Give Me Flowers While I Am Alive

One Saturday night on my way home from a wedding in Birmingham I stopped by the Union Springs Baptist Church cemetery.  It was dark, but I wanted to stop because I did not know if I would have another opportunity to go by there before Resurrection Sunday.  I try to visit every chance I can.  I promised mom and dad that I would visit their graves.  I place a flower or flowers on momma’s grave.  I always would give her a flower when I would visit her when she was alive.  I would get her daffodils, roses, jonquils, crept myrtle, dogwood blooms, and many other blooms.  Dad would always say, “Don’t put flowers on my grave; give me flowers while I am alive.”  He was really saying spend time with me now.

Since it was after dark, I did not stay very long.  No, I am not scared in the graveyard at night.  Daddy taught never fear the dead; it is the living that will hurt you.  I was afraid the pastor of Union Springs might be alarmed with a car entering the cemetery.  I do not know what my home church was thinking when they built the Pastorium beside the cemetery.  My home church has been fortunate to call pastors with families that did not mind living beside the dead.  It may be that most pastors have served dead churches that have manipulating members, and it was a relief not having the dead causing any trouble.

As I surveyed the cemetery, I thought about all the people I knew that were now resting there.  I have worshipped with them, fished with them, laughed, and cried with them.  Buried there are those who taught me Scripture, taught me about life, and taught me about dying.  Some in the graveyard I was with them when they were dying.  I watched some of them suffer horrible deaths from cancer.  There were those who died violent deaths from car accidents and several died from heart attacks. There is a childhood friend who died from a motorcycle accident, the friend who died from alcohol poisoning, and the friend that died from Aids. 

There is the friend that said she knew God called me to preach long before I knew it.  There is the friend that told me that she would always be praying from me when I stood to preach.  There is the old friend that gave me a London Fog rain jacket when I surrendered to preach.

Scattered all over the cemetery are neighbors, family, and a few unknowns of long ago.  There are infant graves, senior adult graves, teenage graves, and graves of all ages in between.  Some have huge tombstones, some are simple markers, and some are marked by a small metal nametag.

Visiting the graveyard, I remember some of the deceased laughs, some of their funny sayings, and some of their unique smiles or distinctive physical attributes.  The graves there mark those that I have made my journey of life.  I started making my trips to this cemetery when I was in my mother’s womb, the day they buried my great-grandmother Crumpton was the day before my birth.

As I look at the pink granite tombstone of momma and daddy, I took a moment to think about the short time I had with them and how short this life really is.  It is hard to image that this Easter daddy will have been dead for forty years or that momma will be dead thirty-six years.  Daddy died the Friday after Easter Sunday 1984.  Easter had a greater meaning that year. I remember walking out of the hospital when moments earlier, around four o’clock in the morning, the nurse pronounced daddy dead.  The sun was shining brightly, not yet broken the horizon.  Birds chirped and sang beautiful songs.  The aroma of spring, as was the dawning of a new day, was breathtaking.  Suddenly I was overwhelmed with the reality that daddy was in beautiful heaven.  My day was zilch compared to his.  As I walk among the dead in the cemetery at night, dad’s spirit walks with the throngs of the living in heaven where there is no night.

I made the trip to the cemetery that night to say, “Mom, dad, I will see you on Resurrection Day.”  I then journeyed back to Linden where I ministered at the time.

The beauty of Resurrection Sunday is that we, as believers, hold to Jesus’ promise of the Resurrection.  The power that raised Jesus from the grave is the same power that will do it again for all believers one day.

I am the resurrection, and the life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live . . . (John 11:25bKJV).

Why seek ye the living among the dead? He is not here, but is risen . . . (Luke 24:5b-6a KJV).

PAY BALL FIRST, THEN GOD

 

I looked up on the wall of the office one morning and made a startling discovery.  I have been in the ministry over forty years.  The date on my Certificate of License is dated 27^th day of February 1983.

Moments earlier that day, I read an article in the Cooperative Farming News, From Pastor to Pasture: That Must have Been 20 years Ago!  Glenn Crumpler, author of the article said he heard a family member say of an event, “That must have been 20 years ago.”  He said that when as a kid he could not imagine how someone could remember something that happened twenty years earlier.  Ironically, he said that happened 45 years ago.  Life is short.

Forty years ago, I would hear preachers say that they had been in the ministry 20, 25, 30, and 40 years.  I remember thinking that is a long time and that I wish I could be in ministry that long. Well, I is there!  That’s not correct subject-verb relationship, but it is true.  Time does fly.  Life is only a vapor!

Ministry has made significant changes in forty years.  When I was pastor at Gallion, a person from the community came to church for the first time in twenty-five years.  After the morning service he told me that church had changed some much since his last visit.  He said he thought he had been to a nightclub instead of a church.  I looked puzzled at him.  He said that the music and the humor in my sermon were like that of a comedy club.

I understand his rationale.  The last Christian youth concert I attended I commented that when I was a teenager momma did not allow us to attend rock and roll events at school and now we have them at churches.

Speaking of changes, years ago at an Associational event, someone asked if she might make a suggestion.  We were always open to suggestions because Associational Ministry Directors, Pam, and I always evaluate our events.  This person suggested to us that we not to schedule associational events that interfere with sporting events.  This question happens more often that you might think.  One time before, I was scolded by a member of one of our churches for having an event during Spring Break.  Bethel Baptist Association ministers in six different school districts, which at that time did not observe spring break at the same time.

Back to the sporting conflict or may I say spiritual conflict.  I learned in forty years of ministry as a pastor, that any event the church schedules conflicts with some activity outside the church.  I reassured the questioner that we do our best to dodge as many possible conflicts as we can.  We would never have any ministry events if we tried to dodge conflicts.

My concern here is when did a sporting exercise for a child take precedent over spiritual training?  A majority of student athletes will never use their sporting exercises in the professional arena, yet most parents spend more money and time at the ball field than they do for God.  Just his week every soccer field, softball field, and little league was packed to the limit.

When did our communities become consumed with sports and recreation?  I played football, baseball, basketball, and volleyball while growing up.  My dad loved sports and enjoying watching my brothers and me play ball.  Dad taught us that it was a game and that work and chores around home and school came before sports.  Sports were extracurricular events.  Realistically, how many children will play win athletic scholarships or play professional sports?

I have walked home, around seven miles, after practice to slop pigs and load firewood many times.  I have missed games because dad and mom were at work, and I did not have a way to go.

Coaches, schools, and clubs would never allow practice or games to interfere with church events.  Coaches would always allow players to leave early if there was a revival or church event that an athlete needed to attend.  This is not the case today.

The issue at the associational event was not with the interference with the athlete playing an event, but with priorities.  I am burdened that parents do not see spiritual development as more essential than worldly development.  I want to weep when I see dads taking their boys hunting instead of to worship on Sundays.  My dad was a lost man, but he prohibited us to go hunting or fishing on Sundays.  Dad taught priorities.

Before I became a pastor, I volunteered to attend an associational brotherhood training event.  The event was on a holiday, but because I worked rotation at the cement plant, I was not off and was scheduled midnights.

My midnight shift allowed me to attend the workshop and not miss work.  Before leaving to attend the workshop, I received a call from the plant that the second shift man did not show and I needed to come in four hours early, six o’clock pm.  I told the second shift foreman that I could not come in early.  He wanted an excuse.  I said that I had committed to our church brotherhood director that I would attend the workshop and I was taught to keep my commitments.  He reminded me that that I was turning down double time and half pay because I was being called out on a holiday.  I reminded him that my commitment was greater than the pay.  I am not bragging but speaking of commitment and priorities.

As Associational Ministry Directors, Pam, and I had a yearly planning day where we try to avoid conflict.  We publish this calendar as early as possible where Church Executive Lay Members can share them with their churches.  Conflict is inevitable, commitment is inconvenient, and choice is a matter of priorities.

Once someone inquired of my commitment, I quoted a sportswriter and poet, Grantland Rice, from his poem “Alumnus Football”:

For when the one great Scorer comes

To mark against your name,

He writes -not that you won or lost-

But how you played the game.

For I know whom I have believed, and am persuaded that he is able to keep that which I have committed unto him against that day (II Timothy 1:12b KJV).