daily java

Daily Java:

Your children will commit themselves to you, O Jerusalem, just as a young man commits himself to his bride. Then God will rejoice over you as a bridegroom rejoices over his bride. (Isaiah 62:5)

I go to the Cooper County Jail here in Boonville, MO, once a week to talk to the inmates. Our discussions are wide-ranging, but I always try to steer them back to God, to the Bible or to the living of life in a good way.

So many of these young men have had no model for what is good in their lives. Many of them were left alone to grow up and ended up using the examples of people who were not good to model their lives. I see part of my function there to show them the benefits of a godly life.

A few years ago I was talking to a young man who was behind bars. He commented that as soon as he got out and got his life together, he was probably going to go back to church. My response was that he had been in control of his life for a long time and obviously had not done a good job of it. After several years of being in control, here he was in jail, standing there in his underwear.

I, on the hand, I told him, had allowed God to control my life and I went home every night to a comfortable house, ate good food and went to sleep with my wife in a good bed.

My question was: which method of control really worked? His or mine? He had no answer.

Last night, one of the guys was talking about having been married at 31 and divorced at 35 and never marrying again. I said that I had married at 21 and had never divorced. We had been married for 41 years. The guys were almost astonished that anyone could be married for that long.

As we began to talk about our pasts, I said that it didn’t seem that long. One asked if the time flew, did it seem like just a short time ago. I said yes, it did.

45 years ago, I was in high school. I still remember it. I still remember the play South Pacific we did in our senior year and how much fun it was. I had the comic lead, Luther Billis, and had a blast.

I remember my first kiss. It was from Liz. I remember being with friends and doing things. I remember graduating and getting a job at a grocery store – Sav-U. It was a warehouse store before warehouse stores were really appreciated, so it wasn’t in business long.

I remember working for Galveston County and working on the seawall, getting a sunburn. I worked some job, I don’t remember much about it, that I had to use a small jack hammer. I worked other places until I got a job with Bell Telephone as a coin collector.

I remember going in places and taking coins from the pay phones. Everybody had a pay phone so I got to go into every conceivable kind of business from grocery stores to strip clubs to bars to office buildings. It was a fun job.

I remember meeting the girl who would become my wife for the first time at the bowling alley in Pasadena, TX. It was after a big Church of Christ youth rally in Houston and I almost didn’t make it, but I was put into the middle of several girls by a woman at the door. I married the girl a year and a half later.

I remember holding her hand for the first time, kissing her for the first time.

I remember the day I got my draft notice in 1969. I came in the door of my parents’ house and they were sitting there with weird looks on their faces and my mother gave me the Letter that began: “Greetings.”

I remember having to go tell my girlfriend that I had been drafted. We went to a party that night at church and she seemed so happy and smiley. I thought, she doesn’t even care. After we left and were by ourselves, she broke down crying. It turned out she was trying to be normal with her friends.

I remember going into the army, going to Germany and coming out two years later. I remember getting married in 1971 and taking Ella back to Germany with me.

This all happened about twelve, fifteen years ago. Or so it seems. It was all almost a half-century ago.

How in the world could my life have gone by so fast?

Yeah, guys, it seemed like just yesterday. And the time flew.

I am not sure I am ready to be this age. Not that I can do anything about it.