Relentless

Brother Bill was the leader for Royal Ambassadors (RA’s) which was part of the Men’s Ministry at Union Springs Baptist Church near Randolph, Alabama. Brother Bill was also the spiritual leader for most of the RA’s teaching and showing us how to become Christians.

It seems that I always worked for Brother Bill starting with picking dewberries for four cents a cup. Dewberries were delicious as well. I helped him haul hay and unload and stack it in his barn. Working with hay was hot, dusty, nasty, and tiring. It teaches the importance of hard work and cooperation.

At age twelve I started helping Brother Bill do carpentry. He was an excellent carpenter. One time a fellow that did sheetrock work for Brother Bill had to repair a foyer that did not meet Brother Bill’s standard. When he finished he sought Brother Bill for payment. Brother Bill asked him if you could tell if it looked repaired. The fellow said a person could tell that it was. Brother Bill told him to repair it again and hide the mistake.

The fellow told Brother Bill that he was a hard man to please. Brother Bill told him that the mistake was his and to repair it again because the foyer was the first place on the inside that prospective home buyers would inspect and that if it was patched the would assume the whole sheetrock work in the house would also be.

The sheetrock man said that he would have remove the sheetrock and start again. Brother Bill said that if that is what it takes then do it. I want it done right.

Brother Bill built immaculate houses but he lived in an old house deep in the woods. It was nothing like the houses he built. His place was a playground for boys. One time he hosted a party for one of his daughters. He did not have any sons and the RA’s were his boys. I will never forget the night of the party. The moon was full and you could see everything.

The party was fantastic with cake, ice cream, decorations, and games. One of the games we played was hide and seek. His farm was idea for hiding. There barns, equipment, lofts, troughs, livestock, and hundreds of places to hide. I pitied the one doing the seeking because of the complicatedness of searching for young teenagers that did their best to scare the life out the pursuer.

Most of the girls did not have the camouflaging skills of us boys and were found quickly. There were some boys that we never found. They appeared when the party was over. One of the problems was there were no boundaries and the possibilities of hiding were titanic. The probabilities of damage were massive. We were relentless that moonlit night.

A bunch of wild boys having fun can be destructive. I had a wonderful time and I was one of the boys that was never found that moonstruck night. Hey, we might have been lunatics hiding in the darkness that night.

Boys and girls hid that night, but we knew that we could not hide from God. Brother Bill as our RA leader taught us that we could not hide from God.

 

The Hound of Heaven by Francis Thompson was published in 1890 shows the relentless pursuit of God for the human soul:

I fled Him, down the nights and down the days;

  I fled Him, down the arches of the years;

I fled Him, down the labyrinthine ways

  Of my own mind; and in the mist of tears

I hid from Him, and under running laughter.

 

 

Can any hide himself in secret places that I shall not see him? saith the LORD. Do not I fill heaven and earth? saith the LORD. Jeremiah 23:24 KJV