My friend went to be with Jesus this week. He will be sorely missed.

I first met Eric in college. We fast became kindred brothers.

He built his first house while in high school.

Think about that.

Who builds a house when in high school?

In college he studied to work in Logistics/Transportation and graduated in business. He worked for a freight company for a while but eventually returned to the love of his professional life and built high end homes in Memphis and later more modest ones in Florida.

He was the Tennessee State Wrestling champ in high school and when I knew him was already a super athlete.

Humble, but naturally gifted.

He didn’t wrestle in college but could have easily gotten a scholarship. He chose not to because he was tired of mat burns on his face and body.

About five years after graduation, I worked for a German manufacturing company and discovered that one of the guys I worked with was a wrestler in high school. He told me he was the runner up for his weight class in the State Championship, so I asked him if he knew my friend. Turns out, Eric had beaten him in the State Final. He told me he was a tough competitor.

So Eric turned to racquetball in the early years of college. No mat burns.

We played in the intermural leagues, and I knew if on his team it was a no brainer that we would mostly win. He had a kill shot that was practically unreturnable.

If you could say there was a guy in college, you wanted to be, for me it would have been Eric.

He was a man’s man.

A super athlete.

Humble.

Handsome. The college women practically fell over themselves when he would walk by, but he was humble and never once acknowledged it. The rest of us joked about being lucky enough just to get a date with the women he passed up.

He married a friend we both knew. She was his kindred spirit and could match him step for step. He fell for her hard and was beside himself when they married. Over the years on one rare opportunity, I got to see them together at their son’s high school football game. It showed me he was still beside himself decades later. Lucky that he married the woman of his dreams.

So, he built a life with his college sweetheart, had kids and lived out their dreams.

A few years back I had the good fortune to reconnect with my friend. He was a builder in another city and I’m sure he was a raging success, but that’s not what we talked about. He spoke humbly of his career only to fill me in on the years that had passed since we had last reconnected. And he beamed with gladness of heart as he filled me in on the lives of his kids.

Eric always thought of others first. He had the natural gift of mentoring men. Once on the phone after we reconnected, he told me this story.

He noticed that on Sunday mornings at his church the leadership was missing out on an opportunity to raise up a lost generation of young men. Their approach wasn’t connecting with some of the sons of the families who attended the church.

So, one Sunday he ran into a kid in a hallway who was skipping Sunday school that just didn’t fit the Sunday school persona.

Rather than encouraging the kid to get back into class he invited him to meet in the church basketball gym the following Sunday. The next week the guy showed up to meet Eric to experience faith in a different way. That chance meeting formed the beginning of what would become a large group of young teens looking to be mentored in Christ.

That was Eric.

He saw an opportunity to stand in the gap and raise up young men who would be followers of Christ. There he was building up young men to reach their God given potential.

Eric lived a life that mattered.

He built a family.

He built homes for families.

He created jobs for men who would be builders.

He built up young men to be disciples of Christ so that they could build families for themselves founded on the solid Rock we know as Jesus.

Eric knew his identity. He knew his calling…and he never wavered.

He followed Christ.

Loved his wife well.

Practiced humility.

Served the communities he lived in.

Loved selflessly.

Left a legacy.