Another McVey Graduates To Heaven

My Dad is on the right and my Uncle on the left. They left this world exactly 100 days apart.


Last Saturday morning my uncle, Robert McVey, stepped across the boundary line from the shadowlands into the full light of heaven. He left this world exactly one hundred days after my Dad had gone.

Robert was my Dad's only sibling. He had been battling cancer for three years. He and Dad used to teasingly refer to the fact that they were "racing toward the finish line" together. When my Dad died on November 30 and I called to tell his brother, he began to weep. When he spoke, the first thing he said was, "He beat me!"

My uncle and aunt (Elizabeth McVey) had no children and Melanie and I have tried to be as attentive to their needs as possible, given the distance we live from them. When the doctors determined that he would not survive the cancer, my aunt asked me to share the news with him. I'll never forget that day. While I have always respected my uncle's faith, it made an indelible impression on me then.

I sat down beside his bed and said, "You and I both deeply love a doctrine that we have discussed many times -- the doctrine of God's sovereignty. You are going to need to rest in the truth of that doctrine now more than ever before. Unless God does a miracle, the doctors have said you won't survive this cancer." My uncle Robert listened intently as I spoke. Then he looked away for only a moment. His eyes misted over with tears and he looked back at me and said in a strong voice, "To God be the glory!"

I'll never forget his response. You and I know that nobody fakes it at a time like that. I saw an expression then of the man I had always known him to be. For the rest of his days in this world, he often said, "I am only praying for God to cause me to be faithful to the end." He was -- in a way that proved his home was not this world.

His death leaves me as the oldest surviving man in my Dad's family carrying the McVey name. I am sad. I love my uncle and will miss him, yet I know that he is there with my Dad, Mom and many other family members and friends. I know I will see him again. Until that day, I pray that I might carry the legacy forward that McVeys who have preceded me have left behind.