Eugolgy for Robert Andy Colebank

I want to take some time now to remember my Dad. I want to honor the good things that made him the person I loved.

I think there are two things that capture who my Dad was; a hammer and a book. My Dad was a builder and a loved to read.

He grew up in Chicago and his Dad worked for the Department of Agriculture. He grew up in the 50’s in the aftermath of World War II and came of age as an adult in the beginning of the 60’s. He went to Rhode Island School of Design to study Architecture and met my Mom there and I came into the picture.

My Dad loved riding motorycles and was a part of the motorcycle club in college. I always remember him telling the story of being out at a party and taking someone for a ride on his motorcycle and the rear tire blowing out on the highway with a semi truck right behind him. He managed to get the bike to the side of the road in one piece.

My Dad loved to work with his hands and he was always buying run down houses or the occasional bus and fixing them up. He always had some hair brained scheme that he was working on. He bought a highway post office mail bus in the early 70’s and converted it into a motor home. I remember living in the motor home in Exeter RI when I started first grade. Then it was time to rent a house and settle down so I could go to school. Not long after dad bought an abandoned antique storefront and converted it into a house. That was followed by another fixer upper opportunity in Coventry RI when my Dad bought a hundred year old school house that also was abandoned and converted it into a spacious home. My parents bought the house in Coventry so I could go to the best high school in RI at the time. I will always be thankful for that, because I had struggled in school with bullies and the move to a different school gave me a fresh start and a new beginning.

I grew up learning to knock nails out of boards and got to scrape many walls and ceiling with peeling paint. Probably the crowning achievement of my Dad’s love for building things is finally being able to fulfill his dream of building a house that he had designed. He finally got to do that when my parents built their house here in New Braunfels out on Eden Estates Drive.

That home is a statement in many ways about who my Dad is and what he loved. My Dad loved trees and animals, so it’s out away from the city where he enjoyed the peacefulness of God’s creation. The house is built around a large open space in the middle, an atrium, where plants could grow right in the middle of the house and be enjoyed year round. Many dogs, Abyssinian cats, two horses and even a rooster at one time have roamed and enjoyed the seven acres.

My Dad also loved knowledge and history. He was an avid reader of history, fiction, collector of swords and books. We often would stay up late at night having many interesting conversations about the things he knew. I owe my love of reading to my dad. He was a thinker and he had little tolerance for things that didn’t make sense and hypocrisy. He valued truth and honesty. His struggle was always in his inability to figure out how to bring the ideals he held in his mind together with the reality of how people really are.

I want to honor my Mom and Dad for succeeding in staying married through many difficult years when many would have quit. Twenty years ago my parents moved to Texas to be closer to my Dad’s mother as she got older. For my Dad it was a chance to try to start over with a clean slate. With a huge appreciation from all the sweat equity he had put into the last house in Coventry that he renovated. He tried to invest that money and was ripped off by swindlers. He tried to start a fencing business and again was taken for a ride by another con man and lost considerable money.

He was good with his hands and had a very intelligent mind, but always struggled in his relationships with people. He had a difficult time figuring out in life who to trust and was burned many times which fueled his anger and cynicism. This struggle with anger and depression was the darker side of my Dad’s life, one he never managed to master.

Over the years some friends who were able to move past his anger issues. But many had a difficult time getting past his depressions and the negativity he would often sink into. I think that my Dad always had a difficult time living up to his own ideals and dealing with his anger at other people who didn’t do that they said. I suspect this may have grown out of the fact that his father was highly successful and my Dad never could be good enough to earn his father’s approval even though he was in the top 10 percent of his class. He never experienced gracious acceptance from his father, and he never was able to extended it for long towards other people when they failed. And when people inevitably disappointed him or he himself failed, he would get angry and withdraw from relationships into isolation which was an unhealthy place for him to be.

Even though he never figured out how to handle most relationships in a way that he could connect with a healthy community and thrive, I want to honor my Dad for succeeding in giving me the affirmation that he never received from his father. I know my dad loved me and was proud of me because he often told me that. Even when he couldn’t understand when I did a crazy thing like going off to seminary to become a pastor, he still supported me. I will always be thankful for the good relationship I had with my Dad.

 The strain of the failed business attempts probably was the trigger that brought on his diabetes. He finally retreated into the quiet country side and gave up trying to connect with people. In recent years as his health began to fail. Starting with a heart attack nine years ago and then losing a foot to diabetes a few years later. Slowly he lost the ability to do the things he lived for, being able to work with his hands and finally as his eyesight began to fail, he lost his other great love… being able to read. The last two years were the hardest for him.

But I want to conclude by telling a part of my Dads story that many probably don’t know outside my Mom and I. It was the ray of hope that broke into my Dad’s life at a time when he was in the depths twenty years ago.

It started when I was in my junior year at RISD. I had been accepted to the same school my Mom and Dad had graduated from and my Dad actually worked at the school at that time which allowed me to go to a very expensive school tuition free. But during my junior year, my dad had a conflict with his boss and lost his job. Once again he struggled with relationships and was depressed. I had been home to see him that February in 1988 and I didn’t really know what to say except;” I love you Dad.”

Also at that time I had become friends with a bunch of Christians in college who were very different from the church goers that I had grown up with who had really turned me off to God with their hypocrisy. These friends had joy and they were drinking and doing drugs, my roommate Steve had a great relationship with his girlfriend and they weren’t sleeping together which blew my mind. My dating relationships kept blowing up and falling apart. As much as I would argue with my friends about how deluded they were in putting their faith in some unseen God, I couldn’t help but want the joy, peace and love that I saw in their lives.
That February as my Dad was going through this dark night of the soul, these friends invited me to a Bible study. There we debated the difference between faith (trusting in God) and positive thinking (which I believed, I just believe in myself… it’s the only thing I can count on). During this Bible study, they asked me a question that I had no answer for; “what happens when you reach the end of yourself and you can’t do it anymore?”

I didn’t have an answer to that and it stopped me. As I sat back and thought about that, a quiet voice spoke to me in my mind saying “If your Dad would trust in God, God would help him.” I realized I would have to believe in God myself before I could ever convince my Dad to trust in God. And it scared me to think about changing everything I believed it. But the incredible peace like nothing I had ever experienced filled me. I realized later that was the first time God spoke to me and the first time I felt his presence.

That encounter with God began a seven month spiritual journey as I considered more seriously at the existence of God, and finally I came to the point where I said, “God I think you really are there and if you are I want you in my life.” Once again I felt the peace of God’s presence and God began to speak to me about things that would need to change in my life.

A little more than a year later, I had graduated from university and moved to California. But things didn’t work out there, so I went to Texas and stayed with my parents for about six months while I was trying to figure out what to do with my life. During that time my Dad’s business venture had failed and he had developed diabetes. And it was during that time that I shared with my Dad about how God loved him and wanted to help him. My Dad responded by asking God to forgive his sins and come into his life as well.

My Dad still struggled with people, but came to the place after his second heart attack nine years ago where he said he was at peace with God and was ready to face life after death. Over recent years, as his health rapidly began to fail, he was more and more eager to leave the pain and problems of this life and enter into eternal life.
As I stand here today, I am thankful that God spoke to me twenty years ago and began both my Dad and I on a journey that would allow me to stand here today with a peace and confidence that one day my Mom and I will see my Dad again. What we read in John 14:1-3 is true and I want to share another verse from John 14:21.

Jesus said, “Whoever has my commands and obeys them, he is the one who loves me. He who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I too will love him and show myself to him." The reason I can know for sure that there is a life after death is that God has revealed himself to me in this life, starting with that first encounter with him in my college and then many times since as I have obeyed him and he has continued to show me more of who he is.

The reason many today do not see God is they are not willing to obey him. But if you are willing to turn from sin and turn to God, He will forgive and he will reveal himself. And as He reveals himself he also gives a free gift of eternal life, resurrection from the death to a life in eternity where all sorrow, suffering, and pain has been removed.

Let me read a passage at the end of the Bible that tells the end of the story.

Revelation 21:1-8

This is available to everyone. My Dad is experiencing this now and he would want everyone here to know that they also can have this eternal life and that all who are here grieving his death can have the chance to see him again one day.  If you have not discovered this relationship with the God who loves you, I would encourage you to call on the name of Jesus like my Dad and I did. In a few minutes we will close with the Lord’s prayer. Pay attention to two important phrases in that; Forgive my sins (trespasses) and your will be done. When you tell God you want to obey him, do his will, and you want him to forgive your sins… he does. He cleans the slate and begins to lead you in a relationship that ultimately leads to eternal life. Thank you for letting me share with you today and tell the story of my Dad, and most importantly his journey of faith which gives us the certainty of seeing him again.