My Tribute to Dr. Fred Miller

God’s Masterpiece

Ephesians 2:10

One of my favorite scriptures is Ephesians 2:10, because in very few words, it says so much about the identity of those who belong to Jesus.  Paul says,

For we are God’s masterpiece. He has created us anew in Christ Jesus,

so we can do the good things he planned for us long ago.

The Greek word translated “masterpiece” in the translation I read, describes things masterfully designed to fulfill a great purpose. 

A sculpture brought out of a block of marble by the skillful hand of the sculptor to honor a leader or tell a story. 

A painting that displays little dabs and lines of paint in such a way that it takes the viewer on a journey. 

A poem that takes a few words carefully chosen and masterfully combined to capture and communicate a timeless truth. 

Paul says God’s people are like that—designed by the Master to fulfill His great purpose.  We are, as one translator wrote, “heaven’s poetry etched upon lives.”

Fred Miller, like no other man I've known, was God’s masterpiece.  By God’s design and Fred’s obedience, he was perfect for fulfilling God’s great purpose.  Heaven’s poetry was truly etched upon his life. 

You knew it the first time you heard his voice.  Justin Ulmer, a young man who has grown up in this church, says he believes God sounds like Fred Miller.  That’s not true.  God came first, so Fred sounds like God.  That voice, so strong, yet so soothing, proclaiming God’s Word with both a clear message and an inviting melody—that voice was an instrument God used in pulpits and homes and hospitals and gravesides to speak the truth in love. 

Fred was a masterpiece of a preacher.  Some of you were blessed to hear Fred Miller preach in this place or in another church each Sunday.  I was not so fortunate, but a few months ago, Fred asked me if I would like to have a few recordings of his sermons.  I didn't have to think about it.  I told him “yes.”  Those “few recordings” were in fact, several hundred tapes of sermons he preached here at St. Andrews Baptist Church.  I picked out a few at random and listened.  Those recordings left me very confused.  You see, Dr. Miller and I went to the same schools, Furman University and Southeastern Seminary, but those schools didn't teach me to preach at the high level of scholarship and style they taught Fred Miller.  I must have slept through the wrong class.  Fred Miller was a prince among preachers.  He knew the scriptures and, obviously, studied them constantly to mine out the spiritual truths, life lessons, and sustaining manna you needed to receive.  He knew the human condition, where people are hurting and need to be healed, where we are blind and need to see, how we are lost and need to come home.  He captured God’s truth and communicated it in clear but correct English.  So many of you are spiritually strong and healthy because he fed you so well.  As our preacher, Fred Miller was a masterpiece. 

He was a masterpiece of appearance.  I've heard the jokes about Fred never having a hair out of place and his surprising invitation near the time of his retirement for Betsy to come on this platform and mess it up.  I know how well he dressed for worship services here and board meetings and other functions, looking like he stepped out of a menswear magazine.  Who can forget his strong features and his winsome smile? 

Life’s little mishaps seem even funnier when they strike someone who looks so perfect so much of the time.  Several times during his ministry, Fred Miller was betrayed by baptismal waders.  One pair had holes, another had dry-rotted, and a third, borrowed from a friend for baptism in our chapel, were too short for his frame.  Fred was inadvertently rebaptized from the waist down that day.  On that infamous “short wader Sunday,” Evelyn set a world record for driving from this church to her home and back to bring Dr. Miller some dry pants.  She forgot socks, so he squished a little during the sermon that day. 

But weren't you proud to see such a stately gentleman, a man who carried himself with true dignity, and be able to say, “He is my pastor.  He represents my church.  He is an example of a life given to Christ.”  When you looked at Fred Miller, he was a masterpiece. 

Fred’s unshakable spirit was a masterpiece.  You don’t know who some people are going to be on a given day.  Former astronaut Alan Shepherd had a secretary who would secretly change the picture outside Shepherd’s NASA office from one with a pleasant expression to one with a scowl to warn her coworkers to stay out of his office on one of his bad days.  Emotionally and constitutionally, Fred Miller was as constant as the North Star.  He was who he was wherever you saw him and no matter what the circumstances.  He wasn't like a thermometer that changes to match the temperature around it.  Dr. Miller was a thermostat who set the emotional and spiritual temperature of a situation through the constancy of his inner strength. 

Stephen tells a story about his dad at a Furman football game.  The game was at a critical time, with victory and defeat hanging in the balance, when an official made, shall we say, a very questionable call.  Stephen said that all around him, Furman fans erupted into loud protests against the call, some of them using very colorful language.  When that tidal wave of a tirade had passed, Dr. Miller seized the moment to voice his disapproval of the call.  He pointed his finger at the field and shouted, “Poor officiating!  Poor officiating!”  Even in the heat of the gridiron battle, he was Fred. 

How many times have our lives felt out of control, turned upside down, shaken to the core, only to have Fred enter the room, enter the crisis, enter the moment, and become a spiritual compass for us, unshaken by circumstance, remembering what matters, pointing us toward hope, toward love, toward God.  His spiritual constancy was a masterpiece. 

His visionary leadership was a masterpiece.  Dr. Miller led this church through some of its most forwarding moving years.  He had a vision for how this church could expand its ministry and serve Christ in a greater way.  He didn't hesitate to call upon you to help his God-given dreams come true.  John Timmerman told me a story of a call he received from Dr. Miller, asking John to meet him for breakfast the next day.  Dr. John is a good man, but still wondered what kind of trouble he was in to be called in for a private meeting with the pastor.  Over breakfast, Dr. Miller shared his vision of a new sanctuary, a place where many more people could gather to worship God, a place where God’s family could continue to grow.  He asked John to chair the church’s financial campaign to build this sanctuary.  In 1980, you entered this new building and began a larger ministry. 

Fred had a dream for this church.  He also had a dream for each person who made up this church.  He saw your buried talents and unclaimed gifts.  He believed in you before you believed in yourself.  He called you to take frightening first steps that moved you forward toward the person God created and called you to be. 

Carl Sandburg said, “Nothing happens without first a dream.”  Fred Miller had a dream for this church and for each person who works and worships here.  His vision was a masterpiece. 

Perhaps the heavenly poetry God etched upon Fred’s life was at no time more evident than when this church and its larger Baptist family needed a statesman.  Our convention was at war.  Names were called.  Lines drawn.  Wedge issues hammered.  Relationships poisoned.  What was happening nationally to Baptists was happening, to some extent, here at St. Andrews.  We could say of Fred Miller, what the Bible says of Queen Esther.  He was brought to the kingdom for such a time as this.  Fred dared to face the issues, talk about them, be honest about them.  He was Baptist enough to believe that people don’t have to agree about everything in order to work together.  He remembered the Baptist hallmark of soul competency and challenged this church and our Baptist family to remember that each believer has the right to follow Jesus Christ as led by the truth of the scriptures and the witness of the Holy Spirit.  He demanded that as we speak the truth about who we are, what we believe, how we feel called to do missions, we speak that truth in love, respecting and, yes, even loving those with whom we disagree.  So, these many years later, we are a church of Southern Baptists and Cooperative Baptists.  We are leaders in our financial support of both mission groups and actively participate in the life of both.  Had our larger Baptist family followed Fred Miller’s path, the path of high principle and deep love, we would be stronger and more faithful today.  His statesmanship was a masterpiece. 

Allow me to voice a personal note of appreciation when I say that Fred Miller’s relationship to me as his successor was a masterpiece.  I could fill a book with stories of former pastors and their successors who try to occupy the same spot in the life of the church and never get along.  Fred Miller wouldn't be in that book.  He told me once that his goal was to sit as close to the back pew as possible and keep quiet.  I wouldn't say it that way.  He was my greatest supporter.  He encouraged me.  He praised me.  He prayed for me and with me.  I never asked him for help or perspective or wisdom that he did not come through for me and make my ministry better.  And, in a great demonstration of his maturity and his ability to put the church first, he knew how to let go.  He was like a father of the bride who walked this church he raised to the altar and entrusted it to my care.  Then, with no less love for you, he sat down and allowed my life with you to begin and to grow.  I loved him.  I will miss him.  I will cherish my memories of him because Fred’s relationship with me, as one who followed him in this church’s life, was a masterpiece. 

Someone has wisely said that no man is a better servant of Christ than he is a husband to his wife and a father to his children.  That truth applies to women in ministry too.  Fred’s most cherished masterpiece was his family.  Evelyn didn't know she was marrying a minister when she and Fred fell in love, but they shared such a deep love for Christ and desire to do His will, that they headed out together on a kind of missionary journey, years of study, finding ways to manage the demands of school, work and family, and a beautiful partnership in marriage and ministry.  Evelyn told me she and Dr. Miller were married for 64 years.  What a shining example of the meaning of Christian marriage you two have been. 

And through the life you've shared, you've brought new life into the world.  Sons and their families who have grown to claim their own places in the world, their own ways of living for Christ and making him known. 

The Bible tells us to build for the storms, to build lives that can endure the winds and rains of hardship and crisis.  Perhaps there is no greater testimony to the masterpiece of Fred Miller’s life than to see the strength of the family that has surrounded him, supported him, and sheltered him during these very difficult, very demanding days.  Sammy, David, Stephen, I say to you and your families, beyond anything we can say or do today, you have honored your father and your mother with the love you’ve returned to them when they needed it.  We admire you and love you for that. 

Thursday, when Fred Miller entered the city, following in heaven the same Lord he followed so faithfully in life, he realized the two of them were passing through a crowd.  The crowd was not so much looking at Jesus as they were staring and smiling at Fred.  And, I imagine, Fred asked his Lord, “Who are these people and why are they looking at me with such smiles on their faces?”  Because, I picture Christ saying, “They know they are here because of you.” So many of us will join that crowd one day, eternally grateful for a man who answered God’s call, fulfilled his mission, and led us to Christ. 

Fred Miller was a masterpiece.

Heaven’s poetry was etched upon his life.

He fulfilled the great purpose for which God so perfectly prepared him.

And so, Dr. Miller, Pastor, Fred, we will thank our God every time we remember you.  

My Tribute to My Mother

Today, our family joined many wonderful friends  at Pelham Road Baptist Church to remember and give thanks for my mother's life.  This is the message I shared as part of the service.  

A Gift and a Miracle

Life is a gift and a miracle.  My life began in the body that lies before us, the body of my mother, Sara Eunice Hester Vaughan.  Some of you would have no trouble believing that doctors did not approve my being born.  After Debbie, my sister, came into this world, mom suffered a series of miscarriages, one a set of twins, with dangerous medical complications.  Her doctors advised her to enjoy her precious daughter and take care of her health.  Suffice it to say that Barry and I are here today because our mother didn't always listen.  She didn't want Deb to be an only child.  She wanted girls and boys in the family circle, so with great determination, at great risk, with long intervals of failure and disappointment in between, I was born six years after Debbie and Barry entered the world seven years after me.

Every mother risks her life in giving life.  I owe my existence to a mother who took a greater than usual risk because she had a greater than usual desire for a large family.  The way she gave us life I spite of medical challenges was truly a miracle. 

Challenge was nothing new to her.  Born in 1925, a fact not firmly established for many years, she was a child of the Great Depression.  Her father, a graduate of Clemson College and a veteran of World War I, William Robert Hester, Sr. worked in his trained field of horticulture, ran a country store, cut hair, and did anything else he could do to support their large hungry family.  My mom was blessed with three sisters; Frances, Vera and Thelma, and bore the burden of two brothers, Bill and Jack.  Keeping a promise made to a dying friend, my grandparents welcomed a seventh child into their home to raise, my wonderful Aunt Ellen. 

There wasn't much to share, but share they did.  My Uncle Jack tells a beautiful story of a Christmas at which Will and Lula gathered their children around them, gave them each a single orange, and explained that was the only material thing they would receive that Christmas.  They added a promise that their children would receive more love than they imagined possible.  They kept that promise. 

Along with the blessing of that love, mom also bore some of the scars of those tough times.  She never threw anything away.  I have cleaned out more than 150 old gift boxes from her attic, some dating back to Ivey’s and Myers-Arnold stores.  She had enough plastic butter tubs to preserve an army’s leftovers.  She watched every penny.  She turned off lights, turned down thermostats and piled up the blankets.  As a child, I couldn't have rolled off my bed had I wanted to.  Those tough years made her strong and wise.  But the Great Depression was only one force that shaped my mother’s life. 

If you ever wonder if God has a sense of humor, think about this: Will Hester, as my grandfather was often called, was working tirelessly to put at least a little food in the mouths of his wife and seven little ones when God called him into a line of work known for great pay, short hours, low stress, and high levels of customer satisfaction.  God called my grandfather to be a pastor.  You can’t understand my mom unless you know she was a preacher’s kid. 

Really she was more than that.  She and her brothers and sisters were junior partners in the family ministry.  When God called Will to preach, God called the Hesters to support his ministry.  My mother and my Aunts Frances and Vera formed the first Hester Sisters’ Trio.  They sang in the churches their father pastored, followed him to provide special music in revival meetings, and sang through much of the summer under what my grandfather called his “big gospel tent.”  My grandfather, being a pianist, a singer, and a composer, knew good music and bad notes when he heard them, so mom put in many hours of rehearsal at home around the family piano, preparing to give God her very best.  Later, when Frances married Horace and was granted “maternity leave” from the trio, my Aunt Thelma stepped up to fill the void and the Hester sisters were on the road again. 

My grandfather had no use for Christians who sang the songs of Zion but lived the life of Sodom and Gomorrah.  He demanded that all his children live above reproach.  And, being a barber who had heard what some men said about some women, he was especially strict with his daughters.  Mom came to measure her life by high standards of holiness but also, sadly, by the opinions of sometimes highly critical church members.  She would tell you that she spent much of her life too concerned about what other people think. 

But one of the many good things that came out of my mom’s deep involvement in the church was that she always had a strong intuitive sense of how church worked.  When I talked to her face to face or even by telephone, she saw through my shallow reports of “everything going just fine” and called out some of the challenges she knew I must be facing.  I never wanted to worry her with church pettiness or politics, but time and again, I found in her a wise listener who understood my life in ministry as well as anyone.  You can’t fool your mama, and especially your preacher’s kid mama asking you about your church.  But, as I learned, the bond a mother has with her child goes far beyond even that. 

One evening, a few years ago, Debbie was pushing Mom’s wheelchair down the hall at National Health Care.  Mom had finished dinner and would soon be ready for bed.  As they rolled along, out of nowhere, Mom suddenly turned her head around and said to Debbie, with deep urgency, “Something is happening to your brother.  I need to check on him.”   Then she named the crisis she felt I was facing. Though she had no way of knowing what was happening in the other end of the county and though she lived in the constant fog of dementia, my mother knew exactly what was happening to her child and exactly when.  I can’t explain it, other than to say, a mother’s love and the bond she shares with her children is a gift and a miracle. 

Before you decide my Mom grew up in some kind of Baptist boot camp, you also need to know that, in her family circle, she was a clown in a circus with many clowns. 

Determined to learn how to drive, she started up a family truck her dad used in his business.  She got it moving and drove past the front of her house in celebration.  When she drove by the second time, she called out, as I remember it, to Jack and Bill on the porch, that she couldn't figure out how to make it stop.  They laughed, waved back, and wished her good luck.  She orbited the house many many more times, asking more earnestly for driving help but receiving nothing but a wave and a brotherly laugh, until, finally, the truck did stop, completely out of gas.  She mastered the use of the brake pedal soon after that. 

Mom was a comedian, never funnier than these past few years.  Our family had come to National Health Care to visit her.  One of the topics of conversation was our daughter Elizabeth’s pregnancy and our excitement over a grandchild coming.  A little while later, when our attention turned to something on television, I was standing close beside Mom’s bed.  I glanced at her and realized she was staring at my stomach.  She got a spark in her eye that should have warned me one of her lines was coming.  She reached out her hand, rubbed my belly, and said, “Are you trying to keep up with Elizabeth?” 

I don’t know much about her dating life.  I do remember hearing the names of a few suitors from the past.  About sixteen years ago, I met one, a now-married grandfather who had wanted to be mom’s boyfriend when they worked together in the 1940s at Steel Heddle Manufacturing.  All those years later, as he asked me about her, I could tell he was still smitten with her.  I felt like the father of a teenage daughter, sizing up a guy who wanted to ask her out.  I was well into adulthood before I realized what a beautiful woman my mother really was.  The man who always felt blessed beyond measure to have won her heart and her hand in marriage was my dad, Orin Vaughan. 

Late in his life, Dad opened his heart to me and told me how deeply he cherished his Eunice.  He had just returned from World War II, the mopping up operations in the Pacific theater and the occupation of Germany.  He feared that while he was far away from home serving his country, all of the “good girls” as he put it, had been taken and he would never find the right woman to marry.  He told me how very blessed he felt to meet Eunice and to see their love grow into marriage.  He cherished her as a gift from God and saw their life together as a miracle.  When Papa Hester heard my dad sing, he decided that he hadn’t lost a daughter, he had gained a tenor.  Dad was quickly drafted into the family choir and sang many a trio with my mother and my grandfather on the radio, recording the program at 6:30 a.m. on the way to work. 

They began married life “poor as Job’s turkey,” as Mom would say, renting a couple of rooms from relatives on West Elford Street in downtown Greenville.  They saved their pennies, literally, and dreamed of a home of their own.  In 1951, that dream came true as they purchased what my dad’s father labeled, “the green house on the red hill.”  His words weren't reversed.  Their little mansion at 110 Griffin Drive stood on several feet of green-painted cinder blocks, rising out of the red Carolina clay.  Mom never called another place home.  And she worked hard to make it home for us. 

Mom saw home as a gift and a miracle. 

Mom saw homemaking as a high calling, a ministry to the next generation.  When we left home in the mornings to go to school, she saw us off.  When we returned, she was there.  I know now she had to set aside her business school training and her enjoyment of the workplace to focus her life on home and family.  That was a sacrifice she lovingly made for us.  I know the world has changed since I was a child.  I know one-income families and stay-at-home spouses are rare.  But I fear sometimes that we are building bigger barns and losing the souls of our families.  I’m glad my mom chose to be at home.  She gave me some great memories.

I remember sitting on top of the washing machine, crammed into our tiny galley kitchen, watching her cook.  I especially loved the pressure-cooker and way it spewed out steam and rattled in a metallic rhythm every minute or so. 

I followed her on hands and knees as she vacuumed the house with an Electrolux Model XXX, with little swinging louvers on the back that reminded me of the saloon doors of a western movie.  I followed her, sticking plastic cowboys and Indians inside those doors, then opening them to see the exhaust shoot them across the room. 

But my favorite memory of my stay-at-home Mom happened in the middle of a long feverish night.  After contracting Rubella as an infant and a fever so high, it sent me into seizures, I was in danger of seizures any time I ran a fever.  As a child, I was a strep magnet. I had it again and had been put to bed with medicine for the fever, antibiotics, and a medicine to fight off seizures.  I awoke in the middle of the night, tossing and turning with fever when, out of the corner of my eye, in my room lit only by a nightlight, I saw my mother sitting in a straight-back chair, like one of London’s Beef-eaters standing guard at the palace, watching me, ready to help me through the long night of sickness.  I’ll never forget the feeling of peace that came over me and how loved I felt seeing her there. 

I thought about that experience a few nights ago as now I sat by her bed in the middle of the night.  I haven’t done that very often, but for the past six years, my Mom has known the joy and peace of awakening from illness or confusion or fear to find someone sitting beside her bed, standing watch over her, guarding the goodness of her life. That someone is my sister, Debbie.   Deb I love you and honor you for the way you have so sacrificially loved our mother. 

Mom wasn't good at every part of running a home.  Her efforts to discipline us were an ongoing joke.  Sometimes, in a moment of frustration, she would chase us with one of dad’s black leather belts (I don’t know why black sounded more painful than brown, but it did).  The belt was a worthy tool of discipline, but not the way she held it.  She chased us, well, Barry and me, while gripping the belt so close to the end that she left only six or eight inches with which to spank.  First, she couldn't reach us.  Second, when she did, it didn't hurt, at all.  We laughed until we cried.  We cried when dad got home and used the rest of belt. 

Mom was a great cook, but she had some memorable culinary miscalculations.  One of the first cakes she made was for a family gathering.  The cake looked great and people hurried to get a slice to round off their meal.  The problem was, the longer people chewed this cake, the bigger it got in their mouths.  People asked for the specifics of her recipe, perhaps to imitate it, or to tell the doctor at the emergency room later.  My mom, believing that if a little is good, more must be better, had put a dozen eggs into one cake.  The legend of that cake has grown more than the cake itself did in the mouths of Mom’s family.  

Then there was the ice cream churn.  Mom and Dad gathered with fellow choir members for a summer church choir picnic social.  Back in those days, real men churned the ice cream by hand, sitting in a circle of folding lawn chairs, talking over world affairs and swapping stories while the women, well, did everything else.  After a few stories and laughs, some of the churns were fighting back, so those men, having completed their course, stood up, put the white towel on top of the churn, and went off to do something else helpful, like play horseshoes.  Dad’s churn was still turning easily, so he pressed on.   Only when he found himself the last man in the churning circle, did my Dad begin to think something was wrong.  “Eunice,” he called.  “What did you put in this ice-cream churn?”  She talked through the recipe, probably pointing out how few eggs she used, and sure enough, everything that was needed was there for homemade ice cream.  Dad, now totally confused, took the churn apart, opened the cylinder, and said, “Eunice, I’m afraid you did leave something out—the dasher.”  That story is repeated every time an ice cream churn comes into view. 

Mom believed that worship is a gift and a miracle.  And she prepared all three of us, her children, to play a part in that holy work. 

Barry, Debbie, and I have all been told, at one time or another, “You resemble your mother.”  We’re proud to hear that.  But as I’ve thought about my Mom and the three of us who are her children, I think she on part of her gift for worship to each of us. 

My mom was a pianist.  She received some formal training, but not nearly what you’d give a student today.  She didn't often play for crowds.  She liked to close the door of our living room, sit at the piano, and make it her personal altar.  The music she played was an offering of prayer and praise.  Debbie, that part of Mom lives so beautifully in you.  You play here every Sunday, as you've done since this church met in a house, to share your worship with others.  And you've taught hundreds of students how to play so they may add the power of music to their lives. 

Mom was a singer.  She grew up singing with her family, in the Hester Sisters’ Trio, in church, in revivals, in school.  I saw her sing in our church choir and ensembles.  Barry, you are the singer.  From a young age, your voice has touched and blessed others in many churches, in many styles of music, in many important life moments.  I know you believe you've yelled so much as a coach, you can no longer sing, but I hope that’s not so.  That part of Mom lives on in you and can continue to bless all of us. 

Deb got the piano, Barry the voice, but I got the ham.  Believe me when I say my Mom loved drama. Our mother knew, long before the idea became popular in churches, that drama brings power and effectiveness to worship.  I never saw her on stage, but always as the director, creating a vision, choosing characters, enlisting helpers, encouraging strugglers, and raising an event as she raised her children until it was mature and ready to live.  She used drama to make the story of Lottie Moon so real I could’ve believed Lottie attended our church.  Mom took us to the Upper Room and the Last Supper as we joined the disciples in asking if we betray Jesus when He needs us most.  When I come to worship and portray a character, or wear a costume, or do something unusual to make a message memorable, that is her blood in my veins and part of my proud inheritance. 

For the past five-and-a-half years, Mom has lived at National Health Care in Mauldin.  Our family is grateful to those who cared for her there so tenderly.  She was there because a stroke weakened her body and the bright colors of her mind were fading.  She lost all sense of time.  Some days, I was her son, others her brother, still others just someone she loved.  But she was content.  And even dementia was, in its own way, a gift.  If you knew my mother well, you knew that she sometimes suffered from emotional ups and downs that burdened her life and complicated her relationships.  I had to spend a season in my own dark valley before I began to understand the enemy she faced.  In this last season of her life, God gave us an unexplainable unexpected blessing.  When mom’s mind got a little smaller, her shackles fell off.  These last years, she was freer to love and be loved, to embrace life and enjoy it than I have ever seen.  The last words she spoke to me were, “I really love you.”  In all things, God is working for good.  In God’s hands, even illness can be a gift and a miracle.

Even while celebrating all I and others have shared, I stand upon this one truth,

Eternal life is a gift and a miracle. 

My mother is in heaven, but not because she or I or anyone else can make the case that she’s good enough for God.  She received eternal life from Jesus Christ the way I received life from her, as a priceless personal gift, costly to the giver, miraculous in its results.  You can receive the gift by giving your life and entrusting your destiny to Jesus.  And if you receive the gift, you will share the miracle. 

Friday evening, I stood by my mom’s bed, knowing I had to leave Greenville and go home.  I had the flu or it had me and I had no business around such vulnerable people as nursing home residents.  I held my mother’s face in my hands, hoping she could hear one last thing I wanted to say.  I kissed her burning forehead and whispered, “Thank you for my life.” 

And, today, I say, “Mom, thank you for your life, for in the sunshine and the storms, the laughter and the tears, the complexity and humanity of it all, your life has been a gift and a miracle.”

If the Music Isn't Right, No One Hears the Words

Many years ago, in the church I then served, the very talented choir was singing the Sunday morning anthem, a beautiful arrangement of “Tell Me the Story of Jesus.”  It was beautiful, until something happened.  The composer of that anthem had decided to change the key of the song not far from the end.  The choir would sing “love paid the ransom for me,” hold the last note of that phrase and carry it over as the first note of the final section, “Tell me the story of Jesus…”  Great idea, had it happened.  The instruments changed key.  The choir didn’t.  So, for the rest of the song, the instruments and the choir were at musical odds with each other.  It was ugly.  Our choir director, Jim Needham, tried to end everyone’s suffering by cutting the choir off.  He signaled a cutoff several times.  They wouldn’t stop.  It was a harmonic train wreck no one could prevent.  I think that was the moment Jim first heard  a call to the mission field.  No one went home talking about the words of the anthem that day.  They probably remembered nothing about my sermon. The story of Jesus was drowned out by the  terrible dissonance of that musical civil war.  

choir was singing the Sunday morning anthem, a beautiful arrangement of

If the music of your life and mine isn’t right, if our lives are not in harmony with the faith we profess, then, no matter how beautiful or powerful the words of witness we want to share, no one will hear them.  The conflict between what we preach all day and what we try to share in moments of witness will drown out the story of Jesus. 

Master the music of the life you live each day, then a lost world will be eager to hear the words that can guide them to the Giver of a life that really sings.  

I'm Counting Your Blessings

I’m Counting Your Blessings

On Christmas Day of 1988, our Elizabeth was four years old and had a three-month-old baby brother, Josh.  This was the first year that Santa brought gifts for more than one child to our home.  Josh wasn’t too impressed with his Christmas goodies.  A three-month-old is too busy eating and sleeping to worry about much else.  But when Elizabeth came into the living room to see the Christmas gifts, she ran straight for the toys that Santa had brought to her baby brother.  Look at this!  Look at this!  I would like one of these!  Finally, wanting to redirect Elizabeth’s yuletide attention, we asked, “And what did Santa Claus bring you?”  She pointed over her shoulder without even turning her head and said, “That stuff over there.” 

          Some of us never experience happiness because everyone else’s blessings look so much better than our own.  We count their blessings and envy them instead of seeing God’s goodness at work in our own lives and praising Him.  Proverbs warns us about counting someone else’s blessings. 

(Proverbs 14:30) A heart at peace gives life to the body, but envy rots the bones.

          Wanting someone else’s life will destroy your life.  God wants you to see your blessings.  Like the Father in the Parable of the Prodigal Son who pleads with his jealous older son to come in and join the celebration of his brother’s return, God pleads with you to stop being jealous of the love He’s shown another one of His children and realize that He loves you too. 

(Luke 15:31) 'My son,' the father said, 'you are always with me, and everything I have is yours.

          As long as you count someone else’s blessings, you have nothing.  When you see your own, you have everything. 

This story is included in my book, The Stories of My Life, a collection of more than 200 life experiences that taught me about the art of living.  You can find the book at Amazon.com and at St. Andrews Baptist Church in Columbia, SC. 

Can Jesus Be Born in a Place Like This?

Christmas Day of 1981 found me as the chaplain on call at Spartanburg Regional Medical Center.  Actually, I had volunteered to work that day.  I was only single guy in the chaplain’s department and I wanted my coworkers to be with their wives and children.  I volunteered for another reason.  This was the first Christmas after dad died and I thought it was better to keep busy and to focus my energies on others.  Christmas Day in the hospital is tough, because all but the sickest patients have gone home.  Those who remain face very serious illness.  As I walked the halls that day, seeing very sick patients around me and feeling terrible pain inside me, I asked myself, Can Jesus be born in a place like this? When I got to the end of that very busy day and looked back at the people and problems I’d seen, I realized that Jesus, in fact, had come into the messy painful places of our hearts. 

He came—to the parents and grandparents of a tragically stillborn child, a family that knew that because of Jesus, they had hope of one day holding their child in heaven. 

He came—to a woman who wanted to go home, but knew that her circumstances were taking her, instead, to a nursing home, a woman who, amid all the unwanted changes in her life, clung to the truth that would not change, the Savior who is forever faithful, the love from which nothing could ever separate her. 

He came—to a man who invited me to share the Christmas that his family had brought to him at the hospital because he couldn’t go home, and we knew he never would. It was a happy day; it was a good day because he knew that every day is a gift from God, every day a gift to share with those you love. 

He came to my family as we faced our first Christmas without my father.

Who would be born in places like that?  The one who was born in a stable.  The Savior of the world.  The Son of God.  Jesus. 

He will be born in you today, if you will only believe that He is born in stables, in far less than perfect places, in sinful broken people like you and me. 

Do you believe that?

Then ask Him, welcome Him, invite Him, and Jesus will be born in you, just as you are. 

Where Are Your Blessings?

This story is taken from my new book, The Stories of My Life, available at St. Andrews Baptist Church in Columbia, SC and "soon," I am promised, at Amazon.com.  I hope this story adds to the meaning of your Thanksgiving celebration.  

Where are Your Blessings?

(1 Peter 4:10-11) Each one should use whatever gift he has received to serve others, faithfully administering God's grace in its various forms. If anyone speaks, he should do it as one speaking the very words of God. If anyone serves, he should do it with the strength God provides, so that in all things God may be praised through Jesus Christ. To him be the glory and the power for ever and ever. Amen.

           When I hear the word “Thanksgiving,” it opens a family album of memories.  In my growing up home, Thanksgiving Day was a holiday, almost a holy day, filled with many routines and rituals.  Amid those memories, I learned the true meaning of thanksgiving. 

Most of the Thanksgiving morning was spent in the front yard raking some of the ocean of leaves that fell from the oak tree that towers over my home place.  We raked those leaves partly to clean up the yard and partly to keep us out of the house so that more important and more delicious work could be done without interruption or unsolicited taste-testing. 

Before we were sent to the yard, however, there were several things that had to be done to prepare the way for the Thanksgiving meal.  Our home didn’t have a dining room as such, so on Thanksgiving Day we would pick up the table from the kitchen and carry it into the den, making it our banquet hall for the day.  Only on Thanksgiving, both leaves were added to the table to make room for lots of people and lots of food.  The table clothes would be put in place. 

And then, someone would be sent to the corner of the room to a lawyer’s bookcase with glass doors that my dad had found and refinished and given to mom as a kind of china cabinet.  On those shelves were the good dishes, the fine china, a set that my parents had received from friends to celebrate their 25^th wedding anniversary.  Thanksgiving Day was one of the very few days that bookcase was opened or even touched.  It was, in my house, a bit like the Ark of the Covenant.  Those who touched it without a high and holy calling might just end up dead.  There was something very special, something almost sacramental about bringing out those good plates for Thanksgiving dinner.  When everything was ready, the yard crew, myself included, would be called in, cleaned up, and invited to the table. 

When everyone was in place, Dad would say a special prayer.  His mealtime prayers were always good, but everyday meals often got everyday prayers that sounded a lot alike.  But this prayer was anything but routine.  This was a time to think and to thank.  I always listened to those prayers as though they were a State of the Family address. 

I remember my brother Barry’s strange and sad food choices.  With a feast before him, he would make a Thanksgiving meal of turnip greens (no vinegar), white rice (no gravy), and pickles (no food allowed to touch the others).  How he ended up in the food industry is a mystery to me!

And then there was mom’s dressing.  To paraphrase the old spiritual that says “take the whole world, just give me Jesus:” take the whole meal, just give me dressing. 

We ate.  We talked.  We laughed.  We teased.  We shared a great time over the good dishes on Thanksgiving Day.  But they weren’t with us for long.  As soon as the meal was over, we cleaned them carefully, washed and dried them by hand, stacked them neatly, and closed them up in the bookcase china cabinet.  There they stayed, untouched, unused, almost forgotten until the next Thanksgiving. 

Flip a few pages in that album of memories to another Thanksgiving Day at my home place.  In many ways it was the same as the others—the moving of the table, the adding of the table leaves, the dressing, the good dishes.  But this Thanksgiving was different too.  Someone was missing.  Dad wasn’t there.  When we sat down for the meal that day, we joined hands and waited in silence as though he would deliver the Thanksgiving blessing from heaven.  Barry, my brother, finally jumped in and blessed the food.  For once, the family preacher couldn’t find a word to say. 

After the meal and the cleanup and some family pictures, and sort of watching the football game on television, I left the rest of my family and went downstairs into the basement.  Halfway down the stairs, I sat down and looked around at what had been my father’s workshop. 

As a child, I’d seen him at work in that place and believed that he could do just about anything.  After a few years of adolescent blindness, I’d come to realize that I was just about right.  He made our first basketball goal in that workshop.  He made beautiful wooden cornices to go atop the windows in our den.  He often took an electric motor apart, replaced and refurbished parts and put it back together as good as new.  (I can still judge the health of an electric motor by hearing it run.)  He could take my wildest idea for a school project and bring it to life. 

Now, for the first time ever, his workshop was silent.  His tools were idle.  I could hardly stand it. Almost by reflex, I moved to the bottom of the stairs, across to the workbench and began piddling (as he called it) with one of the unfinished projects that sat there as though they were observing a time of mourning.  I picked up some of his tools.  I knew where most of them were.  I can’t say that I was accomplishing much of anything.  Still, it felt good.  It felt right.  Tools are meant to be used.  Tools are meant to work.  I liked hearing a little noise in the workshop again. 

As I worked a little in my Father’s workshop that Thanksgiving Day, something began to dawn in my heart.  There in the basement of the house where I grew up, surrounded by tools and parts and unfinished projects and memories, God taught me a lesson that forever changed my understanding of what living a thankful life is all about. 

God began to ask me, Where are your blessings?  Are they in your china cabinet or in my workshop?  That day I began to see that there are two very different ways of looking at life—two very different ways of understanding life’s blessings—two very different ways of living a thankful life. 

One is the way of the china cabinet.  In this way of living you see God’s blessings as precious gifts to be protected and preserved.  Like my parents’ good dishes, you bring your blessings out into the open on special days to see them, to name them, to count them, to give thanks for them.  But then you clean them up and put them back in that safe place unused, untouched, almost forgotten.

This way of living doesn’t work.  It leaves you as spiritually hungry as a thanksgiving dinner without mom’s dressing.  Something inside us knows that counting our blessings and then somehow safely storing them away is as wrong as counting your money in front of a person in need but not using any of it to help them.  I began to see that, for the Christian, thanksgiving doesn’t happen in a china cabinet. 

The more faithful way is the way of the workshop.  When you live a thankful life in a workshop kind of way, you see that God’s blessings are not so much treasures to be kept as they are tools to be used to love others and glorify Him.  Learning this lesson, 1 Peter 4:10 became my most faithful scriptural guide for living a truly thankful Christian life:

(1 Peter 4:10) Each one should use whatever gift he has received to serve others, faithfully administering God's grace in its various forms.

The truly Christian way to give thanks and to live a thankful life is not the china cabinet way, but the workshop way.  And once you know that, once you decide to live that, you never see God’s blessings in the same way. The workshop way to thank God that I can read is to teach a child to read for themselves or read to an older person who can no longer see the words.  The workshop way to thank God for my health is to respect my body as a temple of the Holy Spirit and use my strength to lift up those who are weak.  The workshop way to give thanks for this nation is to exalt it through righteous living and to use our freedoms not to indulge ourselves but to glorify God.  The workshop way to give thanks for my family is to open that circle enough to share with someone who doesn’t have a family.  The workshop way to give thanks for our church is to roll up our sleeves and work hard to keep it strong and see it grow. The workshop way to give thanks for my salvation is to tell the story of what Christ has done for me and to do all that I can to help someone else know Jesus.  The workshop way multiplies the blessings in your life because you not only have the gift; you have the smile of the Giver and the joy of changing the world. 

Where are your blessings? Are they counted, cherished, but safely, even selfishly stored away? Or are they tools in God’s workshop, serving others, and bringing glory to His name?  Lives will be changed, beginning with yours, when you get your blessings out of the china cabinet and into God’s workshop where they belong.  

That Tree's Not on Our Lot

This is one of the 225 stories from my soon-to-be-released book, The Stories of My Life.  I hope you enjoy it as you decide which trees are actually on the lot of your life!   RDV

That Tree’s Not on Our Lot

Linda and I bought a lot in a new subdivision as a step toward building our first home.  One of the first choices we faced was which trees we wanted to keep and which ones needed to be cut down.  So, covered in insect repellent and armed with orange plastic tape with which to mark the survivors, we trudged through the weeds and briers of our new lot, choosing our trees.  I came to one particular tree and couldn't decide.  At first, I thought that I should cut it down to give some other trees around more room and light to grow.  Then I thought that I should keep it to keep the woods around the edge of the lot fairly thick.  I couldn’t decide so I sought a second opinion.  I called Linda over to where I was and asked her what she thought we should do.  She looked up at the tree in a moment of deep thought.  She looked at everything around it, not wanting to make a ruling until she had the bigger picture clearly in her mind.  Then, she offered me her opinion.  She said, "Dee, I don't think you need to worry about that tree.” 

“Not worry about it?  We have to make a decision about every tree on our lot!” I shot back. 

“You don’t have to make a decision about this tree because it’s not on our lot.” 

She was right.  In the process of tree-shopping I had wandered beyond our property line and didn't even know it.  Until I saw the line between what was mine and what was not, I was worried about the wrong tree. 

Learning where the line is drawn can help you make better decisions in relationships too.  One of the most painful experiences we face is rejection.  Rejection is never easy, but we can walk away from rejection with a greater measure of peace if we will learn where the line of responsibility is drawn between us as we try to share our lives and faith with others, and those who may reject us. 

As Jesus prepared his disciples to go into the world to serve Him, He gave them and us this word of guidance,

(Matthew 10:12-13) As you enter the home, give it your greeting.  If the home is deserving, let your peace rest on it; if it is not, let your peace return to you.

Let me paraphrase those verses to make the meaning of these customs clearer to us. 

When you come into someone’s life, offer your love and blessing to them.  If they are receptive to that gift of yourself, then let that blessing rest on that life and make it better.  But, if that person rejects you, let your peace return to you.  Don’t let their rejection take away your happiness. 

In the words of Jesus, the only decision which others make about you is whether they will be "deserving," receptive toward you.  They decide whether they will receive the love you have to offer.  You have no power over their decision.  It is on their side of the line.  But what many of us fail to see is that there is another decision, one which is crucial to our finding release from rejection, which is on our side of the line. 

You decide to let your peace return to you.  If your heart is held captive by rejection, this is the freedom that Christ calls you to find.  We cannot, we must not, let our happiness be decided by anyone else, especially by those who reject us.  That choice is not on their side of the line.  Our happiness must be decided only by our trust in the God whose love doesn't change. 

No matter what others decide about you and the love you offer to them, there is still a decision on your side of the line, it remains "your peace."  Of all of the words of our Lord which we need to hear and believe, none cry out with a more urgent message for Christians who live in captivity to rejection,

Let your peace return to you.