Tuesday, November
28, 2023
James 4:14
14 Whereas ye know not
what shall be on the morrow. For what is your life? It is even a vapour, that appeareth
for a little time, and then vanisheth away.
Yet
another birthday has come to me. In 1946, today was Thanksgiving Day. My arrival interrupted
the festive feasting of the doctor as well as my mother but Oneida, Tennessee gained
another son.
It seems like only yesterday I was a shirtless barefoot boy, playing with
an old alarm clock in the black dirt in front of a rented house in Cincinnati.
One could smell the meat packing house not too far away and the noise of the city
was a curious mixture of honking horns, and the rumble of machinery. I would
play all day and then turn the bathwater into muck. Momma would dry my kid-blond
hair with a towel and then off to bed.
A moment later I was a teen in a football uniform and then a cap and gown. Suddenly
I’m a young man working in the parts cage at the Coca-Cola Company with an uneasy
restlessness that later defined itself as a call from God upon my life.
Like a blur I’m kneeling in the tabernacle at the Ohio youth camp after hearing Dr.
David Cavin. Now I’m standing in line registering for classes at
Fifty-five years of ministry, and church and family are still the core of
my life. The memory of those years swirls about in a cyclone of places and faces.
I sort them like a school librarian after a middle school research group. It is
satisfaction in a strange blend. Now it is sunset, and the colors are
magnificent. A wonderful product of older age is the evaporation of the need to
impress or please others. I’m much more comfortable with who I am.
Dear Lord, teach us to
number our days that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom. AMEN
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