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In 2009 on a rain-slick stretch of Interstate 15 in Idaho, a man by the name of Rich Retallic lost control of his light truck.
His vehicle struck the median and overturned. Even though he was wearing his seat belt, the impact tragically took Rich’s life. He was a 62-year-old husband, father, and grandfather.
As I happened to mention closer to that time, he was also the youth leader whom God used to change my life.
Early in the 1970s, Rich was studying to become a pastor at Louisville Theological Seminary. He arrived at my family’s church on the north side of Indianapolis as a “weekend warrior” contracted to spend 48 hours every week leading our garden-variety high school youth group.
I was one of the seniors. I was also on my way out. I was in the process of leaving the youth group, my church, and Christianity itself as a way of making sense of the world.
I had become captivated by Darwinism and evolutionary biology’s answers to the three great human questions.
Who are we? We are the end products of a long series of fortuitous genetic mutations.
Where are we heading? Individually we are headed for the grave. As a species we will all perish when total entropy transforms the universe into an everlasting icebox.
What should we be doing right now? I resonated with what Kurt Vonnegut had said to his young son Mark when he asked, “Dad, why are we here?” The novelist replied, “We’re here to help each other get through this, whatever this is.”
Then Rich showed up.
He wasn’t like our previous youth group leaders, who were brimming with cutting edge ideas and led incisive discussions about Vietnam, America’s social upheaval, and whether the God-Is-Dead theologians were right. By comparison, Rich was rather dull.
But Rich actually claimed to know God. I was intrigued. I had never known anyone personally who prayed as if God might answer.
Even though I was supposed to be abandoning the whole church thing, I stuck around to see if there might be some truth in the Jesus stories after all.
Rich gave me a book (Run, Baby, Run, by Nicky Cruz) authored by a New York City gang leader and murderer who had come to Christ in the midst of a seemingly hopeless life. It was the first time I seriously entertained the thought that God might be real and accessible. He might even be interested in a Midwestern teenager.
I don’t recall exactly when my heart began to change. Gradually I realized there was another set of answers to the great human questions:
Who are we? We are the treasured children of the magnificent Architect of the universe.
Where are we heading? We are either running towards or scurrying away from God’s outstretched arms.
What should we be doing right now? We have the chance to bet our lives that Jesus knows the truth about everything.
Looking back, I would have to say that I was born again breech. Rich helped me through the struggle. To this day I still wrestle with doubts and questions. But he was the first person who showed me I could trust God and love science and not lose my mind in the process.
Rich’s dream of becoming a pastor never came true. He doubted his own gifts. He moved to the Pacific Northwest and became an elementary school teacher, Phys Ed instructor, and postal worker.
More than three decades after we went our separate ways, I gave Rich a call. It was wonderful to hear his voice. We talked about how our lives had turned out. I assured him that he had been instrumental in shaping the course of everything I had experienced.
Rich resisted the idea that he had made much of a difference. He seemed surprised to learn that, incredibly, nine of the kids and volunteer leaders in that garden-variety youth group had entered full-time Christian ministry – in large part because of his own faithfulness to God.
What will surprise us the most in the next world?
I don’t think it will be the answers we finally receive to our most vexing theological questions.
I suspect our eyes will open widest when we grasp the impact that we had on each other’s lives.
Just by showing up day by day with our prayers, our love, that book we once gave to someone, and our brief words of encouragement, we’re sending out what seem to be the humblest of ripples.
But those ripples go all the way to eternity.