It happened again this week. One of my good friends of the past left this life in the present. And I am left sorrowful for his death, but joyful for his life. With the hope that Jesus gives to us, smiles eventually defeat the tears.
Stanley Shaquanie, my Tlingit brother in Kake, Alaska, said farewell to this terrestial plane earlier this week. He leaves a great family mourning for him, and an entire village in the double clutches of grief, since they had just lost another revered Elder, Lois Berkeley, early last week. Our prayers are with his dear wife Alberta, and with his entire family, and with all the Ravens and Eagles of Kake. May they help each other dry the tears on their faces.
Stanley was a strong man, physically and mentally, and he had been through a lot of tough times in his life, including his own recent battle with the difficult disease of cancer. I hate cancer. It devastates people and families like few other diseases do. It claimed the life of Stanley, of his young son before him, and has attacked two of his beautiful daughters and his own dear wife.
But through it all, Stanley was a man of strength and courage, and always had a smile and a kind word for others. He was always ready to cheer someone else up with his good humor and special ways. My daughter Joanna remembers him fondly, for his laughter and his kidding, and his words of encouragement. We knew him to be someone ready to lend a helping hand to anyone in need.
Stanley was a truly wonderful man who worked very hard, and who did a lot of good in his life. He was a family man of the highest degree, and in a native Alaskan village that is an extremely high compliment, because family matters greatly, and the whole village works together to help each other out. The rest of the world can learn a lot from the Native Alaskan people and their time-tested values and ways. Stanley believed in the old ways of respect and community values. He also was a strong believer in Jesus Christ, and he served ably as an elder of the Presbyterian Church. He saw how true Christianity and the ancient Native Alaskan values were often like hand in glove.
Stanley Shaquanie was not afraid to proclaim the faith he had in Jesus Christ and he would freely tell you how Jesus makes a difference in our lives here, and how the Lord makes possible our life to come. We say "see you later" to Stanley, because we are confident that he is even now in the arms and care of God, and that some glad morning, when this life is over for us, we will be reunited with Stanley again.
Stanley and his good wife and family seemed to have far more than their fair share of suffering in this life. Sometimes it seems that God calls on some people to carry a cross of greater suffering in this life, in order to teach the others of us good life lessons we need to learn. Stanley was willing to that, if God called on him to do it, and so it was that Stanley taught many of us about courage, dignity, and family, and about strength and grace under pressure.
John 3:16 plainly says that Jesus came that “all who believe in Him might have eternal life.” In the scriptures we see a pattern -- The Biblical call is to trust both the present and the future to God.
Jesus was the Lamb of God that took away the sin of the world; He became our priest and sacrifice, all in one. Confronted by our hopelessness in sin and death, Christ interceded by offering himself -- His entire person and work -- in order to reconcile us to God. It has been said that when our Lord passed through the door of real human death, He showed us that there is no sorrow He has not known, no grief He has not borne, and no price He was unwilling to save us. Jesus died, his mother grieved, but death was conquered!
And on that fine day beyond the future, time will be no more, and the newest dawn will break upon us from on high, and we will be in the sweet by and by. Until then, may we all have a closer walk with our God on this earthly plane. One day, in that bright land the Scriptures talk about, through the grace of Jesus Christ, we will celebrate with families and friends, reunited in the Day of Resurrection! And I will give Stanley Shaquanie a big hug! What a day of rejoicing that will be!
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