Dead Friends

I often refer to some men as "friends" who I could not possibly have known. We've all said of an author or other influential person in our lives, "I feel like I know him."

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, author of my favorite book on the church "Life Together" and other great books like "The Cost of Discipleship" about true belief and the believing life to follow, is one of those for me.

Another is the author of the Pilgrim's Progress, John Bunyan. His spiritual autobiography "Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners" lets you peer right into his very soul.

I feel like I know them. I call them my friends. I grin as I say it or even think it since D.B. died (hung in a Nazi prison camp) 20 years before I was even a thought on earth and J.B. died almost 300 years before I was born.

I have dead friends. Heroes of mine. They have and still do cause the water in my eyes to come up. It's not only their words as authors but their lives as men. God had made them men indeed. When I hear testimony of them or give it myself I am moved in my soul.

Jesus said there was never any man as great as John the Baptizer. The author of Hebrews relayed a list of Biblical heroes of whom it reads "the world was not worthy."

I love them. I need their example. I am spurred by them. Do you have any?