Rich Mullins

We hardly knew you . . .

Today is the day in 1997 that Christian singer songwriter, Richard Wayne Mullins, finally made it . . . and I’ll leave it right there so that you can finish the sentence.

Six months after the concert that is attached to the end of this post, Rich Mullins and his musical protege Mitch McVicker were driving in Rich’s Jeep southbound on I-39 north of Bloomington, Illinois, to a benefit concert at Wichita State University in Kansas when whoever was driving lost control of the vehicle which overturned throwing both of the men out and onto the roadway. McVicker suffered serious head trauma but would eventually recover after a week in a coma and a year in rehab. Mullins, who was only forty-one years old at the time, got hit by a semi-truck that swerved to miss the overturned Jeep in the road. It’s believed that Mullins was already dead when the big truck hit him . . . but if you ask Rich one day, he will laughingly tell you that he was more alive in that moment than he’d ever been in his whole entire life.

Or, at least, that’s what we tell ourselves because Mullins was such a devout believer in Jesus Christ and often spoke longingly of his hopeful expectation of eternal life in Heaven even as he wrote so many songs praising the Creator of all the beauty there is here on Earth.

I’m supposed to be reading my Bible and saying my morning prayers right now . . . and I will do both after I finish writing this post. In three different blogs, I’ve probably written more about Rich Mullins than I’ve written about any other musician. I also regularly attach Mullins’ songs to other posts that I write to convey an extra thought or a feeling to whatever it is that I’m writing. His songs have long haunted my heart and also strengthened my faith in Jesus Christ, our mutual Friend.

I believe that I’ll someday see you, Rich . . . and you and Jesus can teach me to play the hammered dulcimer as well as you always did. It’ll likely take an eternity to do so, but I’m sure that it’ll be fun!

If you have the time to do so, Folks, here’s the rest of one of Rich Mullins’ final concerts to end this remembrance of the man who we barely got to know before he was gone too soon.

Enjoy!