Thankful Hearts

The Hoppers were never big on holidays because we used them as days to catch up with work around the house.  At other times, we would be cutting, splitting, loading, and unloading firewood.  Daddy always reminded my brother and me that cutting firewood warmed you twice.  When we asked how, daddy would say it warmed you when we cut it and it will warm us when you burn it.  Looking back, I have fond memories of spending a cold day in the woods working with daddy and my brothers.  I really miss it!

I usually grill out steaks for Thanksgiving and Christmas.  I remind folks I can get turkey and ham when I visit relatives.  There are not many leftovers when we grill.

When I was growing up we did not cook out, but we did slaughter hogs and roasted some tenderloin on the fire before the pig had time to get cold.  There is nothing any better than homemade sausage and momma’s biscuits.  Part of the fun of slaughtering hogs was grinding the sausage and having momma tweak the seasoning of the sausage trying to get it just right.  We were her guinea pigs having to sample each batch until she got it just right.  If you have never eaten a sausage biscuit outside in the cold with your hands smelling like pigs, your nose running, and your tongue burning from steaming coffee, you ain’t ever lived.

The Hoppers loved eating during the holidays.  Thanksgiving and Christmas were the two holidays that momma cooked special: fried pies, homemade cookies, and cakes.  Every day, when we could afford it, momma cooked a seven-course meal for supper.  Two things always on the table were green purple hull peas and fried Irish potatoes.  I once told momma that if I ever got grown I would never eat peas and taters again.  I hate I told her that and I sure do miss momma’s peas and taters.

On Thanksgiving and Christmas momma “showed out.”  There was something for the most finicky eater.  Momma could fix the best dressing.  Every year she would almost ruin it by cooking it.  We liked it raw and loose.  Sometimes I would sneak some out of the pan and eat it before momma browned it.  I always accused her of burning it.

Momma always insisted that she had to cook it.  Everything she put in it was already cooked.  The broth, the cornbread, the crackers, the bread, and the eggs were cooked so it was not raw, and we did not like it like a cake, but momma had to put it into the oven to brown it.  If mamma was happy, then everybody was happy.

Everyone ate at the table or tables.  It was family time.  Daddy always, even the years as a lost man, called on someone to say grace.  Every time we put our feet under the table, we gave thanks to God for providing us with something to eat regardless, how far down on the hog we got or how bare the cupboard was.  I remember the days when there was no hog, no milk, nothing but bare shelves, so we were thankful when daddy and momma were able to provide a bountiful meal.

Thanksgiving is truly a time for being thankful, yet we live in a very unthankful world.  We live in a time of entitlement.  God blessed and we worked hard to have plenty.  God has blessed us much as a nation, but many do not realize this.  Thankful hearts recognize the blessings of God at all times.  Momma and daddy taught us to be thankful in times of want and in times of plenty.

As believers, we have an obligation to teach unthankful people a lesson.  The Apostle Paul writing to Timothy gives thanks even though the apostle’s future was bleak.  Paul faced death by execution. “I thank God, whom I serve from my forefathers with pure conscience, that without ceasing I have remembrance of thee in my prayers night and day;  Greatly desiring to see thee, being mindful of thy tears, that I may be filled with joy; When I call to remembrance the unfeigned faith that is in thee, which dwelt first in thy grandmother Lois, and thy mother Eunice; and I am persuaded that in thee also.”

Here are some things which he gave thanks.  Paul was thankful to be a believer with a Christian family to have true joy, true devotion, and true prayer.  He was thankful for friends bonded by tears, by happiness, and by yearning.  He was thankful for a faith that came from teaching the Scriptures.  He had a faith that came by being one believer witnessing to many unbelievers.  Paul had a faith rooted in the promise from those of Timothy’s family that would be from generation to generation.

Give thanks with a grateful heart
Give thanks to the Holy One
Give thanks because He's given
Jesus Christ, His Son.

Time With Daddy

I loved spending time with my daddy.  His life experiences were something that I wanted to know and to share.  He grew up during the Great Depression without a dad.  Granddad Hopper committed suicide when daddy was eleven years old in 1935.  Granddad Hopper, gored by a steer and suffering a stroke, was plagued with depression and paralysis. By his early forties, he shot himself in the head with a shotgun. He believed he had no reason to live.

Granny Hopper, dad’s mother, was a sharecropper, widow woman, and a mother of eight during the Great Depression and daddy would tell how the family struggled to survive.  I remember one of the houses that Granny Hopper lived in for many years.  It was high off the ground, had wide crakes in the floor, and had no inside plumbing.  In fact, the kitchen was a separate building adjacent to the house.

I thought it amazing that dad lived there most of his life.  I was glad that it was not the house where granddad killed himself.  I think that is why we lived in our house for many years without many modern amenities that other folks had, such as hot water and a bathroom. Dad was not accustomed to them.

Dad served in the Army during the second Great World War.  He had been to Texas, California, North Africa, and Italy.  He had been wounded by an exploding grenade and ripped open by a machine gun blast.  He was left for dead and had been captured.  He was in the hospital when General Patton became infamous for slapping a soldier.

I thought daddy was intriguing.  He had been to so many exotic and interesting places.  He knew so many different people from all walks of life.  He would tell us some of the most interesting stories.

I loved to lay out in the yard with daddy in the evenings.  He would come home from a hard day of logging.  I have a vivid memory of him coming home all sweaty and dirty from working in the woods.  After supper, daddy loved momma’s cooking, we would get an old blanket and lay in the yard and watch the sunset. 

The hill where we lived provided the most gorgeous sunsets.  In the twilight, we would listen as the crickets and frogs serenaded us.  We would watch the bats dive for bugs as the stars began illuminating the heavens.  Daddy would talk of how the Old Master created all the heavens.

On our backs and looking in to heaven, we watched falling stars, planes traveling to and fro, orbiting satellites, which he called Sputniks, and sometimes far off lightning.  He would thump a cigarette into the grass and tell us that the crickets were having a weenie roast as the smoke swirled upward.

When daddy started to work evening shift (three to eleven p.m.), our times outside in the yard were fewer, but we spent time out there when we could.  I could not wait for daddy to get home when he worked evenings.  I was happy to see that he came home.  I worried that something might happen to him because he worked with heavy equipment at the rock plant in Calera.

Daddy would always have something left over in his lunch bucket.  It was usually a Colonial honey bun which he picked up on the way to work and did not have time to eat it or may he left it to see the scuffle between my brothers, sister, and I to be the first to open it.  It was fun to share the honey bun, but it felt wonderful that daddy was home.  Oh, the joy of seeing daddy come home.  I knew daddy had to leave home to earn a living for the family and I knew he would come back.  It reminds me of Jesus’ promise.

In my Father's house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you.  And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto myself; that where I am, there ye may be also (John 14:2-3 KJV).

The Process

“The higher you go the broader your horizon” come to me one day standing atop a limestone silo at the cement plant.  I had heard a missionary speak those words and they resonated with me.  God gave those words to me in a moment of “egoitis” atop that silo.  Egoitis is my word when you think more on yourself than you should.

I had finished college, pastored my first church, and returned to the cement plant after a five-year layoff.  I was discouraged having resigned that first church.  Called, ordained, graduated, and resigned, I was alone on the silo covered with a massive spill of crushed limestone.  At the moment, it seemed that my supervisors were having fun placing me on the silo with hard labor as their intent and humiliation as their goal.

Semi-depressed, I stood there breathing the sulfur exhaust from the limekilns, dressed in steel-toed boots, hardhat, safety glasses, goggles, leather gloves, and a number two flat shovel.  I peered through the steam from the lime hydrator observing the massive quarry walls.  I wanted to be a pastor of a church.  What was I doing here?  Why could I not get a church?  Why were four years of pastoral preparation through university training regressing to pre-college employment at the plant?

As I studied the quarry, I remembered what I learned in history, geology, and science classes about the limestone. The quarry walls were the result of innumerable tiny sea shells silted and forged together by pressure after the deluge of Noah.  The layers of limestone were slanted rather than being vertical or horizontal towering about 200-300 feet from the quarry floor to the surface.

I questioned God and He reminded me of my calling using the limestone.  For thousands of years the limestone was the resting place of dead sea creatures in tiny shells.  One day someone drilled into those solidified shells and filled the holes with explosives.  After the blast, limestone of all sizes flew separated from the bedrock.

Giant machines recovered the limestone of various sizes and hauled them to a primary crusher.  The primary crusher hammered large limestone into smaller pieces.  Some pieces went through the crusher untouched.  Most all of the limestone went to a secondary crusher by conveyor belt where the stone was hammered smaller. 

Some stone fell by the wayside and some stone was untouched as it continued to climb to a third crusher, which hammered the stone again.  Some stone continued, some fell by the wayside, and some was untouched as it continued up to the silos of the cement and lime kilns.  Limestone headed for the cement kilns would be mixed with iron ore, aluminum, and other materials then pulverized. 

The pulverized material would be cooked in the cement kiln at @2200 degrees forming balls of various sizes which went to another crusher which sized them to travel to another crusher which pulverized the balls and Gipson to make cement.

Limestone that went to the limekilns went to another crusher which sized the stone into small stone called rice, #2 rock, and #3 rock.  These three sizes were cooked converting them into lime.  Lime goes through a small crusher and then to a hydrator, placing the water back into to make hydrated lime.  Hydrated lime is used in thousands of products.  Water purification relies heavily on hydrated lime.  Cement mixed with lime makes mortar mix.

As I studied this process from the quarry to bridges, houses, dams, and everything lime that utilizes cement, crushed rock, and lime I realized God was showing me that each of us is transformed differently.  One day God took my spiritually dead life and transformed by the power of the Holy Spirit.  Dunamis the Greek word for power and is the root word of dynamite.  I was one of those stones that had to be crushed to be useful for the Kingdom.  My egoistis had me looking at other preachers who seemingly were unscathed, who had churches, and who were prospering.  I immediately thought of pouring concrete in a bridge.  There cement, which had pulverized limestone mixed with limestone of various sizes that could have come directly from the quarry, untouched except by the initial explosion, mixed together and solidified make a bridge for travelers to pass.  That was a marvelous revelation.  It is a possess to get where God wants you.

I turned to that massive spill, the neglect and irresponsibility of some cement employee, and started the possess of returning limestone into the silo.  It was not long before other laborers appeared and started their turn in humility.  When they complained, I reminded them that someone had to cleanup the mess of someone’s neglect.  That’s what God did at Calvary.

Being confident of this very thing, that He which hath begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ (Philippians 1:6 KJV).