Bethel United Methodist Church in Wildwood
Making disciples of Jesus * Leaving no one behind * Inviting you for the journey
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Bethel United Methodist Church in Wildwood Making disciples of Jesus * Leaving no one behind * Inviting you for the journey
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Launching Pads to Heaven “At Rest in Wildwood”, September 2005, Wildwood Historical Society George Gaehle, President of the Bethel Cemetery Committee, and in charge of sales and marketing of graves, relates his perspective on the work he was called to do. I had just retired and my son came back from college to work, about 1989. So I was eating breakfast with him, and my wife was getting ready to go to work, and this fellow from church calls me. And he says, "George, will you watch these records?" And I said, "What records?" And he said, "The cemetery records." And I said, "Why?" "Well, I've got to have my knees operated on." So I said, "Okay, Curtie." So I went down to his house just the day before he was going to be operated on. So I picked up those records and put them in the truck and I said, "Now Curtie, just as soon as you get your feet on the ground, I'll get these right back to you." He looked me right in the eye and he said, "George, I don't want them back." I don't teach, but I lead a Sunday school class, and there is a big difference. The subject was the Apostle Paul when he went to the town of Thessolonica and he kept telling everyone, "Jesus is coming again." Well he had to leave and go down to Corinth and start a church. And after he left, the Thessaonians said, "Now wait a minute, Paul said Jesus is coming again. My mother died, and my son died . . . what happens to all of them?" Timothy was with them, but he didn't know, so he went down and found Paul. And Paul wrote the Thessalonians a big letter, and in Chapter 4, verses 13-18 it says, "I would not have you ignorant, brother, but in the last days, the trumpet will sound, the archangel Jesus will come in the air, and all those who are asleep with Jesus will rise up out of the ground, and after that those who are living will ascend into heaven." That is what is called the Rapture. So I'm thinking to myself, "How am I going to lead this in a Sunday school class?" I had all of these cemetery records, I had this thought, and I forgot about this tape a guy had given to me when I was retiring. It was a Country-Western tape with Christian music on it, and it was a beautiful one. I had played about half of it, and it was in the trunk. And all of a sudden, I got a call from people who wanted to buy some graves in the cemetery. So I jumped in my truck and took all of the records with me, and there was that tape. And I plugged it in and it was going pretty good and so I turned it up, louder and louder. And then just as I got out here in the cemetery, looking over all of these headstones, the song came on that said, I'll see you in Rapture . . ." I mean it was belting it out! And in my minds eye I could see all of those bodies coming up. And I said, "George, you don't have a cemetery, you have a missile program, and each of the graves is a launching pad!" But the best story is this. This lady came with part of her family to buy a grave. She had lost her 17-year-old son who had been playing football, and she was crying hard, very hard. And so we went out and picked the spaces out, and then we walked back to the church to write up the sales agreement. And I couldn't help it, she was still crying, and so I looked her in the eye and I said, "I want you to know something. You're not buying a grave, you're buying a launching pad." And then her eyes stopped. And she looked at me, and I told her the story about the launching pads. And then we got into the church and finished all the paperwork. And the family got ready to go and she stood there with her hands on her hips and she said, "I'm not leaving until I hear the rest of the story." She was no longer crying. And that's what the passage in the bible says. "You must comfort one another with these words." George ended his discussion by saying, "Keep looking up," and then added, "As a Christian I don't think we should say goodbye, but rather, I'll see you later." |
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