Bear Paws and a Lion’s Heart

Ernie is a man who is on a scale that I can’t fathom.  He’s 6’2” tall and about 225 pounds, he’s slimmed down from when I first knew him when he was around 265lbs but even now he is a man of epic proportions.  Right off the bat it feels like my foot is in my mouth about him, let me clarify:  Ernie has bear paws for hands, some have likened them to banana-hands,  He has the footprint of bigfoot himself(size 13’s and 17’s in ski boots) but lastly Ernie has an equally proportional heart.

That man has a lion’s heart thumping inside of his chest.

I have a couple instances of his huge heart in my life.

1.    Not too long after I had surgery to have a defibrillator implanted in 2008 the gang of us went camping.  If you’ve ever been camping with Ernie or his crew you know that it is epic, dangerous and always an adventure.  We had used the winch on the front of Ernie’s Land Cruiser to pull down a tree and cut it up for firewood.

Because of my defibrillator, I can’t pick up anything heavier than about 40 or 50 pounds.  The sections of tree being cut were massive, much to heavy for me to pick up but without missing a beat Ernie came to the rescue.  Knowing my condition and inability to pick up the wood he asked me to operate the winch on the truck knowing that I was embarrassed to admit that I couldn’t take part of the “man-work”.

2.    When I met Ernie in 2006, he was in the most beaten up and downtrodden shape I’ve ever seen him.  He’d moved down to VA for many reasons but one in particular left him broken and wondering what the hell God was doing and how he would ever redeem the 536-mile move to VA.

  

But even in the depths of such brokenness he continued to look for God’s redemption by repeating a simple phrase that has come to change my life and how I look at God.

“His will, not mine”

And as life continues to beat Ernie up and bring him to dark spots He has always refused to blame God for any of it.  Ernie’s perspective on God, on suffering and his peace in the ground-shattering realization that God, in the end, is FOR US and never against us has changed my life and I am so grateful to have him in my life.

Isaiah 14:24

“The LORD Almighty has sworn, "Surely, as I have planned, so it will be, and as I have purposed, so it will stand.”

Isaiah 55

“"As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.”


Ernie always says this phrase and in it he is confessing that God is up to something much bigger than Ernie's life and even Ernie's plans. 

Ernie Golen: Bear paws and a Lion’s Heart. A man after God’s own heart.