On Friday morning our great friend and faithful pastor, Terry Price, entered heaven’s portal and joined those already called home. Terry was diligently serving the Lord as pastor of Maranatha Baptist Church on the very day he was called to heaven. We mourn our loss — but for Pastor Price, or “Coach Price” as he was affectionately known by his Bible college students and football players, it is all gain.

Years ago, as a youth pastor, I wrote the following poem when a dear church member, and father of two kids in my youth group, was very unexpectedly promoted to heaven. It is homespun poetry that was influenced by a youth group camping trip to the awe-inspiring Colorado mountains a few months before.

 It’s better to be in heaven
 Than to walk the plains of earth,
 For a moment with Christ in glory
 Defies any measure of worth.
 
Sure — I’d like to live on a mountain,
 There the world looks majestic and grand;
 But life is lived in the valley,
 Where sin and disease grips the land.
 
Heaven must be like a mountain —
 Where the struggles of earth seem small;
 And the view of eternal values
 Obscures the curse of man’ s fall.
 
Someday I’ll be moving to heaven,
 When God has need of me there,
 But now I must stay in the valley,
 To tell of the Saviour’s care.
 
For Jesus has given the orders,
 To strive with the forces of sin;
 And tell the news of Salvation,
 That Christ in His mercy might win.
 
I’d rather go on to heaven
 But God has need of me here —
 To love a lost world for Jesus,
 And dispel men’s doubt and fear.
 
We sorrow not for our brother,
 Who God has called from the strife;
 We weep instead for the millions,
 Who know no hope past this life.