John Claypool had a great gift for helping people through their grief. Now we grieve the loss of this uniquely gracious person who died Sept. 3 at age 74.

Like many, my faith was shaped by the writings, lectures and sermons of this gifted preacher. Though I did not know him personally until recent years, his impact during my formative time as a student and young minister was significant.

Reflecting on his wonderful contributions to our journeys of faith, there are three lasting lessons many of us will carry with gratitude. Here’s a sampling of what could be learned from John Claypool.

First, don’t hide your pain from God or others. Claypool’s transparency while dealing with the illness and death of his daughter, Laura Lue, was revolutionary for a Baptist pastor. His remarkable honesty — clearly expressed in four sermons that form the book, Tracks of a Fellow Struggler — has helped many in their travels through the valley of the shadow of death.

Claypool taught us that God is big enough and gracious enough to handle our fears, anger and hard questions. Amazingly, he told me in an interview that he received criticism for his confessions and some even called his words blasphemy. But he stuck with his belief that “God can handle whatever it is that you are feeling.”

By the way, that interview (in the March 2002 issue of Baptists Today) was the easiest I have ever done. No research was needed. I simply asked the questions that had grown in my mind over the many years of hearing and reading his words.

I broke my self-imposed editing rules and allowed the interview to extend across six pages. His words seemed too important to cut.

Positive response to the interview exceeded any other article included in the news journal over the five and a half years I have been editor. One reader rightly commented that Claypool “speaks a different language” from the rest of us.

Second, don’t point your finger when you preach. As a college student attending a conference in Ridgecrest, N.C., I heard Claypool for the first time. His style was remarkably different from most Baptist preachers.

He didn’t raise his voice and made no threats. His spoke about our needs, our failures and our hope. He was indeed a fellow struggler.

Claypool said his embrace of confessional preaching was rooted in the experience of his daughter’s illness and death. But it carried on for the rest of his life.

“I began to realize that one of the images Jesus left with us was that of a witness,” he explained in the 2000 interview. “Now I’m very aware that it is a two-edged sword, that you can divert attention away from the gospel to yourself… (But) I have since come to the belief that there are times when our own experiences can be gifts that we can give other people — when the spirit is generosity and not exhibitionism.”

Third, life is a gift. One of the four sermons in Tracks of a Fellow Struggle is titled “Life is a gift.” But, in reality, it was the theme of all of Claypool’s sermons.

In his deepest pain, Claypool chose “the road of gratitude” that leads to the “basic understanding that life is a gift — pure, simple, sheer gift — and that we here on earth are to relate to it accordingly.” It was a theme echoed in his lectures at Yale University and the ones I was privileged to hear as a student at Southeastern Seminary in the late ‘70s.

Those familiar with Claypool’s journey know he became an Episcopal priest in 1986 and retired as rector of St. Luke’s Church in Birmingham in 2000. Upon retirement he became visiting professor of preaching at Mercer University’s McAfee School of Theology in Atlanta where he reconnected with many old Baptist friends and influenced a new generation of Baptist ministers.

When an Episcopal friend who covers religion for a daily newspaper learned of Claypool’s plans to teach at McAfee, she emailed me to say: “You dirty-dog Baptists. Trying to steal John Claypool back from us!”

Of course the truth is that Claypool belonged to the larger family of faith. Even in an Episcopal pulpit and collar he quoted from his Baptist heroes like Carlyle Marney and Wayne Oates. There was enough grace, passion and insight in Claypool to go around.

Indeed, life is a gift from God. And John Claypool was a special gift for which we can long be thankful.