Good ole' Grandpa Speer

As I was thinking about yesterday's post, still feeling the same sense of urgency but wanting to lighten things up a bit, my thoughts, and ultimately my smiles, fell on one of my heroes. Man, this guy was...well, at one point in my life, besides my parents, he was just about everything to me. What a man. I can't even think about him without laughing - his zest for life was so contagious that it still motivates me 23 1/2 years after his death. He was the most excited, busy, passionate, hectic, compassionate, whirlwind of a man that anyone who knew him had ever seen. Sometimes it made your head spin (in a good way) just to be around him. The only thing he loved more than his family and friends was his God. He had a burden for those who didn't know Jesus that ran deeper than anyone I've ever seen, heard of, or even read about. His name was Donald Speer and he was my grandpa.

Don Speer loved to ski. That's pretty much the understatement of the century. He felt the same way about skiing that I do about surfing. He was a hardcore addict. I really think he believed that next to Salvation and family, skiing was the greatest gift that God ever blessed us with. And he wanted to make everyone a skier! As each new grandchild was added to his ever-growing family, he would take an old pair of skis, cut the tails off of them so that they were only about a foot-and-a-half long, mount tiny little bindings on them and then wait for the new baby to learn to walk so that he could strap those puppies on their feet and get them out on the slopes! I'm not kidding - I think most of the kids in my extended family learned to ski before they could even carry on an intelligent conversation!

Whether or not we actually wanted to ski didn't really make a difference to Grandpa Speer. Skiing was just one of those facts of life, like food or sleep, of which the human body simply could not be deprived. Luckily for him, we all turned into ski bums! But it wasn't just us. Grandpa actually sold skis in his free time and it was his mission to turn everyone around him into a skier and then sell them a pair of skis! And what a salesman he was. He had never heard of the term 'soft sell'. Only communists, satanists and criminals didn't want to ski, according to Don Speer. If you didn't want to be a skier, you were basically creating a rift in the time-space continuum and the Universe would disown you. I don't think I ever witnessed him not making a sale!

The great thing was that the passion that he had for skiing extended to every other facet of his life. He loved like no one I've ever known. Just as every single day on the slopes was "The best it's ever been!" (one of his trademark sayings), so was each one of his grandchildren his 'favorite', and each one of his friends his 'closest'. He had a heart so big that it literally had room for everyone to be #1. None of us ever doubted that we were his favorite. We knew that all of the rest of us were his favorite as well, and because of the miracle that was Don Speer, we were all OK with that. He worked hard, he played hard and he loved hardest of all.

Why did my Grandpa Speer come to mind as my thoughts drifted toward yesterday's post? Well, Don Speer understood something better anyone I've ever seen. He knew that time is short. The passion that he had for his family was equally directed onto those who didn't know Jesus personally. He was a major proponent of the 'hard sale', remember? That wasn't just when it came to selling skis. You see, he had something burning inside of him that never let him rest. He felt genuine anguish all of the time for those who wouldn't be coming to Heaven with him.

Check it out - of the countless days and years of my young life that I spent on the slopes with Grandpa, I very rarely got a chance to ride up the chairlift with him. You see, each time we would get to the bottom of a run, he would 'conveniently' end up the odd-man-out and have to go into the 'singles' line and ride up the chair with a stranger. "You guys ride together!" He would say, "I'll just go single." Man, it makes me smile just thinking of this. Those people who ended up with Don Speer on the chairlift never had a clue what they had in store for them! You see - Don had made it a goal to tell everyone he met about Jesus. He was truly a 'fisher of men'. He purposely rode single on the chairlift so that he could cast his net and bring more people into the Kingdom of God. And he was a very good fisherman. At the top of the chairlift, people would either be skiing off as fast as they could to get away from him, or be sitting in a heap of tears confessing their need for Jesus. He didn't care if he looked like a fool. He didn't mind offending people. He truly understood that if they didn't have Jesus, they were going to Hell, and that thought literally burned a hole through his psyche. It consumed every minute of his waking life. The chairlift was only the beginning. If you met him at the coffee shop, the gas station, the movie theater - it didn't matter where - you were going to hear about Jesus. Period.

Even at his funeral, many people came to know Jesus Christ. It was sort of an exclamation mark on a life that burned through this world like a shooting star. I pray every day that God will give me some of Grandpa Speer's passion. He didn't care if he had just met you - you were a child of God and if you didn't know that, you needed to. I am 38 years old and I have still to witness such passion. Friends, time is short. Donald Speer knew that, and it changed the way he lived his life. Ultimately, he died because of his passion for others. He wouldn't have had it any other way. I can only hope that one day you and I can say the same thing.