Words Create Atmosphere

The other day I heard music that sounded familiar.  It was band camp at the local elementary where drums were pounding, students were marching, and the morning freshness reminded me that football season is here.

I loved playing the game of football.  I did not care too much for practice with the Burma rope, camel caravans, monkey rolls, and wind sprints, but it was worth it on Friday nights.  There is nothing like the thrill of running into a stadium full of screaming fans, band members, girls wanting to date football players, and cheerleaders.

I reserve weekends in the fall to watch football, search the sports page of the newspaper, and flip TV channels during commercial breaks to watch football.

I had this co-worker, and friend, nicknamed Big Ugly, that loved football.  He was a fanatic about football.  At work, we had a game we played to see who the best prognosticator of football was.  We kept a record of who we thought would win games on Saturday.  Usually it was the list of the top twenty teams listed each week in the paper.  There was no money or prizes involved, just bragging rights of who was the best prognosticator.  I must say that I had the best record with a 93% average one year.  I was lucky.

One Sunday morning, I hated rotating shifts at the cement plant, Big Ugly and I relieved the midnight shift.  The topic usually was how well things were running, what things to watch, and what changes were being processed.  During football season, the topic was Saturday’s games and who was the bragging prognosticator for the week.

Big Ugly entered the cement kiln control room with, “How bout them Auburn Tigers?”  The two workers that we were relieving could care less about Auburn because they were transplants from a cement plant in Tampa Florida and both were both Florida Gator fans.  Big Ugly poked out his chest and repeated, “HOW BOUT THEM AUBURN TIGERS?”

The two workers replied, “What about them?”

Big Ugly said, “They beat Florida State.”

The two workers said, “Auburn did not beat Florida State, Bowden (Coach Bobby Bowden) gave the game away with that stupid Rooski Fumble.”  In the Fumblerooski, the quarterback deliberately places the ball on the ground, technically fumbling it. The backs will run to the right, and the right guard will pick up the ball and run to the left.  When Florida State ran it, Tate, an Auburn defensive lineman picked it up.  The play resulted in a Florida State defeat.

Big Ugly got ugly.  He was young and immature and it showed that morning.  He complained that no one gave Auburn credit for being a good football team.  That is when I made a huge mistake.  I said, “Big Ugly grow up.  It’s just a stupid ball game.

We have an expression up home that says, “Cussed to a fly won’t light on you.”  Well, that morning Big Ugly cussed me to a fly would not light on me.  Big Ugly was red haired and of fair completion.  He turned so red I thought he was having a heart attack.  He left the control room very angry.  The two workers and I were shocked.  They said, “What’s up with him?”  They gathered their lunch boxes and went home.

Sundays were relatively quiet and everything normally ran well due to the fact that there were no maintenance men, electricians, or dust collector workers to have the kiln operator, “Stop this, start this, shut this off, turn this on, or take the kiln off coal and put it on gas.”  All these things made for a long day and an upset kiln and kiln operator.  On Sundays, you could sit back read the Sunday Sports page and brag about how good a prognosticator you were.

Big Ugly did not return until the morning break.  When he did return, he stuck his head in the door and shouted, “I have you know that I am fifty thousand dollars in debt, own a house, a new car, a truck, married, and have a baby.”  His face was blood red and he was trembling as he slammed the door.

Big Ugly came into the control at lunch.  He tried to pour a cup of coffee, but could not because he continued to tremble.

I had worried about him for more than five hours.  I knew I had to say something to calm him or he was going to have a heart attack.  I said, “Allen (Big Ugly’s real name), I want to apologize for what I said.  I am sorry that I made you so mad.  I want to give you some big brother advice.  You got to do something about your anger.  If you are going to dish out stuff about football, you had better be willing to take it.  If these men of this plant know that can upset you, they will ‘eat your lunch.’”

Big Ugly said, “The other day I did something stupid and my dad told me I needed to grow up.  A day or two later I messed up again and my mom told me I needed to grow up.  Later my wife and I were arguing and she told me I needed to grow up.  When you told me to grow up I lost it.”

Big Ugly and I grew very close to one another after that.  He would tell people how much he loved and appreciated me helping in life.  Big Ugly and I both learned that words create atmosphere.

Either make the tree good, and his fruit good; or else make the tree corrupt, and his fruit corrupt: for the tree is known by his fruit.  O generation of vipers, how can ye, being evil, speak good things? for out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh.  A good man out of the good treasure of the heart bringeth forth good things: and an evil man out of the evil treasure bringeth forth evil things.  But I say unto you, That every idle word that men shall speak, they shall give account thereof in the day of judgment.  For by thy words thou shalt be justified, and by thy words thou shalt be condemned (Matthew 12:33-37 KJV).

What are We Gonna Do, Hopper?

Without counsel plans fail, but with many advisors they succeed. Proverbs 15:22

“What are we gonna do, Hopper?”  My friend Keilan and I were in the middle of a contract negotiation battle that eroded to impasse and resulted in a lockout.

Driving two hours from negotiations in Atlanta back to fellow employees in Calera Alabama was more than enough time to weigh options and prepare our presentation.  The company had its top advisors detailing their position and our local union had its top advisors conveying our desires.

I said, “This contract is bigger than both of us.  We will present our results to our co-employees and make a decision based on what they tell us and what we know.”

Decisions are difficult, but we make them from the moment we open our eyes in the morning until we close them that night.  Our faithfulness in serving the Lord increases or diminishes determining on our decisions.

You may be facing a monumental decision about a change of career, a calling in the ministry, or a life changing commitment.  Seek the Lord in prayer and ask for wisdom from Christian brothers and sisters.  Most decisions are too large to handle without Christian wisdom.

August 15, 2018 Devotion from The Richly Indwelling Word: A 365 Day Devotional Vol. 3

Ain't No Haint Gonna Run Me Home

I love dark nights when you can see billions of stars.  Things look different at night.  Ordinary objects take life and your imagination begins to run while.  I remember jogging one night on an old dirt road.  It was beautiful until I felt the presence of something behind me.  All of a sudden, I began to imagine this hideous green demon with one red eye breathing down my neck.  Thinking about him floating behind me, I picked up my pace a step or two and thought about what my daddy told me one time about darkness in a graveyard.  He said, “Don’t be afraid of the dark.  Ain’t nuthin’gonna hurt you.  People there are dead.”

Granny Hopper said the best thing to do when haints, goblins, and the devils imps are around is shew them away in the name of Jesus.  That is what I did.  I said, “In the name of Jesus I command you to leave demon.”  I must say jogging does get your heart rate up, especially if you jog with a haint.

I have heard of strange things that happen in the night.  One thing is lights that appear and move through the sky.  Where I grew up there were such occurrences until people had security lights.  I never saw these lights up home, but I did see some in Oklahoma.

The Chilton Baptist Builders were working in Baxter Springs, Kansas.  Some of the folks wanted to know if we wanted to see the lights that were just over the state line and since the T.V. program That’s Incredible had been there a few weeks prior to our coming.  It is one of those unexplainable phenomenons with lights bouncing in the sky.

I must say the light reacted much like the ones I heard about in Alabama.  My cousin Floyd said a light came in the house one night while he was asleep.  Grandpaw Chapman followed one down in the woods.

That night the light jumped into the road and headed toward us.  Kansas folks said the light would do all sorts of oddities.  Some there said the light got into their car.  Others said it would come toward them disappear and reappear.  I guess the light was scared of Alabama folks because it never got real close but I did see it and kept some newspaper articles about it as souvenirs from the trip.

I have never seen any unexplainable spooks at night other than those lights, but my Uncle Ellis did.  One afternoon while returning home from school, he saw a haint.  Uncle Ellis was not quite right.  No one has ever been able to explain what was wrong with him other than his mind never developed.  He was a giant six feet, four inch, two hundred fifty pound kid.  He loved to play his Roy Rogers guitar and he loved my mom.  Momma had to get Ellis off dad one time when Uncle Ellis thought dad was hurting mom.  Dad said Uncle Ellis had unbelievable strength.  Uncle Ellis died young. He died before my first birthday.

It seems that Uncle Ellis and Uncle Clifton, who was younger, were walking home from school after the bus dropped them off.  My great-uncle Kelly decided to scare his two nephews.  His scheme was to hide in the ditch and scare them as the autumn sun was setting and shadows were growing long.  It was ideal for haints.  To make it more realistic Uncle Kelly had a sheet over him.

As my two uncles walked by him, great-uncle Kelly jumped from the ditch and yelled Booooo!  Uncle Clifton lit out like a “scalded dawg.”  Daddy said they measured Uncle Clifton’s footprints and they were unbelievably far apart.  All out of breath, Uncle Clifton told the family that a haint had Ellis.  Everyone snickered knowing that it was Kelly in a sheet.  Uncle Clifton was terrified as any little boy would be.  Several family members sitting on the front porch consented to see if the haint got Ellis.

As they got about half way there, they spotted Ellis.  He was walking at a normal pace enjoying the fall colors and the growing darkness as trees blocked the setting sun.  They asked Ellis about the haint.  Ellis said the haint was in the ditch.  They asked what happened.  Ellis said, “Hummm, I pick’d up a rock and hit tha haint in tha head.”

“Where’s the haint,” they asked. 

Ellis said, “Up thar en tha detch.” When the family arrived to the haunted ditch, they found Kelly, the Out Cold Ghost.  Great-uncle Kelly learned that Uncle Ellis wasn’t afraid of haints.

And when the disciples saw him walking on the sea, they were troubled, saying, It is a spirit; and they cried out for fear.  But straightway Jesus spake unto them, saying, Be of good cheer; it is I; be not afraid (Matthew 14:26-27 KJV).

Why Did I Run Away From Home?

As a kid, did you ever think about running away from home?  How many of you reading this actually tried running away from home?  I informed my mom on several occasions that I was running away.  Sometimes she offered to pack my bags, while at other times she threaten to beat me all the way home when she found me,

I never ran far from home.  Usually I ran across the field thinking if momma beat me all the way home it would not be too much of a beating.

My favorite place of refuge was an old oak tree adjacent to where I built my home.  I would leave home crying promising never to return.  Under that tree, I would think of all the injustice of home.  Mom never understood me.  I never ran away from home while daddy was home.  He worked as a mechanic on evening shift at the rock plant.  I think the only time I threatened to leave when daddy was at home that he told me if I left, never to come back.  Mom was more sensitive.  I knew she did not want me to leave.  Dad was a different story.

Under that oak tree, I would look to heaven and gaze at the stars.  I imagined all sorts of things.  Wiping tears from my eyes and snot from my nose, I would host a big pity party.  The only attendees were crickets, tree frogs, and mosquitoes.  After thinking of all the things I could do with my life to make momma sorry she caused me to run away, I would sneak back home.  I would peak in the window to see how much momma and my brothers and sister were mourning about my leaving.  Most of the time it looked as though were having a “glad your gone party.”

Moping for a while, I would go inside.  Momma was so glad to see her prodigal son that she fed the fatted calf and tried to kill the prodigal son.  I guess that it why Jesus’ parable on the Prodigal Son is from the perspective of the father and not the mother.

Several years down the road of life, I wondered why I wanted to run away from home.  I once told daddy that I wished I were a million miles away from home.  When I did leave home, my whole perspective about home changed.  All mom and dad were doing was showing love to their eldest son and preparing him for a long journey called life.

C. Welton Gaddy in his book Geography of the Soul says, “Our perspective of the world comes from our perspective of our home.”  Home was the place I learned to read the Bible and learned how to pray.  Home was the place I learned about life and about death.  Home is the place I learned how to share and how to cooperate.  Home is the place where I learned about pride, integrity, honesty, and commitment.  My spiritual nurture came from home.  Gaddy also says, “Spiritual nurture does not depend on physical structure.”

I understand that.  Our home was a shack structurally, but spiritually it was a magnificent mansion.

In many of my articles, I speak of going back home.  Home is not the same.  If a home does not change, it spells disaster.  Home as I knew it does not exist.  Each time I work around the old home place, I understand the saying that you can never go back home.  I have come to realize that when I go back home that I am not looking for what once was, but I have learned that if home is a place of nurture, where I learned affirmation and criticism, where my thoughts challenged and my spirit lifted, and where my thoughts and love for God developed, I can go back home.  As Gaddy states, “We need to go back home . . . If we cannot return home, we will do well to carry our home with us.”

I realized that the week after the Fourth of July several years ago.  After visiting my aunt and uncle who live across from my Chilton County home, I told my aunt that I needed to head back home.  She asked if I were spending the night.  I told her, “No, I going home to my present assignment.”

She had the most baffling look.  While up home, I refer to our Chilton home as Sugar Ridge and where my assignment home as home.  With that look of concern she said, “You’re not coming back are you?”  I said, “That depends on the Lord.”

When Jesus returned home to Nazareth, instead of recapturing feelings of glad satisfaction, instead of finding a spot He loved to go, a breath of familiar air, or a place to prop His spirits, He discovered heartache.  People who pampered Him and encouraged Him now wanted to kill Him.

For Jesus to return home, it was not to reminisce, but it was to remember His purpose.

And he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up: and, as his custom was, he went into the synagogue on the Sabbath day, and stood up for to read.  And there was delivered unto him the book of the prophet Esaias. And when he had opened the book, he found the place where it was written, the Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised, to preach the acceptable year of the Lord (Luke 4:16-19 KJV).

In January 2018 I did return to Chilton County and my family is deteriorated and home on the story burned in 2012.  I catch myself cooling underneath that old oak tree and wondering "why?"

Preception Is Reality

As Labor Day Weekend approaches I am reminded of the years I spent negotiating contracts and the importance of our economy and industrial relationships of employee and employer.  Relationships are important.   We forget that the Bible is a book of relationships.  It instructs us on our relationship to God and to our neighbor.  If we do not have a good relationship with our neighbor we cannot have a good one with God.

In 1994, I had a personal friend, and co-worker, who police arrested for assault. 

The arrest came while he walked the picket line as Local 50537 United Paper Workers International Union negotiated a contract with Blue Circle Cement.  My friend had no idea what was taking place.  One of the replacement workers identified my friend for Norred Security Systems and the Shelby County police as the man who assaulted him at a Calera filling station.  My friend had no idea what they were talking about and for a moment resisted arrest.  He protested that on the night of the alleged incident that he was at home watching Monday Night Football with his son-in-law. 

With the aid of modern technology and sophisticated surveillance equipment, Norred Security and the replacement worker made a positive identification.  My friend was handcuffed, finger printed, and put into a cell for the first time in his life.  He was embarrassed, humiliated, and devastated.

He called me.  I knew him, worked with him, prayed with him, and witnessed along with him.  He said that he was at home with his son-in-law watching the game.  His concern was as a Christian his testimony was destroyed.  The men of the plant rallied around him with full support.  The objective of Norred was to destroy the credibility of the striking employees. 

It did not take long to find the truth.  Another striking employee had had words with the replacement worker and they exchanged blows.  The common dress for most of us on the picket line was blue jeans, tee shirts, and baseball caps.  My friend and the employee who actually hit the replacement worker had beards, were the same build, and the same height.  In negotiations we tried to get Blue Circle, Norred, and the Shelby County police to admit their error.  They were relentless.  During the hearings, my friend’s key witness, his son in law, was accidentally killed in a car accident. 

Finally, someone revealed to the company who the real culprit was.  The company never apologized; neither did the local police nor Norred.  The company maintained that Norred was at fault.  My friend won the case and a settlement from Norred.  The thing he wanted most he never regained.  His name and reputation were destroyed by the false arrest. 

Several years later I had the opportunity to preach at his deacon ordination.  He mentioned that he still felt the humiliated.

The Book of James has some strong words for gossip.  Speak not evil one of another, brethren. He that speaketh evil of his brother, and judgeth his brother, speaketh evil of the law, and judgeth the law: but if thou judge the law, thou art not a doer of the law, but a judge.  There is one lawgiver, who is able to save and to destroy: who art thou that judgest another? (James 4:11-12 KJV)  

Most of us do not have criminal intentions when we gossip, but it can be very malicious.  Gossip can cause more harm in five minutes than can be repaired in years, not to mention one’s emotional stability. 

Many find delight in spicy gossip.  It is our duty to obey the law of God, not to judge it.  Scripture calls it the worst of sins, because it is a breach of the Royal Law and it is an infringement of the rights of God. The sin of character assassination should not be condoned.  We must learn to improve human relationships and to get along better with people.  This Labor Day, remember we are co-labors together.