Mr. Kruse

 We at the Plank household receive the Wichita Eagle paper edition six days a week.  They don’t print an edition on Saturdays.  One of my routines is to read, or at least skim through the newspaper while I’m eating my shredded wheat in the morning.  And one of the sub-routines within that routine is to check the obituaries for anyone I may know or know of who has passed away.

I don’t often find anyone that I know, and seldom find anyone I know of whose name appears in the obituary section of the paper.  However, sometimes, I see an old friend’s name, or an acquaintance…possibly from the deep past, or maybe even an old classmate or someone I knew from my home town.  Some may find this practice of mine a bit morbid; I don’t.  Knowing gives me an opportunity to possibly reach out to the family in some way, or perhaps even attend the services or at least sign the guest book or attend the graveside service, depending on how the family has decided to  honor the deceased.

Last week, I ran across a name in the obituaries that rang a bell in the distant past…over 50 years ago, in fact.  Following my graduation from high school, I attended WTI, a vocational school here in Wichita…still in business, by the way.  I took electronics technology training there under the tutelage of several instructors; one of whom was John Kruse, whose name showed up in the obituary section of the Eagle.

Mr. Kruse was my television instructor as well as my Industrial Electronics instructor.  His was the last class I attended there before my graduation.  For some reason, his name has stuck with me all these years.  I can recall one or two names of other instructors and associate instructors, but Mr.Kruse was the one I recall the best.

Reading his obituary, I see that he spent over 30 years at WTI and lived in Wichita all his adult life.  He was active in his church, had a family, and was also active in the community.  I would have, had I thought about doing so, loved to have seen and visited with him in his later years.  Of course, that’s no longer an option.

Every time I see in the obit section that someone I know or know of has passed, I get just a little melancholy for a short time thinking about the life that has passed, how I know or knew that person, what he or she meant to me, and how things have changed, if at all, since his or her passing.  Oh, I don’t get depressed, but I may get into a sort of a funk for a few days if the person who has passed away was close to me in some way.

Today, CJ, one of the other ministers, came to my door as he came in to work and asked me how I was doing.  He came into my office and we visited for just a bit about why I seem to be just a little bit “down” when seeing someone’s name in the obituary section who I’ve known or know.  Now, I don’t know if this is a normal thing or not.  I only know how I sometimes feel during times like this.  But as we talked, one thing came out rather clearly.

John Kruse was doing his job when he taught our class.  Yes, he did it well.  But it was a job for  him.  Work.  It was what he did for a living.  Yet, in many ways, he had, and still has, a profound effect on me.  Had he not been my instructor, I may well have still done well and did what I have done in life.  But I can’t be sure of that.  And if I was a betting man, I would bet that in some way, some how, he steered me, probably unknowingly, into the place where I am today through something he said or did all those years ago that made my life-series of events what they are and brought me to this place in time.

And the more I think about this, the more I can relate that truth to my own life and those events and people that I have affected in some way.  Often, and especially in ministry, it is difficult if not impossible to measure success.  Oh, we might look at the attendance or collection numbers.  And once in a while we might succeed in celebrating a conversion or perhaps a positive result from a benevolent act or some kind of counseling.  But by far most of the time what we do isn’t results-oriented in the same way that some other occupations are.  We can’t count the number of widgets that come off of our assembly line.  We don’t know how many people we have cured of some illness.  We don’t measure our work by the number of acres of farmland we work in a day or how many cattle we can sell at market.

But, just as John Kruse, all these years, has been an influence on my life, so I must believe and acknowledge that I have been and continue to be an influence on others, and that THAT influence will likely outlive me, possibly by many years or even decades.  The question is, will that influence be positive or negative…good or bad…uplifting or damaging?

I thank God that Mr. Kruse was part of my life.  I am also thankful that I can be a positive influence on others, even if I never know what I’ve said or done, or how I have influenced someone else.  And I trust that He will see to it that my influence will “work together for the good,” in someone’s life.