Legacy.

As I was catching up on my reading yesterday morning, Brodie’s post remembering the vice-principal of our Bible college popped up in my feed reader. It stopped me in my tracks.

Think of someone you know who has an overwhelming enthusiasm and knowledge of something they’re really into. That was Ted Herbert. He was a lecturer in Old Testament at ICC, and his classes — and the man himself — were easily the best thing about the college during my time there.

Ted took what could easily, and often does, become a very dry, uninteresting subject, and he made it dance and sing. He knew his stuff and he communicated it with the kind of joy that every teacher should have, however few actually do. He left me with a new love for the Old Testament that has only grown since.

More than that, though, Ted was a friend to many more students than to me. Often as not he’d be spending his lunchtime in the common room plating table tennis with the students, usually winning but always gracious.

At a retreat earlier this year, I was asked who has inspired me. It was my Old Testament lecturer. I hadn’t heard that he was sick until I read Brodie’s post — I have learned since that he was diagnosed with cancer only a month and a half before he died this week.

If you have a listen to his message to the students at ICC (on YouTube), you’ll learn a great deal about the man: grace, peace, but most of all, joy.

One of God’s best.