My wife's oldest sister, Linda, married Joe, and Joe was our elephant man. Joe was a big man. He came from a family that had big people in it and he as big. Sometime when I find them, I will post some pictures of Joe's hands as he was playing pinochle one night. His hands and fingers were massive. Joe picked up a gallon milk carton the way I pick up a half-gallon carton.

Joe will get bigger and bigger and the years go by.

Joe grew up in Prosser, Washington. I am sure that he was a handful growing up. I think he was probably the cousin that was so much fun but who was always pushing the boundary limits of what was ok to do.

As a teen-ager, Joe met Linda, who lived seventy-five miles away in Othello and he began courting her. In those days, you could storm across the forty miles of highway between Vernita and Othello and never meet another car, You couldn't stop because the Hanford Nuclear Reservation which bounded the highway was a serious military area and we were living in the days when the Russians might drop the bomb at any moment.

Joe had a fast Oldsmobile and he would come courting and leave late at night. One night going home he broke down miles from nowhere and spent the rest of the night walking back to Linda's house to get help. Eventually , Linda and Joe were married and lived here and there. Finally they moved back to Prosser. They had children, Lester, Lorie, Kurt and Craig. They are all big people.

Joe was funny. Things in life were funny for him, though he actually took life pretty seriously. He loved people. People existed to tease, annoy, observe and help. And Joe did them all.

Joe loved farming even though it wasn't always profitable, but most of all, he loved livestock. Joe was the head deacon of the First Church of Livestock Auctions in the Pacific Northwest. If there was a livestock sale, he was there.

In his lifetime, Joe probably bought and sold a million sheep, goats, calves, horses, mules, pigs, cows and whatever else would go through an auction sale yard. If it honked, squealed, squawked, mooed, bleated, quacked, clucked, neighed or baaaed, he was ready to buy it or sell it. If you wanted to eat one, all you had to do was call Joe and he would get it for you.

Joe and my wife, Carol, Linda's baby sister, had a funny contest going betwen them. For years they sent strange holiday cards, odd items and miscellaneous goofy things back and forth to each other. Joe once wrote and mailed a check to Linda's dad, Lee, for payment for something. Carol took the check, cut it just so and carefully glued it around a rubberball and sent it back to him telling him that it was no good, that it bounced.

One day Carol got a great box in the mail, opening it to find that Joe had sent her everything that he had found in the top drawer of his old office desk. Christmas one year, Carol got a gift-wrapped nose from a pig for Christmas. We still have it in our freezer. It is now nearly thirty years old. You never know when you will need a pig nose.

One year at a church white elephant party, I was set up by Darlene Norton to choose a nice looking gift from the table. "You'll really like that one," she said. I put down the one I had chosen and picked up the one she suggested. When I opened it I found she had shanghaied me into choosing her dad's used false teeth in a cup. That pretty well grossed me out. Days later, after thinking those teeth, Carol packaged them up for Joe to gross him out. Before we put them into the package, we broke off one front tooth and glued in a big rhinestone so that the teeth would smile with a big diamond flash.

Joe delightedly received his present and upon opening it yelled, "Oh boy, teeth!" and he popped them right into his mouth. For the rest of the evening he and his younger sons had a ball passing the teeth around and wearing them. We were grossed out.

Today, Linda is a serious Christian. Joe struggled back and forth throughout his life with God. For a while, he attended a little Salvation Army church in the lower Yakima Valley. He liked the part of church where you went and did something for other people. He didn't do well with the pomp and circumstance and the religion of church. He had trouble reconciling the suffering of people with the goodness and the mercy of God. If God was all-powerful, why didn't He fix things for people?

I do not have the answers to those questions. I can only speculate like most pastors and theologians. All I can say with any certainty is that God is holy. God is merciful and gracious. God is long-suffering. God is just and righteous. God hears, He listens and He does answer. To say much more than that would be to presume upon God. Suffering and hardship, deserved or undeserved seems to be part of life.

But now let me tell you one more thing about Joe. He died. One day, loading livestock into a trailer, with Linda helping him, he collapsed and within a few minutes died. He was in his early sixties. There was grieving and of course, there was a funeral.

The funeral was held in Grandview, Washington at the Nazarene Church, though Joe really didn't go there much. It was amazing. People came. All kinds of people came. All colors of people came. They came to say good-bye to Joe. Some of the people were well-to-do. But most of them were not wealthy folks. They were people whom Joe had helped. Something for that family, something for this one. Over the years it became evident that Joe had been involved in the lives of a lot of people. The church was full and many had things to say.

I do not think that Joe was particularly orthodox in his faith. In fact I would say he was probably contrary or indifferent to orthodoxy. It was the way he was. I am not trying to justify or excuse him, just trying to describe him.

But Joe did have a faith of some sort. Joe did have a religion of some sort. It was a religion about the little guy, the unlovely person, the person who didn't fit, who need help and who probably was in the same boat that Joe had found himself emotionally and spiritually many times in his own life.

I once attended and graduated from the Washington National Guard Military Academy to become a Guard officer. One of my tactical officers at the academy was Captain Ed McCann. Captain McCann, once told me that he had been told by a senior officer that in life you would meet many different people. Some would be good, some would be bad. He said his superior told him that in life he should, "take the best from each man you meet and rise above it." Ed McCann passed that pearl along to me. I have never forgotten it.

I say that to say this. There were several things in Joe's life which I would not want to emulate. Joe would probably be the first one to tell me that he had weakness in his life. But there was a great example to follow in Joe's life. Joe believed that people were worth helping and saving. And in that belief, he lined up with the character and will of God. Joe loved people. He was willing to take time out of his life and do things to help them. Several of his children carry on this trait of generosity today. If you needed it, they would give it to you. Today, Linda is still Linda. She is as I have always known her, kind, generous, sweet in temper, ready to help. She continues to live out her faith, following Jesus, loving her children, her family and those whom God brings into her path.

You are blessed when God puts special people into your life. I think I was blessed to have had Joe as a brother-in-law. I am blessed today to have Linda as a sister-in-law. Perhaps you might look into your life and take a moment and consider how and through whom God has blessed you.

It isn't always evident. Sometimes you need to search to see the blessing. If you look, though, it is probably there.