Not too long ago, John Dobbs started a meme among some Christian bloggers for recognizing those who have influenced us. I wrote about a few people and promised to write about some more.

On Easter Sunday, I attended the funeral of Shirley Huston. Shirley and her husband Ed were my Bible school teachers during middle school (we called it junior high back then). They were heavily involved in other youth activities, like our annual camp. It’s hard to think of camps or retreats without thinking of them.

Ed and Shirley had 5 kids, the oldest of whom was one year behind me in school. Their house became a popular gathering place for the young people during my high school years. I spent many hours there with others from our church.

To be honest, I can’t describe even one Bible lesson that I heard in their class, though that doesn’t mean that I didn’t hear some good ones. What it means is that the influence they had in my life went far beyond what happened in a Sunday School classroom. Probably the biggest influence was the example of family life that I saw in them.

Shirley was deeply loved; hundreds of people turned out for her funeral. The funeral, though tinged with the sadness of the loss we had experienced, was more a time of testimony to a life well lived than a time of mourning. Could any of us aspire to anything more when our own time comes?