Frank Comes Home

In my blog “Disappointment with Christians,” I told of a lunch I shared with journalist Frank King. After that a friendship developed. When a relationship fell through, Frank had an extra ticket to an Eagles concert, so he called me. “You mean the Hotel California Eagles?” “Yep,” said Frank. “They’re old and bald. You’ll be able to relate.” “So,” I asked, “are the tickets, like…free, or do they take up an offering?”

He laughed. “They’re seventy-five bucks.”

“Sorry. For a minute there I thought you said seventy-five bucks.”

On the night of the concert, we watched the Eagles soar through three decades. Near the end, Joe Walsh played a slide-guitar solo. 16,000 fans sang along:

Amazing grace how sweet the sound,
That saved a wretch like me.
I once was lost but now am found,
Was blind but now I see.

Frank knew every word.

One day I called Frank. “I’ve got a ticket for you to a Christian concert.” “A what?” he asked. But he came. It was as loud as the Eagles. And when they sang, “I believe in God the father maker of heaven and earth and Jesus Christ his only son,” Frank walked out.

We stood in the lobby talking about God and relationships. Frank was struggling with both. He had been watching my wife battle epilepsy and he knew us well. We talked about Jesus. Not a religion, but a relationship. There were tears in his eyes. “You know that Foreigner song, ‘I wanna know what love is’?” he said. “I’d give anything for that kind of love.”

We stayed in touch. Every Wednesday for five years I prayed for Frank. Then came an email. “I did it,” he wrote. On a ski lift high in the Rockies, he put his trust in Jesus.

The last time we bumped into each other we were in a city of a million not far from where we first shared pizza. I was about to try on a coral shirt my wife had picked out, and suddenly Frank was standing there with a shirt of his own, selected by Lori, his awesome wife.

“What are you up to these days?” I asked. He laughed. “You’ll never guess. I just landed a job with the Billy Graham organization. I’m writing about my faith.” The four of us stood there laughing and smiling and reminiscing. It was one of life’s finest full circle moments.