The Real Tom Green

I'm not even sure where to start in how I write this out.  This has been a difficult long start to a summer for me.  I started off on a stress leave, which then about 3 weeks into it, my appendix decided that it wanted to get removed(no it didn't burst) - to then find out I have a benign cyst on my adrenal gland, which may be the root cause of a few health problems I have.

Now - generally I write things out about things I've found and noticed, perhaps a life experience for me - but today I'm dedicating this to my uncle:  the real Tom Green.

When someone passes on - it's a period of mourning for those that are left behind.  When the mourners feel that their loved one has passed on prematurely - we generally start asking a whole bunch of questions.  When a loved one passes on prematurely due to cancer it's even more so.

Now - Tommy never really had an easy life.  He lost his dad at a young age, and this in itself would've been difficult.  Now - from that moment, yes he had good moments, but it always seemed that just when he was about to get the next lucky break in his life - BAM - something would go wrong.

All throughout this - he'd move on.  Yes he was blessed to have had a supporting cast around him along the way, and yes this supporting cast did help him move on, and yes the supporting cast does also deserve a round of applause.  The key thing here though is he did move on; he continued on and definitely an applause is also in order for Tom Green.

Perhaps there was something helping Tommy - perhaps he had a passion within him...

Anyone who knew Tommy - knew he was passionate about certain things - to the point that if you didn't believe those things you'd say he sounds crazy or "whacked in the head" - just to throw a few examples:  his talk about aliens or other "conspiracy theories", his talk about natural nutrition, alternative medicine or how the pharmaceutical companies are ripping you off because they want customers and not people to get better; how Big Brother is watching us, etc.

Yes - Tom Green - the Real Tom Green was passionate.  Some will also say compassionate - which while this is true with one of his favourite expressions being "warm hands means a warm heart" - but the purpose here is to also allow everyone to learn something through the word passion.

Everyone has clearly heard of "The Passion of Christ" - whether it be the movie or just the Passion that Jesus had in generally period.  For anyone who's seen the movie - you see the passion in the sense that Jesus is whipped, basically even died before making it to the cross that everyone is so familiar with.

Whether you believe or not - just to understand the psyche behind, Jesus did all that to save His people from the sin that was written in the law.  A sin could only be atoned for through a sacrifice and Jesus became that sacrifice.  All that suffering and pain.  He did it for us

Why do I bring that up?  Well passion - is derived from a greek word:  pathos.  The meaning of pathos is:  suffering, emotion, depraved passion.

In today's day - most people hear the word passion and think a deep love for someone, or a deep love for something.  While this may be true - when you look at the deeper meaning of it all, there is suffering.

The reality that we're getting back to is Tom Green was passionate.  Yes he had a deep love for people, he had a deep love for certain things.  While he did have this, his life did have suffering.

Now, while Tommy did have suffering in his life - yes we can get stuck in feeling how we feel bad for him because we wouldn't want such a thing.  This just shows the strength a person can have, and if we can't handle such a thing - shows how strong Tommy was.

Yes - we can feel bad about Tommy having gone through much suffering - even in his last few weeks after being diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, there was much pain.  He continued on.  Finally in the early hours of July 10th, he lost his fight with cancer.

As much suffering that Tommy had, I believe that you should now rejoice.  Yes we can say he's no longer in pain, he's no longer suffering - but I see something far more beautiful than that.

If Jesus is the King of kings in heaven - I'm going to ask you to just think about Tommy while reading this Bible verse:

I Peter 4:13 But rejoice insofar as you share Christ's sufferings, that you may also rejoice and be glad when his glory is revealed.