David Bloom's Last E-mail Talked of Jesus

On the night before he died of a pulmonary embolism, David Bloom sent his beloved wife, Melanie, an e-mail that eerily foreshadowed his death.

At his funeral Wednesday in St. Patrick’s Cathedral, his brother John read that prophetic message, one that defined David Bloom and showed clearly what values propelled him in his brief life.

"But I'll tell you, Mel, I am at peace. Here I am, supposedly at the peak of professional success, but I could, frankly, care less. It's nothing compared to my relationship with you and the girls and Jesus."

Earlier, Bloom, a convert to Catholicism, hinted that he would not be coming back from Iraq. According to Joel C. Rosenberg of World magazine, on the night before he left for Iraq he confided to the Rev. Matthew McGinness: "I'm almost afraid to say this, but I'm ready."

Said Father McGinness, "David had recognized God's sovereignty over his life." Obviously he had a sense he might not come home, Rosenberg, a fellow convert to Christianity, wrote.

Rosenberg recalled meeting Bloom back in 1996, and had followed his career ever since. But he said he had been unaware of that Bloom "in recent years [had] become a Christian who considered his personal relationship with Jesus Christ far more important than all the glamorous assignments he'd had, from White House correspondent to war correspondent on the road to Baghdad." That, he wrote, is what he learned after hearing Bloom's last e-mail.

According to Reuters: "Bloom's religion played a central part in his life. 'David had ... personal issues to address,' said his friend Jim Lane, who met Bloom at a New Canaan, Connecticut, Bible study group."

"It's not easy to demonstrate childlike faith anywhere - to believe that God loves us and has a wonderful plan for our lives ... that each of us are sinful and rebellious and thus separated from God ... that Jesus Christ's death on the cross and resurrection from the grave is God's only provision to forgive us of our sins ... that we must individually receive Jesus the Messiah as our personal Savior and Lord by faith through prayer ... and that only then can we truly experience God's love and plan for our lives.

"But that's what Bloom did. How fitting that as we celebrate Passover and Easter, a news reporter's last e-mail should point us to the most important news of all, and good news at that: 'For God so loved that world that He gave His one and only Son, that whosoever believes in Him shall not perish but have everlasting life.' (John 3:16, the New Testament)."

It is only now, after his death, that his millions of admirers learned of his devotion to his faith and his God. They also realized that he pursued that faith with the same single-minded passion and enthusiasm he chased every story that came his way.

Just read this article this morning:

'Into the Very Presence of God'

'Into the Very Presence of God'

BreakPoint with Charles Colson

April 17, 2003

Remembering David Bloom

It was early morning, Iraqi time. Crouched in a modified tank, NBC News correspondent David Bloom picked up his phone and played back his messages. One was from Jim Lane, a New York financier and Wilberforce Forum advisory board member. The two were sharing a daily, long-distance devotional time using Oswald Chambers's classic, My Utmost for His Highest. Lane read the message for April 5, based on Matthew 25: "Because of what the Son of Man went through, every human being can now get through into the very presence of God."

Moments later, Bloom climbed out of the tank, took a few steps, and collapsed. Soon after, he was ushered into the presence of God.

David's death from a pulmonary embolism devastated his family, friends, colleagues, and millions of TV viewers. At age thirty-nine, David was a rising star at NBC. Viewers looked forward to watching Bloom file his reports while bouncing across the desert on his "Bloom-mobile," his face streaked with dirt, his hair snapping in the wind. He loved his job, and everyone knew it.

But what most viewers did not know was that David was a committed Christian. David had grown up in a Methodist home. And while he had a strong understanding of the Gospel growing up, it wasn't until two years ago, according to Lane, that Bloom "effectively came to a saving knowledge of Jesus and started a real faith journey."

Bloom joined the New Canaan Society, a weekly men's fellowship group founded by Lane and my former colleague Eric Metaxas. I met Bloom several times as a guest of that fellowship, and we became friends. I was struck by the sincerity of his Christian faith. He was hungry for knowledge of God and how his faith ought to play out in his life.

On the day he died, Lane says, "David was in a very good place, at peace with himself, his faith, and his family." That peace was reflected in the last message he would ever send to his wife, Melanie?one that reveals that, in the middle of a desert battlefield, his own mortality was very much on his mind. Bloom wrote: "When the moment comes in my life when you are talking about my last day, I am determined that you and others will say, 'He was devoted to his wife and children; he was admired; he gave every ounce of his being for those whom he cared most about?not himself, but God and his family.'"

Yesterday Lane spoke at a memorial service at St. Patrick's Cathedral in New York. Speaking before America's most powerful media figures, Lane told a simple story about a man who loved and served Jesus Christ. It was a side of their colleague that many of them had never really known?a side scarcely mentioned in the voluminous media coverage of his death.

At the end of his April 5 devotional reading, Oswald Chambers writes: "The cross of Christ was a . . . sign that our Lord had triumphed . . . to save the human race." I thank God for that triumph in the short life of this ebullient, gifted man, and I pray that his posthumous witness will inspire others to seek out the God he served.

C. S. Lewis once said that Christians never have to say good-bye. So, to my dear brother David, I say simply, au revoir.

For further reading and information:

Send notes with condolences to David Bloom's family at BloomFamily@NBC.com, or mail to The Bloom Family, c/o NBC, 30 Rockefeller Plaza, New York, NY 10112.

David's friends have established a trust for the benefit of his three daughters. Donations in memoriam may be sent to David Bloom Children's Trust, c/o Latham & Watkins, 885 3rd Avenue, Suite 1000, New York, NY 10022.

"Remembering David Bloom," MSNBC, April 6, 2003.

"David Bloom, 39, of New York," MSNBC, April 9, 2003.

Jonathan Alter, "Consummate Pro with a Human Touch," Newsweek, April 6, 2003.

"NBC Correspondent David Bloom Dies in Iraq," Washington Post, April 6, 2003.

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