A WEEKLY CHALLENGE: They transported the body of a friend

I got to meet and learn about Jim Belyou as he was writing the last chapter of his life. I was deeply touched by his life and by his passing. Let me share with you just a little of what could not have been scripted by Hollywood, but was indeed scripted by the divine.

Belyou had a love for the Amish people. He knew that they wouldn’t drive a car – according to their religion and their beliefs. He was known as an “Uber driver for the Amish.” With one small exception. He wouldn’t take a dime for gas or for his time spent driving them in his big red van which he bought so he could transport entire Amish families. Whether it was taking them across town for groceries or across the United States to move their entire family.

As a basketball coach I would always tell my players, there is an important choice to be made when the clock starts. You can choose to make an appearance or you can choose to make a difference. I not only live with that choice on the basketball court, but in all of life’s pulpit.

When you choose to just appear, you count the moments until you are finished with the task at hand and your journey can be a cruel taskmaster. But when you choose to make a difference, you summon the courage and the strength to alter life itself, and lives can be changed all around you.

Perhaps a word of encouragement and a small boy doesn’t give up. Perhaps a loaf of bread and a family doesn’t go hungry. Perhaps a ride in a red van and a family is transported to a new home.

This was a man certainly had an unusual ministry. He provided rides to the Amish. Whether they had to go to the store or relocate to another state, this man and his wife provided the transportation. When he spoke about this being his ministry, his eyes would just light up.

He not only had a fascination for the Amish, but a love for their simple and dedicated way of life. He didn’t adhere to or worship their ways, but here was a man of a different world, permeating the closed culture of these very private people.

He didn’t care which culture they embraced, or that their clothing and their ways were different, Belyou had a gospel that he didn’t preach, but that he lived. The Bible says that God doesn’t look upon the outward appearance, but that He looks upon the heart. That’s the Father’s business.

Belyou was all about his Father’s business. No fanfare, no motivation for fortune or fame, he just had that special gift. The gift to be able to look past the differences and see the needs. And see the hearts. The hearts of people that would become close friends and who had a need.

Friends with their proud horses pulling humble carriages and precious cargo. Belyou and his wife Sue, didn’t make an appearance in this life, they truly made a difference. Especially in the lives of those people you never hear about until one of their buggies is going too slow on a main highway on a Sunday morning.

Now Belyou didn’t always have the role of “driving Miss Yoder.” He made a difference in every endeavor that he encountered and touched lives at every fold on his map.

They say it’s the good who die young and we found out that Belyou had been diagnosed with stage 4 cancer.

There was a Friday in April about 20 years ago that I will remember as if it were yesterday. We got the call from Belyou’s wife that he had been taken by ambulance to the hospital.

As my wife and I arrived at Saginaw Veteran’s Hospital at noon, we felt as if something very powerful was going to happen. Now, I’ve seen people at death’s door, turn around and come back. Twice I’ve witnessed people go through that door and come back. Perhaps this was going to be one of those days.

Perhaps God would let Belyou recover and come back for a little while longer… perhaps to transport just one more Amish family to a new homestead. We were told by his wife that the doctor’s update was not good, nor was the prognosis for life, explaining that his kidneys had shut down and his liver was also heading in that same direction. Soon the body cavity would fill with fluid and he would be gone.

As we entered the room, it was a veritable “who’s who” of angels and ministering spirits. Although there were only a handful of family present, we felt crowded in a realm that could only be seen with the human heart. During the day we fellowshipped with family in and out of the room, we sang together, we interceded, we talked about poems, prayers and promises.

We even found a time to laugh together. One of Belyou’s favorite things to do was laugh and we offered it as one of our final gifts. He told me once, “I love jokes. But I just can’t seem to remember how they go the next day.”

The day had many facets to it. The story I will share with you here and now is simply so powerful that it too can only fully be appreciated with the heart. We noticed that Belyou’s breathing had become more and more labored as the day wore on. Although he had been heavily medicated, we felt that his connection was still with us.

By 6 p.m. the “death rattle” was growing louder and more intense, and we knew that like a flood, the bodily fluids were beginning to submerge his lungs. Many visitors had come and gone in the two days that he had spent there, but on this day, people came and didn’t want to leave.

Somehow, we all wanted to be standing at the shore when his ship sailed. And what an honor and a privilege to be anointed and appointed to walk someone to that door. That our faces will be forever remembered as the last faces he would see on this side of eternity.

Even that Amish family that Belyou had driven on so many occasions were supposed to be coming up later in the evening to say their goodbyes. I kept encouraging family members to talk with Belyou and speak with him while his spirit was still listening. Listening, they say, is the last to go. I heard his wife tell him on more than one occasion, “I love you honey. Melvin’s Amish family… they’re coming to see you tonight. They’ll be here in just a little while.”

By 7:50 the labored breathing had gone to shallow breaths, pushed out like contractions every few minutes. As if he were birthing his own death. With the lengthening shadows outside, the room seemed to grow dark and quiet. I went quickly to the lounge and found scattered family members and told them, “His breathing is weak. It’s close to the end.” At 7:55 there was a muffled but bustling procession in the hallway, and suddenly there were bonnets and long dark dresses, handmade quilts, men with beards and simple black hats.

Belyou’s precious Amish family had arrived to say “goodbye.” There we stood in a circle around the bed. I had Belyou’s left hand in my right hand and his wife also next to me. She looked tired and worn as the events of the past few months had started to take a toll, and the reality of the moment had come to rest in those weary eyes.

Melvin Yoder was directly across from me holding Belyou’s other hand and completing the sphere. The circle we created around him was unbroken as his breathing seemed to stop and start without any rhyme or rhythm. I asked his wife if it would be all right to sing him home. She welcomed it in the midst of that heavy silence.

We started to sing the song “Amazing Grace.” Amid the tears and broken voices, it seemed as if that music spilled out of that room and down the hallway into other rooms in that hospital corridor. What a sight it must have been. The Amish clothed in their simplicity, interspersed with those of us who seemed to be from another place and time.

Hand in hand, all singing boldly, loudly – the same words. The same song. With the same heart. All of us on the same spiritual hymnal page of this day. All saying “goodbye” this one last time to this man who was already at that moment waving from afar and disappearing from our eyes.

I realized that it was Belyou’s life that brought even different cultures hand in hand unified in song and purpose. I remember starting that first stanza, and when we came to the end of it, the song was continued by “Brother Yoder” on the other side of the bed as he began the second verse, “Twas grace that taught my heart to fear…”

When we got to the very end of the second verse, with that final word, we knew that it was as far as we would go with Belyou still with us. With the words, “the hour I first believed,” there was a last gasp as his spirit lifted gently from his body.

One last squeeze from his hand and he was gone. I didn’t know if anyone else had felt it, but I knew that everyone continued to hold on tightly to this moment. There was silence. A peaceful silence, and then through the darkness, I heard my wife begin to sing the Lord’s Prayer as others began to join in.

I reached down to feel for the pulse of his life but knew that I wouldn’t feel it. I kissed him gently on the forehead and left quietly for the nurse. Belyou didn’t lose a battle with cancer, he won a battle over hell, death and the grave. As I ministered to those embracing and in tears, I realized something very special. That these people that Belyou transported were his ministry. I told them that. “You were his ministry,” I said and continued. “You provided purpose and vision. There is something so profound about the gift of purpose, and what it can do for another man.”

And what a beautiful ending to life here on earth that to be fully surrounded in death by his ministry that he loved so much. It was an almost surreal night. Certainly, a humbling night to stand at the crossroads of one who, with one blink of the eye… was home.

To suddenly be able to feel the life in your hands, release and go forth to a place where those who believe it and live their belief will one day call home. There are no more comforting quotes from the book at a time like that, than this quote from Jesus Himself. “I will see you again.” For a Christian, these words are a balm of peace for a wounded soul.

Belyou had the ability to bring people together. Perhaps you reading this today is just another way of bringing you face to face with someone you’ve never met or a culture you’ve never embraced. I think he would enjoy knowing that. Knowing he had a hand in it.

And just maybe, your love for him, or your desire to see him or perhaps another loved one who has passed, will cause you to seek out the only one who knows the way home. As a proper finish to the story, Belyou’s body was transported to the gravesite by way of Amish horse and wagon specially fashioned for just such an occasion. A reaping in death of what was sown in life. He had transported him. Now they transported him for his final ride.

Belyou didn’t just make an appearance on this earth. He made a difference. And if all of us are touched in some way by the courage he had and the life he lived, then truly that life is still making a difference long after his passing.

On one hand, Belyou won his battle over cancer and death. He made a proclamation there at 8:15 p.m. “I am still alive,” he said. “I am no longer on planet earth, but I am still and now eternally alive. Cancer can’t hurt me anymore. I have no pain. Death can’t embalm me with fear or stop me, because I’ve found my path to the other side.

I can look death in the eye and say boldly, “Where is your sting?”

On the other hand, he was ripped too soon from the hearts of those who loved him and were just beginning the grieving process. The funeral that was held for Belyou seemed anticlimactic in light of the dimly lit ICU where the final service was held at his bedside in the moments of his departure.

The Belyous made a difference. Your challenge this week is to give something to someone who can never repay you. True ministry. Go forth and make a difference… not just an appearance.