I love hearing from old friends on any day, but this message was remarkable considering Lyle died in 1979 and has therefore enjoyed 45ish years in the presence of the Lord.
I was digging through some old slides this morning, when I discovered this one. Back in the late Middle Ages, before PowerPoint, people prepared visual presentations with slides. They would type on a transparency plastic then create little slides to act as text headers and transitions during their slide presentations.
At the little bible college I attended, there was a class for students with certain majors which included a requirement for a visual presentation. I was a popular go-to-guy since I had backpacked and camped through my high school years and taken exclusively slides. So I had lots of slides of high mountain lakes, peaks, waterfalls, flowers, etc. of central Idaho. I loaned out slides to anyone that asked and in the end the slides all became kind of a mish-mash with little organization. And inevitably a few extra ones would pop into the mix. Like this one of Lyle's.
Lyle was my first close friend in college. He befriended me and pulled me out of my "monk mode" (working hard at getting straight A's). I might have been more of a recluse that year than I am now. Lyle was outgoing and sociable. Impossible to ignore when he would choose to drag me out of my studies to go do something fun.
He was a big happy guy with a quick smile from a ranching family in South Dakota. He drowned with his little brother and friend (who had both just graduated HS) in a stock pond on the property. Lyle's heart was all about Christian camping for youth. And after his death, his brother Larry Robin Reinhold, (another of my old college friends) and family turned the family ranch into Rainbow Bible Ranch. A working cattle ranch that ministers Christ to kids in a wonderful ranch setting. If you would like to learn more you can visit rainbowbibleranch.org.
Thanks for the little reminder today Lyle! And I do praise the Lord, and especially today as I thought of you and your life.