Smoke 'em if you got 'em/Snippets of poetry

I am always blown away how no matter how cold it, folks will sit outside and smoke.

Cold, icy weather, or the threat of it, makes me remember my best friend from seminary, David Crow. He died in winter, and I could not get to his side because of the bad weather. The Red River was frozen, and the weather was no good all the way to Harlan. One day I told David that in ministry, we would be like Teucer and Ajax (him Ajax, of course). He was maybe the only person who could get what I was trying to say. And I suppose how things have gone after he was struck down make some prophecy there.

There was worry tonight with the folks coming to the food and clothing ministry that the cold weather was going to make it hard to get home. We had a good meal—meat loaf, corn, green beans, mashed potatoes.

4 people came forward wanting to be baptized.

There’s a guy who has really not liked me for as long as I have been here. No problem, he was at a table, no way he could escape, so I sat down next to him and talked. He told us about some adventures he has had. I ain’t hurtin’ nobody, ain’t hurtin’ no one.

Chaucer said of his Clerk (cleric), “gladly wold he lerne, and gladly teche:”

A few people came up to me and said the service needs to be longer. There was some serious conviction there. Basically, I have been selling the people short. Maybe it’s feeling self-conscious about knowing that the crowd can sometimes be hostile; some people are there just for the food and they wish we’d just hurry up. And then, there are those who simply cannot be in the presence of Jesus. You start preaching and they get up and leave.

At least they’re honest. Good, respectable Christians, now they’re the ones who will glad-hand you after Sunday service and run you down as soon as they think they’re with people who love to complain. What are they so scared of? They can tell me what they think—or perhaps they are ashamed of what they think?

Well, I have to one degree or another considered the service to be more of a talk, more of an evangelistic conversation. Yet, they need the Word and want the Word. And they asked for it. Wow.

Sam came to help. She tried to talk her brother into it, because, she said, “being a Christian means helping others and being in fellowship with other believers.” I hope Sam doesn’t grow up to become an adult. It’ll be all over then. She’ll say she’s too busy to serve and has too much money just to give it away… Anyway, after dinner was served, she took the kids to the library and read them a bit of a book.

After the service, I went to get some milk and bread, wondering why it is so easy for me. I just go and get food. I have the money. It can’t be hard work, because as Merle Haggard sang,

“been workin every day since I was twenty

haven’t got a thing to show for anything I’ve done

there’s folks who never work but they’ve got plenty”

On the way to the store, a song that brings back so many memories and seems so appropriate after some of the folks I sat with at table. “Aqualung:”

Do you still remember December’s foggy freeze?

How the ice that clings on to your beard, it was screaming agony

And you snatched a rattling last breath with deep sea-diver sounds

And the flowers bloomed like madness in the spring?