Grace and peace, Saints.

Today is my birthday, and I am now officially 53 years old.  I normally don’t make a big deal about my birthday, though I tend to make a big deal about everyone else’s.  That’s because I didn’t do anything to deserve another year on planet earth.  God, in his grace, has granted me another year.  So, I usually make it a point to be grateful to the Lord Jesus for extending my lease on this body for another year, and I try to make sure that my children know that this is what birthdays are really all about.

Today, however, is different from the previous 52 birthdays, because, by completing 53 years on this earth, I did something that my father didn’t.  My father died at age 52.  Since he smoked a pipe for most of my memory (in fact he was known as “Piper”),  I attributed my father’s lung cancer to tobacco.  I’ve noticed that during the last two or three years, I find myself contemplating often on the fact that my father died relatively young.  I suppose this can also be attributed to my being around the age that he died.  I’ve also noticed that the longer I live, the more I understand my father, especially since I have become a preacher–just like my father.

The life of a preacher isn’t radically different from that of a non-preacher.  They both wake up and they both go to bed.  They both work and they both play.  They both love and they both hate.  And they both sin.  The principle difference between the two, however, is that the preacher has been called to deliver a message to the world from a Man that the world hates.  If you can imagine what it would have been like to have been a Jewish defense lawyer for Adolph Hitler, then you could probably imagine what it is like to be a mouthpiece for Jesus Christ.  I’m not on very many people’s Christmas lists.

I often find myself wondering how life must have been for my father, the preacher.  He was an electrician by trade, and he owned and operated his own shop where he sold and repaired citizen band radios.  In the heyday of CB radios, popularized by films like “Smokey and the Bandit,” my father did very well.  He also happened to be one of the first Black businessmen on St. Louis’ South Side, at a time when very few, if any, non-whites lived or worked in that area.  (Now the area is almost exclusively non-white.)

My father was not only a preacher, but he was also an evangelist.  In fact, one half of his shop was dedicated to the business of CB radios, while the other half was dedicated to the business of saving souls.  It was in my father’s shop that I saw my very first gospel tract: one of the “Alberto” series of Chick comic tracts.  The “Alberto” series detail the testimony of ex- Jesuit priest Alberto Rivera, and exposes the Roman Catholic Jesuit Order and its mission to destroy the Christian Church.

In that St. Louis is a Roman Catholic city, I was brought up believing that Roman Catholicism was Christianity.  I never heard anyone preach or speak against the errors of Roman Catholicism.  I didn’t know that Roman Catholics worshipped the Virgin Mary.  I didn’t know that the Virgin Mary was an idol.  And I didn’t know that worshipping an idol was idolatry.  The South Side of St. Louis, at least at that time, was mostly Italian and Irish Roman Catholic, while the North side was mostly German Roman Catholic.  So, my father, the black Christian preacher-electrician, owned and operated a business in a Roman Catholic neighborhood wherein he also distributed Christian literature that revealed the true character of Roman Catholicism.  I wonder how that went over.

It is only now, that I find myself involved in essentially the same kind of ministry, that I realize that, even though I was a little heathen, I was probably influenced a great deal by that Gospel tract that I read in my father’s shop as a pre-teenage boy.  Because I know that Rome would not appreciate such “heresy,” and because I know that a great many people are influenced by the Roman Catholic church, I have begun to wonder if my father’s activities had anything to do with many things that have happened to me.

I wonder, for instance, if my father’s activities had anything to do with my eighth-grade teacher, Mrs. Anglin, who hated me so much that days after I became a patrol boy (a reward for being an honor student), she got me fired from that post for whistling in the stairwell.  And that was only the beginning.  Five years later, I would drop out of high school altogether.

I wonder, for instance, if my father’s activities had anything to do with the red sports car that ran me over just as I stepped off the bus at the intersection of Cote Brilliante and Goodfellow back in the Fall of 1980.  When I awoke, I found myself lying on my back on the asphalt surrounded by a crowd of people.  I sat up, and saw the sports car pulled over to the side of the road with its brake lights on.   Moments later, it sped off into the night.  People don’t usually wait around after a hit and run to see if the person lived or not.  So I have always wondered if it were really an accident.

I wonder, for instance, if my father’s activities had anything to do with someone rigging my harness with a “fatal hookup” minutes before I repelled from an Army helicopter.  After I exited the helicopter, instead of continuing down the rope, I stopped abruptly about fifteen feet below the helicopter and a considerable distance from the ground.  Suspended in mid-air, I looked directly at my gear, and the D-ring gate was broken open.  I remained composed and performed emergency action, motioning the pilot to land.  Ironically, we had only an hour before received instruction on how not to rig a fatal hookup, and it was one of those very instructors who had rigged my gear.  The looks on the faces of my fellow soldiers told me that the irony was lost on no one.  I found it quite strange that nobody questioned this incident and no action was taken.  I had forgotten all about it until a couple days ago.

I know that people have suffered much worse things than I, and probably much of what has happened to me would be considered trifling compared to what has happened to others.  But I have also come to understand that many incidents that we consider to be “coincidences” and “accidents” aren’t really coincidences or accidents at all: they are planned orchestrated events.  Many of our lives have been drastically and irreversibly altered by such “coincidences,” which I believe are designed to prevent us from realizing our destinies, or, to keep us from reaching age 53.

Then again, maybe I think too much.

Hey, it’s my birthday; and on one’s birthday, one is allowed to muse and pontificate endlessly on those musings.  More musings to come.  Hey, it’s my birthday!

The Still Man

P.S. Hey, it’s my birthday!