The Passing of John’s Father

photo: Sonny (dad), Gina, Janette, Billy, Joanne (mom), John

John’s dad William Jewell passed away in March. We just had his funeral yesterday. At his military service, John read this article I wrote:

What do you say when someone dies? The good stuff. You talk about all of the fun memories you shared with that person and all of the positive ways he influenced his friends and family. You make everyone feel good about the life he lived and the hope that lies before him way out there in the great unknown. But what about when the person who died doesn’t leave you with happy memories and warm fuzzy feelings? What do you say when the world may actually be a better place without him? You say nothing at all, I suppose. You let the others say all the nice things. Unless they can’t. John’s dad passed away and nobody seems to know what to say to make sense of the really bad life he lived, so he asked me to try.

Honestly, I cannot say that Sonny Jewell ever treated me poorly. My first memory of him was when he took John and me camping and fishing in his RV. He made a surprisingly good beef stew and a shockingly bad cup of coffee. It was pressed through a gas station napkin because he had forgotten the filters. That’s when I learned that he was not very concerned with details or decorum. At our wedding he kept my mother in stitches with stories of his cab-driving days and the general shenanigans of a heathen trying to make it in this world. He showed well for short visits and was quite entertaining.

God fashioned a wonderful personality in that man, but the devil had dragged him into a dark place long before I met him, and he never seemed to be able to escape it. He didn’t talk about the abuse he suffered as a boy. Others in the family told me those stories. Instead, he just adopted the trauma and passed it along to his own family. For the better part of thirty years John and I have kept ourselves and our three sons at a distance, even though he lived just a few miles from the rest of the family.

When we came to town, John would faithfully go see his dad. The visits were less than satisfying but he knew it was the right thing to do. During one of those chats John shared the gospel with him. He listened and asked questions, and they had a conversation about it. He took it seriously but, at the end of the talk, he was angry—furious, in fact. He could not believe that a good God would ever forgive a man like him of all the evil things he had done. He liked the story but felt like it was outrageous to think it could ever apply to him. That was the last they spoke of it for years, and then one day Sonny brought it up again. He wasn’t sure it could be true, but he wanted to believe it. John studied the Bible with him and assured him that the promises are all trustworthy. He was baptized in his own bathtub, which was a trick since he was over six feet tall, but it happened. I saw it with my own eyes and praised God for such an unlikely miracle. John’s father had been reborn!

Unfortunately, over the following months and years, we didn’t see what we wanted to see, what we hoped to see. The miraculous transformation that would turn him into a gentle and loving father and grandfather never happened. Instead he went back and forth between doing good and doing evil. He tried and failed and tried and failed and tried and failed. I watched John’s sister faithfully honor and serve her father even though he was less than grateful. I watched his grandchildren hesitantly lean in towards him only to realize he had no interest in a relationship. We were disappointed and hurt and at times felt hopeless.

But today is not a day of hopelessness, not because of the life of Sonny Jewell though. No, his life was not good. His life was one of pain and suffering, for him and for everyone around him. In fact, sometimes the only positive feelings I could have about my father-in-law came from the promises in Scripture of God’s wrath for the wicked. I fully expect there are some who will read this and agree with me. You will feel a sense of satisfaction that he’s getting his. But I think you would be wrong.

If you expected this tribute to make you feel good because of all of the favorable things I would say about a precious life lost, I’m sorry I cannot oblige. If you thought this might make you feel good because I was going to tell you that an evil man is receiving his due punishment, I’m sorry to disappoint you again. If, however, you are open to it, I do think I have something to say that might just fill your heart with hope and even a little joy.

The very message Sonny Jewell had so much trouble accepting is the very thing I want to end with. I think it’s what Jesus wants us to end with, and it can be summed up in Mark 2:17: “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.” Sonny was not a good guy, but he knew that. He at once asked Jesus to heal him and at once was sealed in the blood of Christ. Even so, those demons never stopped bothering him and he was too weak to resist them. But the promises of God are true and everlasting and far above anything the devil would have us believe.

According to the overwhelming grace of God I read about in Scripture, I suppose I won’t be surprised to meet up with my father-in-law in heaven. But I think he will be the gentle, loving person God created him to be, the man we always wanted to get to know. In fact, those of us who have recognized that we are not healthy or whole or well at all without Jesus will all meet up in that great unknown as the perfect people we were meant to be, and that’s the thought I choose to dwell on when I think of Sonny Jewell. Feel free to join me in letting the anger and the frustration and the unmet expectations go to dwell on the inconceivable and astonishing goodness of God.