Stories of living and inspiration abound on the obituary page.  Here’s one today from John Brewer, a writer at the Saint Paul Pioneer Press, about Rev. Andrew Rogness, 62, a Lutheran pastor in Roseville, Minn., who clearly made "home" for people by welcoming them.  Blogging on the Prince of Peace Church web site, he wrote in one of his entries in February during his Stage 4 cancer about mortality:

 . . . ."There are the usual ‘bucket list’ things to live for, like watching the Winter Olympics and college basketball’s March Madness.  But ‘the most compelling reasons to fight for life, I’m discovering, are of a different kind," he wrote.

"I want to be here this coming July for my son’s wedding – not so much for my sake as for his and his bride’s sake. I want to be here in July for our 40th wedding anniversary, not just for my sake, but for my wife’s," he wrot

"In short I believe the most compelling reason to live, no matter what each person faces in life, is to embrace the notion that we live for the sake of others.  The Bible is filled with this notion of being stewards.  Embracing this reason for life becomes more compelling when faced with the predicament of our own mortality."

When it was clear that Pastor Rogness wouldn’t make it to his son’s wedding, his son and fiancee got their marriage license and gathered their families in Rogness’ hospital room.  They read their vows, the homily he wrote, and he blessed their wedding.  He died two hours later with his family singing hymns that he and his brothers Bishop Peter Rogness, head of the Saint Paul Area Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America; Stephen and the Rev. Michael Rogness sang as children.

Bishop Rogness told Brewer, "It was the most marvelous interweaving of life’s joy and sadness, of ending and beginnings."