About a year ago, my family entered a painful season. The full story is not mine to tell but suffice it to say our hearts were broken in ways I never could have imagined. The story that I can tell is that even in the darkest days God never deserted any of us and we have come to a new understanding of his love and grace and mercy. And I can testify from up close that he is still in the business of restoration and healing. Praise God! Let me say that louder... PRAISE GOD!
Last Christmas, deep in the throes of uncertainty, I remembered this book that belonged to my Daddy. I placed it in an old gift box that I had saved... it still had the tag on it that said, "from Pa"... and passed it along to offer some comfort and wisdom. In case you can't read from the picture, the book is called Promises: A Daily Guide to Supernatural Living by Bill Bright. Somewhere along the way, the book's dustcover disintegrated and Daddy taped it to the hardback. The book is sticky from his repair job - I think there may have been some duct tape involved as well. The pages are loose and covered with Daddy's notes and inside the covers he created his own topical index. He read from it every morning and at the top of each page there is a month and day followed followed by many years in succession. He noted important family events on some of the days, some lovely - birthdays and victories - and some incredibly sad - like the day Mama died. He kept a simple paper bookmark in the most recent place he'd read. It was February 28th and the year was 2005. If Daddy had the book with him later that day, he might have written: The day I have waited for my whole life... the day I saw Jesus face to face... and Beatrice... oh Glory!
On that morning, he read and dated his devotional, went to meet his prayer breakfast buddies at the K&W Cafeteria and called me about 11 AM. He said he was going to do some laundry. I learned later that he had phoned several people - boy did he love to talk and he thought unlimited long distance was the best invention ever. A couple of his friends were driving down the road and decided to stop by. They found the door unlocked and Daddy in the hallway. My brother had gotten him one of those Life Alert things that he wore around his wrist like a watch. He never touched it. After the ambulance left the house, the neighbor went to lock up for us. She found the dryer still running. I believe he had an Elijah moment - one he prepared for every morning all those many years. The moment his faith was made sight.
I still cannot comprehend some of the things Daddy got to experience in his life. He was the only son of a sharecropping family and had to leave school after ninth-grade to work in the fields. He was a bi-vocational pastor with a dual-charge before we had ever heard of those words. He invited strangers into our home - from barefoot hippies to three-piece-suit-wearing gospel quartets to NASA rocket scientists. Steve and I recently went to see the movie The Jesus Revolution and I cried through the whole thing - it could have been about him. I gasped at the scene where they showed actual footage of Explo 72 in Dallas. Daddy was there. And it hit me what an incredible thing that was... this high-school drop out, sharecropper turned steel worker/preacher man from rural Alabama flew to Texas and crowded into the Cotton Bowl with 80,000 people to hear Billy Graham and Bill Bright and to witness the beginning of contemporary Christian music. It altered the direction of his life... and mine.
All that being said, all the extraordinary things Daddy did in his life, I don't think any of them compare to the legacy of this beat up taped together book of promises he turned to faithfully every morning. He doggedly believed that God kept those promises and he clung to them whether he could see them or not. And now we have them and his faith has spilled out onto us. I find myself wondering what my children and grandchildren will have to hang on to from the detritus of my life... a few blogs, a journal or two, some scribbles in the margins of my collection of Bibles? Just to be safe, I've ordered my own copy of the Promises book from Thriftbooks. It says it's in "good" condition but, wouldn't you know it, the dustcover is missing. I highly doubt I will be as devoted as Daddy was but I'll do what I can. Because we need all the faith we can get around here these days. And our beloved ones need to know that we believe in a promise-keeping God.
For the record, here's the last page he read on February 28, 2005. The Bible reading for that day? II Corinthians 5:6-10 Therefore we are always confident and know that as long as we are at home in the body we are away from the Lord. For we live by faith, not by sight. We are confident, I say, and would prefer to be away from the body and at home with the Lord. So we make it our goal to please him, whether we are at home in the body or away from it. For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each of us may receive what is due us for the things done while in the body, whether good or bad.
My last words as I walked away from his earthly shell there in the hospital where they pronounced him dead... "You did good, Daddy." At least I got that right. Selah.
