My friend Steve McLean with his new granddaughter Sophie

  August 17, 2008 – Where would a friend like Steve McLean come from, if not from God?
  I haven’t figured this God stuff out, like some people, but it doesn’t really matter. Steve is the genuine article, a child of God, a man of love and faith and presence. Watching him deliver his sermons, love his congregation, race around as a volunteer fireman, be an instinctive and loving friend, neighbor,  father, and husband, as well as a shepherd in the truest sense, I am just fortunate to know him, and the loving and accepting people in his congregation. I have no idea where he came from. I know what Steve would say. He knows where he comes from, and where is going. I am not yet so lucky.
   I didn’t even know Steve’s name a year ago, and now he is among my closest friends, as is his wife Kim.
   I don’t know how it happened. We just got close in the way of good friends, and stayed that way.
  I am learning that people appear when you need them, when you are ready, when they are ready. You just have to let them in.
 Steve and I are different in so many ways, and alike in so many others Life is strange, I think, is the point. What pure joy it is to see Steve up on the platform at the Argyle United Presbyterian Church, giving and receiving so much love. And to see him with his granddaughter Sophie. It is a special privilege to be a photographer when you see Steve and Sophie, and I loved annoying him by trying to get him into the light while he was dutifully attending his flock. I love Steve.
  Today, he offered a number of prayers, including for Marion, who izzy and I have been visiting, and who told us yesterday that she felt sometimes that she was wearing out. Steve said he hoped her spirit would be renewed, even as her body tired.