Taking Inventory

6/17/2013

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In his book The Grand Essentials, Ben Patterson writes, “I have a theory about old age . . .
I believe that when life has whittled us down, when joints have failed and skin has wrinkled and capillaries have clogged and hardened, what is left of us will be what we were all along, in our essence.

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“Exhibit ‘A’ [for my family] is a distant  uncle... All his life he did nothing but find new ways to get rich ... He spent his [old age] very comfortably, drooling and babbling constantly about the money he had made . . . When life whittled him down to his essence, all there
was left was raw greed. This is what he had cultivated in a thousand little ways over a lifetime.

“Exhibit ‘B’ is my wife’s grandmother ...
When she died in her mid–eighties, she had already been senile for several years. What did this lady talk about? The best example I can think of was when we asked her to pray before dinner. She would reach out and hold the hands of those sitting beside her, a broad, beatific smile would spread across her face, her dim eyes would fill with  tears as she looked up to heaven, and her chin would quiver as she poured out her love to Jesus. That was [Grandma] Edna in a nutshell. She loved Jesus and she loved people. She couldn’t remember our names, but she couldn’t keep her hands from patting us lovingly whenever we got near her.

“When life whittled her down to her essence, all there was left was love: love for God and love for people.”

The question is, “What will we be babbling about when all that’s left of us is the essence of a lifetime? What will we be talking about then?”

In light of Ben Patterson’s story, we can say that the things that matter the most to us right now will probably show up when senility has robbed us of the ability to obfuscate . . . when we can’t conceal who we really are, way down deep inside.

So this is inventory day. What will we find when we look inside?

 *The views expressed in this blog are in no way intended to represent the views of Child Evangelism Fellowship©.They are exclusively the expressed views of Curtis Alexander.

 

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The Man, the Moment, the Mission

6/9/2013

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God uses the most unexpected people to accomplish His purpose. Take, for example,
Mel Trotter, who grew up tending bar. Then he learned barbering and began making
a good living. By age 19 he was drinking heavily. 

He married Lottie Fisher but continued to drink. Eventually he turned to burglary to support his habit, and was hospitalized for alcoholism. Upon discharge, he was given a medicine kit, which he traded for whiskey. 

When his son was two years old, Trotter returned from a ten–day binge. He found the lad dead in his mother’s arms. He felt like a murderer. Over the body of his dead son Mel put his arms around his wife and promised he would never touch liquor again. Two hours after the funeral he staggered home, drunk.
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Despondent, Mel hopped a freight train to Chicago. He was dead drunk, broke, no home, no friends, no possessions, and no god but the bottle. After he sold his shoes on a bitterly cold night for one more drink, he headed for Lake Michigan to commit suicide. As Trotter staggered along Van Buren Street, Tom Mackey, standing outside the Pacific Garden Mission in a blizzard, noticed Mel. He steered him inside and found a seat against the
  wall so Mel wouldn’t fall over. When the preacher asked who wanted to be saved, Mel raised his hand, staggered forward, and came to faith in Christ. 
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Asked later how he knew he was saved, he replied, “I was there when it happened, January 19, 1897, 10 minutes past 9:00 PM, Central time, Pacific Garden Mission, Chicago, Illinois, USA.” 
 
He found a job barbering and sent for Lottie. He paid back debts of $1,800 (a hefty sum in 1897) and began to tell people about the Lord. And he was active at Pacific Garden Mission, where he sang, played the guitar, and gave his testimony. Eventually he founded Mel
Trotter Mission in Grand Rapids, MI and spent his life helping others. 
 
 Mel Trotter is an example of the intersection of man, moment and mission coming together as God intended. At just the right moment, in just the right place, he heard the Gospel and believed. From that point on, God began to reveal His mission for Mel Trotter. More than
100 years later, we still celebrate God’s work in the once–tortured life of an uneducated bartender–barber who found and completed God’s mission for his life.

*The views expressed in this blog are in no way intended to represent the views of Child Evangelism Fellowship©.They are exclusively the expressed views of Curtis Alexander.

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The Last Thing on my Mind

6/3/2013

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I saw a man interviewing people on the street. He asked them, “What will happen to
you when you die?” The answers were all over the landscape, from people who really were at it with their mortality, to people who wouldn’t even answer—they simply refused to think or talk about it. 

What would you say if they came up to you on the street and asked, “What will happen to you when you die?”

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In January, 2007, my 25–year–old cousin went over a levee in his car in Baton Rouge, Louisiana and into the Mississippi River. By the time they hauled him out of the river, he was brain dead. They pulled the plug on a Thursday morning, and he lived until 9 PM. Before he plunged into the river, I doubt he thought much about his last day on earth. Nobody thinks about it that much!

Many people are confident that after their last day on earth, they’ll spend eternity in heaven with Christ, because they have trusted Jesus as their Savior. That’s how God intends us to deal with our mortality, and that’s how we can manage to live with the thought.

Others ‘hope’ they’ll make it. Still others think they’re going to have to get their lives together, to do more good stuff, and stop doing so much bad stuff, if they hope to make it to heaven. It’s the particularly American form of karma that seems to be going around these
days.

And lots of people just say to themselves, “I don’t want to think about it!” But when we’re forced to think about eternity, it can be a defining moment of truth for our lives. Maybe it’s because there has been a funeral, or a brush with death—a heart attack or a close call on the
highway; or a September 11–kind of event happens and sets us to thinking. Or there’s just a nagging sense that life isn’t supposed to be like this. 
 
The end comes too quickly for some people to scurry around and get things right. Like my cousin. So, if the end is the last thing on my mind, maybe I should get it taken care of right now.

*The views expressed in this blog are in no way intended to represent the views of Child Evangelism Fellowship©.They are exclusively the expressed views of Curtis Alexander.


  


 
  

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