Pastor Thomas Long tells about the time he was a guest preacher at a church where years before he served as a student pastor:

After the service, I struck up a conversation with a woman whom I had not seen in many years. "How is your dad?" I asked her. "I remember him as one of my favorite people."

"I lost my dad last summer," she said sadly. "Cancer. But he lived a long and good life," she added, "and in many ways he died a peaceful death. The last few moments of his life were amazing.

"My sister, my brother and I were with him when he died. He had a stroke a …