Joe Bunker - A Crown Testimony

On June 26, 2020, we got the phone call that no parent ever wants to get. We discovered that our son was missing while climbing Mount Rainier, and three days later it was confirmed that the park service had spotted his deceased body up on the mountain. And your life changes. You do not expect your children to pre-decease you. So his memorial service was about 10 days after he died, about a week or so after we found out that he had died. And you know, there's just, there's a lot going on. And the day before the memorial service, we're going to have a visitation that evening. And about an hour or so before that visitation, we're getting ready to go up to the church. And my wife and daughters are getting the photographs and mementos and stuff like that to put on a couple of tables up at the church. And all of a sudden it dawns on me a few minutes before they're getting in the car, there's something I want on those tables. And I go to the bookshelf and I quickly find this book. I open it up and I flip through. And after a few seconds, I find, I find the quitclaim deed, and it probably hadn't opened this book in over a decade, even though I've told the story about the quitclaim deed a fair number of times. But I find that deed and I just start bawling because I know what I wrote on it. And I pull out the reading glasses and I read it and I'm like, yep, I signed over my wife and our only child at the time, Matthew. And they're named on here, Matthew, his name is on there. And then all the silly things like bank accounts and houses and cars, things that don't matter in life, they're all listed here. And then my wife and I signed this over to the Lord. So I took the deed and went up to the church and made two copies. And I put one at the beginning of the first table and one at the end of the last table with all the Matthew's pictures and mementos and other West Point memorabilia and, you know, all, all this stuff.

And basically my way of acknowledging and telling the family and friends that were coming, that from the moment of his birth to his last breath, he always belonged to the Lord. And the Lord was very gracious to share Matthew with our family for 28 years. And I feel honored that the Lord entrusted me as the steward of Matthew. I wasn't the perfect dad, but I tried to follow these biblical principles the best I could. And as his dad, and he called me dad, I felt so good about that, that I was his dad. I tried so hard to be that faithful servant and to raise all the kids to know the Lord and to walk faithfully. And the split second he died, he was in the precious arms of Jesus. And he was always Jesus's. I know I'll be with him again someday. And that's really neat to know that. I have peace about what's going on. And Crown has helped our family tremendously. With that piece after the death of Matthew, running from the Lord and being angry with him, I know that doesn't work. Been there, done that. When Matthew died, I very much ran towards the Lord. There's a story that the author just got a new car. And a few days after he got a new car, he has it in a parking lot, and somebody puts a real bad door ding in it. And his response was, Well, Lord, I don't know why you wanted the big dent in the side of your new car, but you must have because there's a big dent in the side of your new car now. And as a dad to Matthew for 28 years, I don't know why the Lord called Matthew home after 28 years,

but he did. And that's God's business, not mine. He has a purpose, and maybe part of that purpose is for a stewardship story to be told. I don't know. That's part of the reason that I'm here. I want so desperately for some sort of good to come out of Matthew's death, and I have to restrain myself from not trying to push the hand to God, trying to make him do something. I can't make him do anything. I can only be faithful to him.