It’s been two years since Tom passed, but the memory of that conversation under the stars feels as vivid as the night it happened. We were sitting outside the evening before my wedding, the sky alive with countless stars, stretching endlessly above us. I remember the moment so clearly—the awe I felt as I looked up, overwhelmed by the beauty of creation.
“How amazing is it,” I said to him, “that God created all of this? The stars, the trees, the way everything works together—it’s just incredible.”
Tom didn’t look at me right away. When he finally did, his words were quiet but firm: “I think people just made up God. Desperate people, trying to explain things they don’t understand.”
It was like the wind had been knocked out of me. How could he not see it? How could he sit under the same stars, witness the same wonder, and not feel God calling to him?
“The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims his handiwork” (Psalm 19:1). The stars themselves seemed to cry out that God was real. But in that moment, I realized something profound: no amount of beauty, no amount of wonder, could open a heart closed to Him. Only the Holy Spirit could do that.
Jesus’ words in Matthew 7 haunted me that night: “Enter by the narrow gate. For the gate is wide and the way is easy that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many. For the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life, and those who find it are few” (Matthew 7:13-14).
The gate is narrow, not because God hides it, but because it requires us to surrender everything. And as I looked at my brother that night, I could see the resistance—the same resistance that lives in all of us. Paul writes, “The god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ” (2 Corinthians 4:4). Thomas wasn’t rejecting God out of anger or rebellion; he was blind to the truth, like so many others.
I prayed for him that night, and I prayed for him every day after. I prayed that God would open his eyes, soften his heart, and draw him to the narrow gate. And when he passed away, I clung to those prayers.
I don’t know what happened in the moments between that conversation and the day he died. I don’t know what he saw or felt in those final moments of his life. But I know this: God’s grace is infinite. His love is relentless. He is a God who pursues the lost until their very last breath.
“The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance” (2 Peter 3:9).
This is the hope I hold onto—that somewhere in the quiet moments of Tom’s life, God reached out to him, and my brother responded. That somehow, the God who made the stars also revealed Himself to Tom in a way I may never fully understand.
Jesus promised, “All that the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never cast out” (John 6:37). I don’t know the fullness of God’s work in Tom’s life, but I know that God is good. I know that His grace is wide enough to save anyone, even in the final seconds of life.
So I keep praying. Not in despair, but in hope. I pray that one day, when I walk through the gates of heaven, I’ll see my brother there, smiling as if to say, “I see it now. I understand.”
For now, I trust in God’s mercy. I trust that the narrow gate may be hard to walk through, but the grace that leads us there is infinite. I trust in the promise of Jesus: “I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live” (John 11:25).
And I trust that the God who created the stars and called them by name also called out to Tom, even in his final moments. That is my hope. That is my prayer. And that is the promise I hold onto.
“For the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life, and those who find it are few” (Matthew 7:14). But for those who do, life awaits—life abundant, life eternal. I pray I’ll share that life with my brother one day, under a new sky, where the glory of God is no longer just reflected in the stars but fully revealed in His presence.
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