Wes Leonard

For all of you who pay attention to Yahoo, you will have heard or read by now that there was a young athlete who died yesterday shortly after scoring the game-winning basket in overtime. His layup finished off a perfect 20-0 season and his team celebrated like no other. Yet just minutes after winning the game, Wes Leonard collapsed on the floor and was pronounced dead at a hospital a short time later.

Why would God do something like this? How could He allow something like this to happen to someone so young? So full of life? So full of potential? We will never know. It's not in our nature to understand. Those are God's decisions to make, and we can only accept them when they come. But as human beings, it is in our nature to care for one another, even if that someone "other" is a complete stranger. Therefore, may Wes Leonard rest in peace and may all those who knew him never forget him.

This is a message I posted on Facebook:

"God puts people in our lives to make things a little easier. While I didn't know Wes, I've heard that he did even more than that. He was a devoted leader. A faithful friend. A loving son. A great person. To all of you who were blessed with his presence, may all the thoughts and prayers of anyone who's read his story be heard within your lives. Let them remind you of all that he was, everything that he stood for. By doing this, he'll never really leave you. Rest in peace, Wes, and God bless all of those who continue to live on in with his memory guiding their lives."

May we never forget how truly special the people in our life are. May we always love them, cherish them, and show them just how much they mean to us, for we never know when they will no longer be there. Someday, they might leave us. Someday, we'll no longer be able to see them. Yet even in these sad times, we can find comfort in the fact that their faces will always smile down on us from heaven, shining infinitely brighter than they ever did while they were with us.