A tribute to Billy Graham.

Charles Wesley once said: "God buries His workmen but carries on His work."

Yesterday, Billy Graham left this world. He has passed on. 

At 99, he has completed the race. He once said that death is the finality of accomplishment. 

But for believers, he said that we have this hope of hearing our Savior say this to us: "Well done, good and faithful servant." 

And I am sure this will be the first greetings Billy Graham will hear as he moves from his earthly residence to his eternal rest. 

It was a long journey for him. 

After about 77 million who saw him preached in person, nearly 215 million more watched his crusades on television or through satellite link-ups, and ministering to several Presidents starting with Richard Nixon and ending with Obama, who personally made a trip to his home to see the man, Billy Graham wrote that the "greatest legacy you can pass on to your children and grandchildren is not your money or the other material things you have accumulated in life." 

He said the greatest legacy you can pass on to them is the legacy of your character and your faith. 

Why? He wrote that "because the memory of what we were like - not just our personalities but our character and our faith - has the potential to influence others for Christ."

Lesson? Just one.

Billy Graham had lived an exemplary life. 

At the end of it, he was driven not by the numbers he had evangelised to, his fame in this world, or the accolades he had received from millions who hail him as the greatest evangelist of all time.

None of that moved him when he was nearing his end. They may be the effect of his dedication for decades, but they are definitely not the reason for his faith and passion. 

But what moved him and driven him to live up to the calling of Calvary was the compelling love of Jesus at the Cross. 

He once wrote that when he think about the foundation of the Christian life, he was reminded of these words:-

All to Jesus,

I surrender;

All to Him I freely give;

I will ever love and trust Him,

 In His presence daily live.

There is a verse in Corinthians that reads: "Each one should be careful how he builds. For no one can lay any foundation other than the one already laid, which is Jesus Christ."

I guess we have been building our own foundation all this time. 

In the rush to complete our piling works, we hammer in the steel bars of our own ideology, our own redemptive plans for the world, and our own concept of what would make life better, easier and whole. 

We do all this in the hope of finding resolution, peace and rest. 

But to Billy Graham, even unto death as a passageway to life forevermore, his hope was built on nothing less than Jesus' blood and righteousness. 

Now, many may see this as a religious post where I write exclusively about blood, death and a man named Jesus. 

But when you write about Billy Graham, you can only say what he had repeatedly told the gathering masses in his thousands of crusades:-

"For all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God." 

I believe it is our misinterpretation or denial of this verse that is the ensuing cause of all our anxieties and grandiose, fear and pride, wishful thinking and ego. 

Some skip the sin part and find that there is nothing wrong with us. Some think that the gap can be filled with good human works. Some come to the conclusion that the only one that has fallen short is a hidden god. 

Still others argue that we shouldn't get too religious about it, and labelling it as sin is so not twenty-first century. 

At most, it is an evolutionary aberration that can be corrected with some charitable acts, some feel good sermons, and some positive confession. 

Still others feel that we are our own saviour. We make our own cross and we rest on it with personal mediation and discipline to redeem ourselves. 

But for Billy Graham, he lived life differently. 

He always saw the gap as unbridgeable by human works and ideas, even human-conceived theology. 

Alas, we all think that we have found the right way, the true way, but they have all led to disappointment and disillusionment. 

They have all fallen short of His glory. 

Let me end with a verse Billy Graham quoted. 

"Now we know that if the earthly tent we live in is destroyed, we have a building from God, an eternal house in heaven, not built by human hands."

I always believe that there is nothing religious about Calvary. 

Hanging there, confronting death, Jesus is not calling for the world to organise themselves around a belief, set themselves up for a day to worship and sing praises, deliver up their first harvest every month to a trustee of men to advance their belief, and hold themselves up to be some authority in the word and having the final say on it. 

To Billy Graham, Calvary is about you and me; it is personal and intimate. It is not only about confronting our eventual death, but about challenging ourselves on how we are going to live today and everyday with every living breath.

More powerfully, Calvary is about how a man had lived, how he had died, and how he has overcome. And in His overcoming, how he has finally closed the gap for all. 

I believe that has always been Billy Graham's message from life to his death and beyond. Cheers.

RIP the good and faithful servant. Amen