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44. Cory's Bicycle

The baby was due in November; we had nine months to get ready. Of course, during those nine months, we also had to pastor the church. Things would get very busy for us.

Since our arrival in Oglesby, I had used the smallest of the three bedrooms as an office. This was convenient for me and saved the church the expense of heating the church office in the winter. The largest of the three bedrooms, the one at the front of the house off the living room, Linda and I used as a family room. This left the living room as a more “formal” room for entertaining, although the entertaining we did hardly needed a formal room. Our bedroom was the bedroom at the back of the house, next to the kitchen.

Now, I had not thought about a baby changing the room arrangements that had been in place for nearly two years. But my slowly swelling mama-to-be had some definite ideas about how it was gong to be.

"I want to keep the family room," she informed me. "I like not having the TV out in the living room. And since the small bedroom (I noticed she did not say your office) is right next to the bathroom and close to our room, I think that would make an excellent nursery."

So, there went my office! I had a few months to make other arrangements. In the mean time, we went shopping for baby furniture, which, we quickly found out, was almost as expensive as having a baby. So we went looking for used furniture. We found what we needed at an antique store east of LaSalle, and Linda proceeded to paint the furniture a bright yellow. She wanted the nursery to be bright and cheerful.

I decided to move my office to the church, where there already was an office. The deacons agreed to purchase some metal shelving, which I installed, to hold my pastor's library. There already was a large, wooden desk in the office. And there was a telephone. What else could I want?

How about bees? That was something else that was often in the office. One wall of the church building had become home to a colony of honey bees, and they occasionally found their way into the office, and sometimes into a church service. Sweet!

Through that summer as Linda grew bigger with our child inside her, we continued to try to lead the church to new levels of spiritual success and walk with the Lord. That was the summer that brought a terrible tragedy into the life of one of our families.

Cory* was fifteen in that summer of 1976. He sometimes rode his bicycle over to the parsonage just to talk to Linda and me. He did not do this often enough to become an intrusion in our routine, but he did it often enough to let us get to know him a little better.

He was a quiet young man. Soft-spoken. Gentle. Perhaps a little shy until he got to know people. Just a nice kid.

I don’t remember what we talked about when he came over. Just little things. I know he had made a profession of faith in Jesus Christ before I arrived at the church.

He, with his family, attended Sunday School and the morning service quite regularly.The family had relatives living in another town several miles to the east, near Chicago, in fact, just on the very edge of what would be called the Chicago metro area, in one of the far southwest suburbs. Cory went to spend a few days with the relatives in the first week of August.

I was driving to Camp Manitoumi, our Illinois Regular Baptist camp, each morning of that week to teach a series of lessons on the book of Romans. It was about an hour drive each way, and I could have stayed at the camp for the week had I chosen to do so. But that would have kept me away from the work and from my blossoming bride. So I decided to make the drive each morning, returning around noon. A fairly busy two-lane highway was the route I had to follow, and Linda showed her concern each morning when I left by reminding me to drive safely because I had an important responsibility arriving in the fall and I had better be there to help her!

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So off I went safely to drive the two-lane highway every morning and every noon for seven days, almost consecutive days except for the Sunday when I did not go to camp. While I was driving that road to the camp each day, Cory and his bicycle were visiting the relatives in the Chicago suburb.

I believe it was Thursday, August 5. Cory was riding on a lightly traveled street near the relatives' home. Somehow the front wheel of his bike caught in a hole in the pavement and flipped the bike over. Cory hit his head hard on the pavement. The wisdom of wearing headgear while riding a bike had not yet made its way into popular culture.

He was rushed to the hospital, but died within hours of the accident. Needless to say, his family, and the church, were devastated by the accident. And it was my job to comfort them all as best as I could.

The funeral was held at our church at nine o’clock the morning of Monday, August 9. I stood in front of the church and watched as more people than had been in our church for a long time came to take their place in the pews. I escorted the casket up the front steps of the church and to the front where I would lead the service.

There was some music, but I don’t remember exactly who sang or what was sung. I read the obituary that had been published in the LaSalle News-Tribune. And then I asked the question that was on every persons’ heart. Why? Why a young person of fifteen years?

I used the text from John eleven. Lazarus was dead. His sisters, Martha and Mary were grieving. If you had been here, Martha told Jesus, my brother would not have died. An accusation against God. Why would He not prevent the death of a loved one?

I answered the question with two arguments from the passage. First, God does not make mistakes. Not ever. John tells us that Jesus had a purpose in delaying his arrival when he heard of Lazarus' illness. He did not err in delaying His arrival; He worked it out to suit His purpose. I assured the family and friends gathered that God had not made a mistake in taking Cory home at such a young age.

The other argument I made from the passage is that whatever God does, He does it in love. John says that Jesus loved Lazarus. In fact, even though He knew what He was going to do, He wept at the grave of Lazarus. The shortest verse in the Bible occurs here — John 11:35. Jesus wept. I reminded the people that God was not ignorant of their grief and loss. But I also reminded them that Cory was with Him, absent from the body and present with the Lord. Though his death was certainly a loss to those of us left behind on earth, Heaven was a gain for Cory.

We went out to the cemetery and there the family said their final good byes to their eldest child, a quiet young man who so often rode his bike to our house. And in that cemetery near LaSalle, Illinois, Cory’s body still rests, awaiting the day when Jesus says to him as He did to Lazarus, Come forth. In the meantime, Cory’s soul has already spent more than thirty years in the presence of Jesus.
*I have not used Cory's real name.
Photo: The parsonage in which we lived for 21 years in Oglesby, Illinois. This picture was taken in the especially snowy winter of 1978-79.
Copyright © 2010, Thomas M. Parsons, All Rights Reserved. - 201