plate the next Sunday.

This stunned the church treasurer, who came up to me after the service with this "are you crazy?" look on his face and said, "Are you sure you meant to do that?"

I assured him that I did, that it was a tithe, and it was God's money, not mine. He shook his head as he walked off.

After retiring from the Air Force, I got a job with the Mississippi Better Business Bureau, which is a great organization, but being a salesman for them wasn't the most fun job in the world.

I had done that nearly three months, when at 8:30 one Saturday morning, my phone rang.

It was Steve.

He apologized for waking me (he did wake me), and I tried to pretend I'd been up already. Then he said, "Dave, are you interested in a job doing database programming?"

I was quite surprised. I had no idea anyone in this state knew I was a computer person, but I guess this had come out in some of our conversations before.

I said sure, and we set up a time for me to come in and talk to Chuck, the boss.

Things worked out very well, and I wound up with a job I tremendously enjoyed, was (eventually got to be) quite good at, and paid enough money to keep us comfortable while my kids went through high school.

It was an amazing blessing, to have gotten that job.

About a month or so after I got started on the job, I took Steve to lunch, just to thank him for thinking of me for this job, because it truly was such a blessing.

As we were sitting down to the meal, I asked him, "Steve, what was it that made you call me that Saturday morning? I didn't think anyone around here knew I was into computers."

Steve raised his eyebrows in that way he has, and put down his fork. "It's interesting how that happened," he said. "Chuck asked me, early that morning, if I knew anyone who was good with computers, who would fit in with the kind of people we want in our business. I said I'd think about it, and I went back to my office, closed the door, sat down at my desk, and I prayed. Your name was the first thing that popped into my mind."

I stared. Wow, I thought. "Wow," I said.

"That's how it happened," he said.

Just so you know, there's absolutely no question in my mind that if I had not started tithing, that if I had not been faithful, and obedient to God's direction, this never would have happened, and I would never have gotten that job.

If you don't think God means what He says about tithing, then you obviously haven't taken Him up on His offer.

"Bring the whole tithe into the storehouse," He tells us, in Malachi 3:10, "that there may be food in my house. Test me in this, says the LORD Almighty, and see if I will not throw open the floodgates of heaven and pour out so much blessing that you will not have room enough for it."

Steve was the one that put the exclamation point at the end of this verse for me.

Thank you, Steve. I miss you, my friend.