WHERE EVERYBODY KNOWS YOUR NAME

 I never watched the old TV show Cheers, but I was always attracted to the theme song. Sometimes you want to go where everybody knows your name. As an 11-year-old kid, I worked at a grocery store next to Harmony Bar. The building was owned by my boss, so I ended up doing some chores on the property. My dad took me there once. I didn't witness a lot of harmony in the darkness of that sad room.

The pandemic has reminded me of the gift Open Door Bible Church is. We had to meet online for several weeks in the early spring of 2020. It was a novelty. Got to interact on Zoom with some past members and missionaries in distant places and see the faces of local people I was already missing. But it was clearly missing the dynamic of genuine, face-to-face fellowship. After 39 years, maybe I had begun to take the gift of our fellowship too much for granted. When Jimmy Leonard was alive, he called us "The Best Kept Secret in Memphis."

Our tagline, A Common People with an Uncommon Love,  has been illustrated in fresh ways over the past two weeks. Exhibit A was the Baby Dedication of Kesler Jones. And yesterday came Exhibit B, the 70th Wedding Anniversary Celebration of Frank and Virginia Buck. Kesler's legacy stretches my memory of God's goodness back nearly four decades. Kesler's great grandparents' surname became his given name a year ago. And a whole series of good memories are crowded into that moniker. The Bucks legacy merged into our own a good number of years ago. Our world largely ignores the treasure living among them. What could be learned from the stories of old people? Frank told me of visiting his elderly grandfather at Christmas back in the 1930s. I did the math and observed that his grandpa had been alive during the Civil War. Turns out, Gramps lied about his age and joined the Union Army! Frank himself, is a Navy veteran of World War 2 and the Korean War. The Bucks have lived faithfully and well, and we get to enjoy their godly joy on a regular basis. But they are also a treasure trove of eyewitness history. Ken Burns could learn at their feet.

I'm thankful for my salvation. And I am thankful for the community of fellow believers I'm blessed to be a part of.

Gary

WHATEVER HAPPENED TO 2020 VISION?

For all the hype back in January about it being a year for clarity and focus, 2020 has turned our best-laid plans into a blur of uncertainties and cancelations. From gathering with friends to our daily work, from finances to graduations, from health concerns to travel plans to sporting events to shortages of items we’ve always taken for granted, who among us has not encountered massive disruptions over the past five months? 

There’s a story in 2 Kings 6 that can guide our praying in the midst of the global pandemic. Things aren’t going too well for Ben Hadad II, King of Syria. Israel is no match for his massive armies. Still, somehow, they keep getting the upper hand, anticipating his every move, predicting his troop movements, second-guessing his attack plans. He suspects a traitor in his camp, but a servant tells the king of a prophet named Elisha who is informing the Hebrews of “the words that you speak in your bedroom.” Comically, Ben Hadad sends a huge army with soldiers and horses and chariots to capture the man. They invade at night, lest this little bald-headed prophet should somehow prevail. When Elisha’s young servant goes out early the next morning to collect the Dothan Daily News from the end of the driveway, he is terrified to see a multitude of armed soldiers surrounding the city. The servant cries out to Elisha that the two of them are seriously outnumbered, but the old man responds: “Those who are with us are more than those who are with them.” The servant must have thought poor Elisha’s eyes were going out on him and his mind was not far behind. The prophet prays that the Lord would “open his eyes that he may see.” And in that moment the younger man catches a glimpse of things normally unseen by earthly eyes. Beyond the Syrian army, the mountain is filled with multiplied angelic forces and chariots of fire.

There are moments when God pulls back the curtain to bring perspective and hope and confidence. Let’s pray that God will allow us to see something of the greater picture. He works in ways we miss unless our spiritual eyes are opened to see beyond the pandemic. 

Gary