A PINK NOTE FROM GOD

 As a new day began to dawn, I watched embers drift into the sky.  The embers were the remnants of a lifetime of collecting.  My home of thirty-six years was slowly disappearing into the coming sunrise of July 12, 2012.

Alone as the Lord’s Day was about to dawn, I began to recall the events of the last twenty-four hours.  My son Aaron and I had spent our Saturday in Linden, Alabama where I was serving as Director of Missions doing miscellaneous items known to all weekend warriors.  We ended the day grilling hamburgers on the grill.  We watched as the hickory wood burned into to coals and the tiny embers that scurried to enter the heavens.  The hamburgers were the best we had every cooked.  They were juicy and delicious.   The embers of the Lord’s Day were a sacrifice, not of Biblical requirements, of over sixty years of sacrifice to have, fill, and maintain our home.

We had moved into the house on December 13, 1977.  It was my birthday.  My brothers, father-in-law, and two brothers-in-law had moved everything in for us.  My daughter Angela was three months old, her big brother almost two.  It was a time of dedication and rejoicing.  Now it was a sober and bitter moment of reality that everything burned.

Aaron and I watched old movies and went to bed.  I wanted a goodnight’s rest knowing I was to preach three services for the Greensboro Baptist Church in the morning.  Sound asleep, a neighbor, Rick, knocked at the door and rung the doorbell.  News at two in the morning is rarely good.  Rick was an Alabama State Trooper and he told us that our home in Jemison, Alabama in Chilton County had burned completely.  It was totally furnished and was our getaway and retirement home while serving in the ministry.

We arrived at Jemison about 3:45 that morning and found the house gone leaving the main floor and basement smoking with tiny fires scattered around the main floor.  Angela, her husband, and our grandson were there crying with only memories of the home she started living at three months.

The West Chilton Fire Department, less than a mile way, tried to quench the fire but the house was too flammable with materials that would create a giant open grill much larger than where Aaron and I grilled burgers.  The only item redeemed was my 1950 Plymouth that had been a resident of the basement since 1978.

Thinking the fire out, most everyone left.  I was able to go in the basement.  There was a fire at the stairwell leading into the great room.  A small flame lapped over a couple of floor joists.  Heat warmed the predawn air and embers continued their flight to the heavens.  Suddenly the remaining darkness disappeared and what had not burned exploded in fames rising for a second time seventy feet into the morning sky.  Firefighters said when they got the call the house was already engulfed in flames reaching high driving darkness away into the heavens.  Everything remaining fell into the basement creating the towering inferno.

I sent everyone home.  Going to my workshop, I pulled out a chair and watched a lifetime float away.  Gone was an antique, hand carved device that we never could fine anyone to identify it.  Gone was my baby bed that was bed to Andy, Angela, and of course me.  It was second hand when momma bought it for me in 1952.  Even today, I remember items that were in the house, basement, and attic.

It was watching our lifetime collection disappear that I cone to the conclusion it was just stuff.  It was OUR STUFF.  When it is all said and done, after my immediate family, it was unimportant.  No lives were lost and a hundred years from that moment who cares?

As the sun began to rise, the thing that mattered was that 8:30 that morning I was to preach the early service at Greensboro.  I had contemplated what would I do.  There was no way to do it.  I called my good friend, and fellow Director of Missions Tom Stacey of the Selma Baptist Association.  He was an answer to prayer.  He told me he had it and he would handle and not to worry.  I knew he would do it and I quit thinking about.

I heard a voice calling BOBBY!  It was my aunt Katherine from across the road.  Her and my aunt Annie were my security system while I lived a way.

I returned the yell with yes mam!  She said come eat some breakfast.  It had been a long time the burgers.  She cried as she consoled me.  I reminded her that everything was going to be okay.

As I returned to the smothering pit, I noticed something pink in the ditch by my driveway.  It was a charred pink note card.  The card drifted more than three hundred feet from the burning house.  A fragile and flammable piece of paper place for me to find.    

It had a picture of a worm created using the fingertips of a child, Angela’s.  I turned it over and there written was Psalm 46:1. I remembered it was in the attic with keepsake stuff in our cedar chest.  Angela was not even old enough write it.  Thirty years before the fire God had someone send me a note.  Psalm 46:1 states, “God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble.”

I looked into heaven and thanked God for the note.  He had been with me all morning.

 

The pink note reminded me:

Life is lived by moments.

One moment I was a 16 yr/old, next I am old man.

One moment our children were babies, now they are 47, 46. and 36.

One moment I was a plant employee, next moment I am retired.

One moment I could not wait to graduate college on December 1987, now that’s 37 yrs ago.

 

Life is fragile.

We are one heartbeat from death.

We are one trip from fatal accident.

We are one phone call from tragic news.

We are one wrong step from being handicap.

We are one incident from emotional instability.

We are one sin from moral failure.

 

God is who He says He is. (Refuge, Strength, Help)

God is the God of the Universe.

God is the God of Salvation.

God is the God of Peace.

 

Why are we afraid?  You may need a pink note from God.

Someone made the pink card for Angel during Vacation Bible School.  They will never know how much spoke to me that morning of the fire.

 

  

A Person of Faith

I was watching a car show the other night.  These shows do what I would love to do, rebuilding old jalopies.  My love for building cars started when I was in the fifth grade.  I got a model car kit from a classmate for Christmas.  Over the years, I had a pretty good collection that I lost when our home burned.  In that collection I had a ’55 Chevy Nomad, a ’50 Ford, a ’57 Chevy, a ’40 Willis, two ’32 Fords, the Batmobile, ’53 Ford pickup, and a few others.  Some of these date back to my teens.  I built them until the government regulations forced glue makes to change the formula and ruining its sticking power.

My dream car is a ’32 Ford Vicky, yellow convertible or five-window, 350 Chevy engine, saddle colored leather interior, and Crager junkyard mag wheels.  Trouble is, they are out there, but beyond a retired Director of Missions means.

These car-rebuilding programs have the mission of saving old cars one at a time.  The closest I have come to rebuilding an old vehicle is when my youngest son Aaron and I rebuilt my ’77 GMC pickup, and I understood the statement, “They don’t build them like that any more” a little better.  It is an era of American history that is fleeting away.   A friend of mine said that it makes him sick to watch classic cars headed to the scrap metal place.

My ’77 GMC is actually a 2009-13 pickup.  It looks old, but it has experienced a transformation.  No, it is not a Johnny Cash Cadillac.  It is a completely restored truck.  It is a work of love and labor.  I will always cherish the time that Aaron and I, father and son, spend together transforming a ragged, rusty, multicolored hunk of junk into what most call a “sweet ride” or a “clean” classic.

Transformed classics make up the body of the church.  Men, women, boys, and girls that experience the transforming power of God are new creations.  The power that raised Jesus from the dead is the power that transforms all those who trust Jesus as Lord and Savior.  It is the same power that carries believers to virus pandemics.

As I thought about restored vehicles and changed lives, I cannot help but to think about Brother Arch Crumpton.  He was a classic when speaking of a man of God.  He was an old classic that you don’t see anymore, a one of a kind.  Brother Arch was a giant pillar in my home church.  Brother Arch, two other deacons, and the pastor were the only men in my home church when I was boy.

I heard stories how Brother Arch would walk four miles to church on Sunday morning to start a fire in the old pot-bellied stove, then walk back home, hitch the mule team to the wagon, and then bring the family to church.  It makes those coveting toilet paper during corona virus panic a little silly.  We have grown too soft in our living.

Brother Arch always sat on the second pew on the preachers left.  He wore a dark blue suit, white shirt, a tie, and a fedora every Sunday.  He could pray some of the sweetest prayers.  I never heard anyone say a bad word about Brother Arch.

One of the most interesting stores about him was when he was a young man in his twenties.  I remember as a kid thinking that Brother Arch was ancient, being well into his seventies when I was a teenager.  He was tall and frail, but always sported a smile.  In his twenties, which would have been in the 1920’s, he had an appendix attack.  By the time the doctor arrived, he had gangrene and the doctor said there was little or no hope.

The doctor did something that most would think repulsive.  He opened Brother Arch, took out his intestines, and washed them in warm soapy water.  Once they were clean, the doctor repacked them.  I remember that Brother Arch always had a flat stomach.

Somewhere along that time, Brother Arch accepted the Lord as his Savior and the Lord removed the gangrene of sin from Brother Arch.  He was transformed and became a model for the men in our church and our community.

One of my fondest memories of Brother Arch happened one Sunday afternoon at my Aunt Edna’s.  My cousins and I were playing football in the front yard.  Brother Arch and his wife, Mrs. Blonnie, shuffled their way toward the house.  They walked along our goal line, which was the sidewalk to the house halting the game for a few moments.  Suddenly, Brother Arch called for the football.  One of my cousins tossed it to him and Brother Arch kicked the football.  He laughed and told us to have fun.  We all had a little more respect for him seeing that old man could kick a football.  Brother Arch will never know how much of an impact he had on my early Christian walk.  He was an inspiration and an example of what a Christian should be.  He was a Christian Classic. He has always been a man of hope.   Our churches would much better with more men and women like Brother Arch.

And we, who with unveiled faces all reflect the Lord's glory, are being transformed into His likeness with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit (Second Corinthians 3:18 NIV).



Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new (Second Corinthians 5:17 KJV).