This Ole House

I snagged this photo from Traces of Texas. I found it both haunting and provocative. It tells such a compelling story about life in Texas in the late 1930's . . . . 1938 to be exact.

Back in the mid-1970's I took my father to Hickory Creek Community just east of Celeste, Texas. That's where my family lived in the late 1930's. In fact, that is where my Dad left for World War Two in 1942 and to where he returned in late 1945. It was the place to where my English mother came in 1946 and where I was conceived.

This was my father's first trip back of which I am aware since he left for Orange, Texas in 1946. In reality we were taking a trip back in time to the days before he went to war in 1942 . . . to the place where he lived and worked and where many of the stories I had heard all my life were lived out.

The road was gone where the Appleby house was located. So were the row houses where many of the people I had heard about and some of whom became members of our family lived. Well, it wasn't exactly gone but it was lost beneath the two to three foot high Northeast Texas Prairie grass. But we navigated it perfectly as he pointed the way relying on memories from "back in the day." I suspect he had walked those roads, drove mule teams down those roads and drove the old Model A down those roads so often they were burned in his brain.

With the exception of one, pretty much worst for the ware, house it was just a big unworked field. But there it sat, weathered and worn. I remember saying to my dad, “She’s pretty much showing her age and neglect.” He replied, “Shoot, this is the way it looked when I walked away for the last time.”  I began to walk around leaving Dad to his thoughts as he was transported back to a time I really knew nothing about. I could see it in his face and his eyes seemed to see the ghost of days gone by. I wondered what he was seeing that I couldn't see. How I wanted to see it but it was not mine to know. At least not with the intimacy and detail he was now experiencing. I just elected to enjoy him as he made that personal journey back in time . . . . a trip back to when he was a young man

I once asked my aunt Edna Mae, Dad's younger sister, about his social life. After all, we all have a social life even back in the late 1930's and living on a farm. Her response as, "Did he have a social life, I'll say he did." Oh, I knew about singing bass in a regional Stamps Music Company quartet and playing fiddle at the Saturday dances in Celeste. But that wasn't what she was talking about.

I have a photos of him and a lady named Edith Gilbert at the edge of the cornfield. In my mind it was just behind the house. I wondered if he could see that scene captured in the photo. Edith was his prewar sweetheart. All his family thought she’d be Mrs. Appleby one day.  Lucky for me it didn’t workout. That war changed a lot of things and one of them was me.

If I'd have known about this photo when we were at the old farm house I'd have probably ask.  After all, I do recall as we turned off the highway and made our way down the county road that would twist and turn until we came to the family farm house he kept pointing out where people back in the day lived. I especially remember him mentioning at one old dilapidated house, "And that's where the Gilbert girls lived" as though I should have known about them.

As I walked through the tall grass that had swallowed up everything but the house he suddenly was back with me as he shouted, “Be careful over there! That’s where we dug a cistern.”  Sure enough a couple of feet from where I stood were some rotted boards and beneath them was that really big hole in the ground. It reminded my of the time, and I told him about it for the first time, when we lived in Vinton, Louisiana. A kid from down the street was chasing me around the house and I jumped some rotted board covering the open top of our septic tank. The kid behind be stepped on the boards . . . the collapse, and yer your got it, he went down into the septic tank. Dad, as he snickered in his own pecular way said he could have lived out his life without learning that. I think he knew since my Mom had to help me get the kid out of the, well grey water is putting it lightly.

We poked around outside as he pointed out where on the porch he and the boys slept during the summers. Finally we went inside. I was astounded how they lived in such a confined space. It was pretty much two rooms with one divided by a blanket. It was physically better than the house in the photo that started all this remembering but it I frightfully similar in size and design.

I remember looking over in one corner and seeing an obviously old tool box tray with tools in it. I said, “Hey Dad . . . . there’s some tools over here.” He walked over looked at them for a long time and after what seemed a forever he said, “Well how about that.” “How about that what?” I asked. He said, “Those where my tools.” When I left for the army that is exactly where I left them.  I could tell again, that he was back in 1942. I wish I could have seen whatever it was he was seeing in his mind. Directly I said, “Well, Dad, if their yours I am going to take them with us.” I am sentimental that way. He quickly said, “No, just let them be. They’ve been there this long just let them be.

Years later I would take my sister there to see the old place and if the tools were still there I was going to get them. But as fate would have it everything was gone on the second trip to Hickory Creek and the tools with them. The land was fenced and plowed and no sign that anyone ever lived in that place.  And yet that little spot, now part of someone else’s farm, was the center of the universe for the Appleby family.

But I digress, As we stood on the porch . . . . Maybe the porch in the photo of him holding his guitar he painted a picture of the houses that use to be along the road across from where we were. He not only described them but he told me who lived in each of them. Some of those people became my aunts and uncles by marriage . . . especially the Grace family. He also pointed out where the Caplinger’s lived and indicated that the old Caplinger cemetery was down the side road a bit. Sure enough as we left I espied the Caplinger Family Cemetery sign pointing up a dirt road. All our folks he said are buried in the Leonard Cemetery. By our folks he meant his grandparents, an aunt and a great uncle.

I have thought about that old house and all the stories it was hiding and am glad I got to see it before it was gone. Unfortunately the 1970's was before phones that take photos and I left my camera back home in Kilgore.

When I look at that old shack in the photo above and the people in it my first response is nostalgia and romanticism. But then I remember what my Dad said when I asked him if he ever met Audie Murphey, the most decorated soldier in WWII, who was from Wolf City just across the fields. He said, “Naw, first of all he was a lot younger than me and besides that back then he was just another bare foot boy running around here.”

I also remembered something else he said to me years before we took this little tour. His brother, my uncle Melvin, used to write an article for the church newsletter called “The Good Old Days.” It was sort of a romanticized telling of the family’s growing up in North East Texas. Dad would pick it up and say, “My brother sure can spin a tale but I’m here to tell you that the only the only good thing about the Good Old Days is they’re gone.”

Life on that farm was hard. Oh to be sure they had a good upbringing by my grandparents. They were both good and godly people and there are indeed stories to be told about them. Growing cotton and corn as tenant farmers was a hardscrabble life. The more you look at that photo the more you begin to realize pictures really do tell a story. What story do you read in that photo.

Stuart Hamblen’s song “This Ole House” tells the story . . .

This old house once knew my children
This old house once knew my wife
This old house was home and comfort
As we fought the storms of life
This old house once rang with laughter
This old house heard many shouts
Now she trembles in the darkness
When the lightnin' walks about

This old house is a-gettin' shaky
This old house is a-gettin' old
This old house lets in the rain
This old house lets in the cold
Oh my knees are gettin' chilly
But I feel no fear or pain
’Cause I see an angel peekin’
Through a broken window-pane

Now this old house is afraid of thunder
This old house is afraid of storms
This old house just groans and trembles
When the night wind flings its arms
This old house is a-gettin' feeble
This old house is a-needin' paint
Just like me, it's tuckered out
But I'm gettin' ready to meet the saints

Now my old hound dog lies asleepin'
He don't know I'm gonna leave
Else he'd wake up by the fireplace
And he'd sit there and howl and grieve
But my huntin' days are over
Ain't gonna hunt the 'coon no more
Gabriel done brought in my chariot
When the wind blew down the door

Are We Returning to Gospel Preaching?

I Kings 18: 41-45.

 And Elijah said to Ahab, “Go, eat and drink, for there is the sound of a heavy rain.”  So Ahab went off to eat and drink, but Elijah climbed to the top of Carmel, bent down to the ground and put his face between his knees.  “Go and look toward the sea,” he told his servant. And he went up and looked. “There is nothing there,” he said. Seven times Elijah said, “Go back.”   The seventh time the servant reported, “A cloud as small as a man’s hand is rising from the sea.”  So Elijah said, “Go and tell Ahab, ‘Hitch up your chariot and go down before the rain stops you.’”  Meanwhile, the sky grew black with clouds, the wind rose, a heavy rain started falling and Ahab rode off to Jezreel. 46 The power of the Lord came on Elijah and, tucking his cloak into his belt, he ran ahead of Ahab all the way to Jezreel.

For a number of years I’ve been concerned about the kind of preaching that was being done in our churches and major telecast. It appeared to me that there was a large movement toward a social gospel. By social gospel I don’t mean the classic social gospel of Reinhold Niebuhr but rather the health wealth and prosperity gospel is being preached by contemporary preachers.

It seems that there was hardly a place that you could go on television or the radio to hear preaching that you did not run into the health wealth and prosperity folks. As if that were not enough I began to notice that in our mainline churches particularly those who broadcast their Sunday services on television were also beginning to leave out the core of the gospel in favor of more popular themes of how to have a successful marriage, how to become financially free, how to raise your children, and other such themes.

Not only sell at the same time preachers were beginning to use all sorts of outlandish theatrics to present their messages. Everything from stage backdrops to riding motorcycles through the church. It seemed as though we were trying to re-create our worship services in the image of the Barnum and Bailey Circus. And one began to think that the leadership believed PT Barnum that there was a sucker born every minute.

When you began to realize that not only was the preaching taking on a circus atmosphere but the congregation was being little by little worked out of the active participation in the service. Hymns began to give way to choruses that went on ad nauseam. The performance atmosphere was doubled down on by eliminating choral groups in favor of worship teams and small group performers. Sermons began to be reduced in length from 30 minutes to 15 minutes with the music seemingly never stopping. Often it was played even while the preaching was taking place.

Personally I saw very little positive taking place in the way we worshiped. This feeling was exacerbated by the fact that we were now living in an age of mega-churches where members hardly knew each other and seldom interacted with one another.

This for me, a Baptist, was especially disheartening. I had grown up in a tradition in which at a very minimum we had three services a week. We had a Sunday morning worship service that was tailored toward a broad audience and was usually evangelistic in nature. That was followed later in the evening by an evening worship service that consisted of a smaller number of people but tailored especially for believers. Then at midweek on Wednesday evenings we had what we called a prayer service or prayer meeting. This gathering was for the purpose of having a short devotional thought, sharing the needs of the church members of the community and praying.

What bothered me about this trend from a local family oriented congregation to the large theatrical mega-church concept was the abandonment of the New Testament model for the church. The apostle Paul when speaking of the church often referred to it as a body. In a theological sense it was the body of Christ. In a practical sense it was all of the local believers as a unit. He often referred to the church as having Christ as its head and all the members the various parts of his body which taken together constitute the church.

Additionally when he spoke of the church he often referred to it by way of illustration using the family unit. In the family unit of his day the husband was the head of the household and the wife, the children and any servants or persons living with the house so constituted the family. The church was to be like that.

The local church that is modeled upon these principles will come more near producing a membership that is well grounded in doctrine and acts with ethical appropriateness. It will be more likely to be responsive to the needs of its individual members and its immediate community.

But as I began I was somewhat dismayed that in my lifetime I began to see slippage into a more casual and less biblical model for the church. I would live through the mega-church movement. I don’t believe that the mega-church movement came about because of bad intentions. Quite the contrary I think it came about as Wynn Arn promoted his view of church growth and missions. That is, the concept of the user-friendly church. It was an effort to remove all the obstacles that prevented people from attending worship. Hence the more relaxed atmosphere fewer restrictions and expectations the part of attendees. Services became more entertaining and last threatening. But like everything else it was the unintended consequences that bore the fruit. But that may be changed . . . . .

This is where I Kings 18:41-45 come in. I have looked time and time again for some sign that we might just be about to find relief. What I witnessed today all around the world was like that little cloud about the size of a man’s hand. May it continue to grow until we see the life giving rain in the form of a new birth of biblical preaching and worship.

I may be wrong but even before the Covid-19 pandemic I had notice what I think might be a trend within the church (body of Christ). I told Susan, in what seems like an eternity ago now, that I am hearing more and more of the "celebrity" (TV) preachers, even some of the "health and wealth" guys, adding a gospel appeal at the end of their sermons. 

Not only has that trend continued but some are returning to the "gospel message." Their sermons are actually intentionally designed and delivered to inform people of the fact that they are sinners and that their sin has separated them from God. They are pointing once again to Jesus as God's response to our sin through whom he offers us redemption and restoration.

I must tell you that I am not saddened to see all the theatrics and staged productions go by the wayside. We need to return to the concept of one hunger man telling another hungry man where to find bread.

I am also seeing television networks like TBN and CBN promote coming to Christ instead of becoming healthy, wealthy and wise . . . . . . .  to be saved from the effects of sin.

Susan, just mentioned one of the TV preachers she generally doesn't care much for brought a terrific Easter message. She said that it seemed as though he laid aside his performance personality and shared the resurrection story as it moved in his own heart. In short, he was authentic.

I do not believe there is a more powerful message than the Gospel of Jesus Christ and it is at its most powerful self when it comes through an authentic vessel . . . . . not a perfect vessel but an authentic one. So when it comes to the preaching of the gospel I am more optimistic than I have been in the last several years.

Another trend that I’m saying is the reintroduction of the hymn. All we are not all the way there yet but there are promising signs. Many of the chorus writers are beginning to incorporate old gospel hymns into their newer music. This is a good sign. Perhaps with time we will return to the hymns of the faith that inspired us, taught us the gospel, moved us in the spirit and the heart, and gave a strength only came to the end of life.

So I’m hopeful. I’m hopeful that we will move to a more Christ centered Bible-based worship. Where the pulpit which represents the preaching of the gospel is central in our building’s signifying to all those who come into that place the importance and primacy of preaching of the gospel. That the person who stands to preach from behind that pulled will see that not as a speaker stand in the sacred desk from which the word of God and the word of God only is to be proclaimed. It is not a prop for reading poetry; it is not a stand to hold music; it is not a post behind which to hide. It is the proper place to hold the sacred word of God as the man of God reads and proclaims its message.

I’m hopeful that the preaching in our churches and our broadcast will return to the preaching of the gospel. It is time to get back to the lifting of Jesus. After all it is not our preaching ability or style; it is not our singing ability or style; it is not our appearance with our dashing personality; it is Jesus who draws men to himself. It was he who said, “and I if I be lifted up will draw all men to me.”

Recognizing that when Jesus spoke this it was concerning his own death on the cross, I will say with out hesitation, that it includes the lifting him up before the people through preaching. For indeed the apostle is right when he says, “how shall they believe on him in whom they have not heard and how shall they hear except one be sent.”  Lifting Him up . . . that is what we are to be about.

That is what we should be doing and we should be doing it not perfectly but authentically. Not sharing what we don’t know but what we do know and this past Easter, as I sat att home in front of a computer watching live streaming from all around the word the gospel message I am encouraged as I heard preacher after preacher and saint after saint declaring through spoken words and with singing voices the one thing that authenticates our message . . . HE IS ALIVE!!

It is Lonely At The Top

This is not a political posting and I do not want any love or hate Trump comments. But as I look at this photo I think of all the times I had to make a hard decision. A decision that would affect negatively many lives regardless of what I decided. I recall how that weighted not only on my mind but upon my soul itself and the "damned if you and damned if you don't" feelings I had.

Good people would offer me their advice and even make their demands regarding what I should decide known. I would think, this all seems so simple to them. How I wanted to turn to each of them and say, "Here, since it is so simple and such an easy thing you decide."

In less significant issues I would sometimes do just that. I would tell some complaining individual, "It is clear that you are concerned about this and that you have spent a lot of time thinking about it. I think you'd be the best person to put in charge of this issue." In every instance, with the exception of once (and that proved to be a mistake) and there were many, they all declined.

In those moments I understood the dilemma of the great Apostle who once said, "I am torn between the two." There is never a win when you are confronted with such choices.  People are going to hurt whatever you decide. Some will be family and friends. But you are the man of the hour. Fate, history or God has placed you where you are and it is you that must decide. You know much of the fallout from your decision and would like to just walk away. But that is not a choice . . . . .you and you alone must decide and what you decide will change a lot of lives . . . . . some for good and others not so good. But decide you must. It is more than your job to do so. It is your responsibility and it is the hour for which you have been chosen.

You have moments when you'd like to hide; moments where tears flow because of the consequences of what you must decide. Now multiply that pressure a thousand or ten thousand times over and you may feel just a little of what the President is experiencing.

I see all this reflected in this man's face. That is why I have ceased my politically motivated commentaries on Facebook. I will only engage with what I believe to be the most egregious cases of Trump Hatred Syndrome.

This decision was reached after I saw in one press interview a crack in his armor . . . . .  a moment when his feeling almost overtook him. He wept for just a split second as he spoke of the great numbers of people who will die. In that moments I felt what I have not felt in many years, the emotional, spiritual and yes even physical impact of "The lonely weight of being in command." The weight of being the only one in the room whose thinking and decisions  really matters and that time is running out to decide.  It truly is "Lonely at the top."

All of us who have to lead soon face the loneliness of command. Leadership is always a personal endeavor, a very human endeavor. It matters not whether you’re leading in a commercial bank, a nonprofit, or as a teacher in a school leadership becomes very human and very personal.  Often, as leaders, we’re going to have to make difficult, sometimes painful, decisions. There is a weight that we will have to carry, and the burden will sometimes seem almost unbearable.  Our President is facing one of those times.

I do not believe he is playing games with this and I do believe we should not be either. We all have ideas; we all think we know what should be done (I know I do) but not a single one of us carries the responsibility for taking actions. I don't know about you but so far no one has called me and asked me, "What would you do?" And it is just as well because in the end I'd have to say, "Mr. President,  it matters little what I think or would do. It is not my decision to make. What matters is what you think and what you decide."

So here is some advice that I can give. First, to the President: Listen to your counselors, weight the evidence, select what you believe to be the least destructive and yet most effective course of action and act boldly. Heed Martin Luther's advice that when confronted between a choice between two competing evils chose the lessor and sin with boldness."

To the rest of us I would say:
➤ Keep doing all the good containment procedures. Don't use any lessening of the rules for containment become and excuse for doing needless travel and attend large public missions.
➤ Pray for the President and his advisors. After all, as Christians, we have been commanded to pray for all that are in authority to the end that we may all lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and honesty.
➤ As long as you are self-isolating look for some way to make a positive impact on your own community.