The Good That Good Men & Women Do Lives on Long After They Are Gone

An Invitation to Billy Graham’s Funeral, by Karen Burton Mains

A few days after Billy Graham died, David, my husband, received a phone call from the Billy Graham Association. A very young voice on the end of the line informed us we were being invited to attend Billy’s funeral in Charlotte, North Carolina. We were surprised, to say the least; it has been a couple decades since we were involved in national media ministry. In the intervening years, we’ve ministered locally and quietly. As one friend commented to us, “It used to be that everyone knew who you are; now no one knows who you are.” That is true, and in some ways, a relief.

So it was with some slight satisfaction to discover that our names were included on the guest list of 2,000 for this event that would mark the passing not only of a good man but one whom God had used in ways beyond human imagining. Indeed, due to the holy anointing upon Billy Graham, literally hundreds of thousands had found faith in Christ. We accepted tickets for two invites and printed off the digital copies as well as instructions on times for the service, places to park and which shuttles to take to the Billy Graham Library, where a big tent had been erected for the service.

One of Graham’s adult children following his death at age 99 on February 21, said, “Everyone has a Billy Graham story.” I suppose that is near to being true. I remember as a child of 7 being taken by my mother to a Moody Bible Institute faculty gathering. My father was on the music staff, and it was a rather small group, maybe some 100 or so of staff, faculty and wives of faculty (and one little girl). I remember that my mother wanted me to hear Billy Graham. He was young, according to my figuring; just 31 years of age. I remember I was deeply moved by his explanation of salvation and stood when he issued an invitation, just a little child in a small audience of adults. Looking back, I think it was not so much a conversion as it was a public confession of faith. However, in the years following, I never doubted my salvation, and I made many public statements of faith. That’s my Billy Graham story.

There was a problem, however, with the timing of the invitation to Billy’s funeral. I was due for laparoscopic surgery to repair a para-esophageal hernia that had grown huge in my belly, wrapped itself around my stomach and upper colon and was sitting ready to close off the blood flow to vital organs in that physical arena. Surgery was scheduled for Monday, February 26 at 8 a.m. Billy’s funeral was scheduled for Friday, March 2, four days later, at 10 a.m.

Though I construed, schemed and worked at constructing an alternative post-operative reality (I could recover in the back of the car driving down; David could fly to Charlotte without me), the truth was, none of them would work. I was much too uncomfortable after surgery to ride for hours in the car; I could barely haul myself out of bed without help. David wouldn’t think of leaving me; he stuck nearby for the whole first two weeks of recovery. Much more of a realist, my husband basically pulled the plug on my schemes: “We can’t possibly do this!” So a few days before the 26th of February, my surgery date, I emailed the Billy Graham Association with our regrets explaining that surgery was going to prohibit any traveling.

Consequently, I attended Billy Graham’s funeral from my bed, after one night in the hospital for observation then after being released to the care of my loving husband and an attentive daughter who first took me to her home for two days. Our son, Randall, emailed us a link that had been made available to all the participants of the National Religious Broadcasters convention (where he was attending), which ran concurrent to the date of the funeral service in Charlotte. And since I couldn’t do much else, in between long and frequent sleeping sessions, I took the time to conduct an Internet review of Graham’s life.

I came away reminded that the good that good men (and women) do lives on after they are gone. From the early days when Graham and a group of young leaders constructed the Modesto Covenant, an agreement as to how they would conduct their lives regarding the use of money, the maintenance of personal righteousness, and the effects of fame and power, those earnest signers lived by its guidelines. Billy made mistakes, as do we all, but mistakes are not moral lapses. He and his colleagues adhered to the Modesto Manifesto, holding one another accountable. Miraculously, through the decades of fame and the heights of extraordinary ministry impact, there was not a hint of scandal.

Click here, to read more about this article.

Click here, to read more blogs on Patheos from Gospel for Asia.