Tom's Message - July 7
Hey, everyone!
Sorry I’m a little late!
I couldn’t find a few things this morning…
Like always, usually before I leave the house I have to look for my keys, my wallet, and my belt!
If I can’t find my keys, it’s impossible to leave the house…
If I can’t find my wallet, I guess it’d be technically illegal to leave the house (in my car anyway!)…
If I can’t find my belt, since I’ve inadvertently lost a few pounds from this surgery I had a month or so ago, it could potentially be embarrassing to leave the house!
As I search for these things, sometimes I ask myself if, here at almost the end of my 68th year on the planet…
“Tommy, are you more forgetful than you used to be?”
(I can’t ever remember the answer!)
Someone said that life goes by so fast, as soon as your face clears up, your mind gets fuzzy!
The other day we were watching Jeopardy, and I wondered, “How on earth do they remember all that stuff??”
Double Jeopardy Category: Famous Names
“Answer: Eric”…”Question: What was Hoss Cartwright’s real name on Bonanza?”
“A: Roy Hinkley”…”Q: What was the professor’s name on Gilligan’s Island?”
“A: Barbara Millicent Roberts”…”Q: What is Barbie’s full name?”
Category: Anatomy
“A: The philtrum”…”Q: What is the groove between your nose and your upper lip?” (Who knows this stuff??)
Category: Board Games
“A: A star”…”Q: What is in the center of a Scrabble board?”
Category: State Flags
“A: Ohio”…”Q: Which is the only state without a rectangular flag?”
Category: Dramatic Movie Moments
“A: The 1951 American League pennant game”…”Q: What was Sonny Corleone listening to when he pulled up to the toll booth in the Godfather?”
“How DO they remember everything???”
The older I get, the more thankful I am every day for every day! Thankful for every day I’m here, healthy and happy!
One of my all-time heroes was a British physician's assistant who sailed for China in 1853 when he was only 20 years old to share the beautiful news of Jesus with those who had never heard. There were only 300 followers of Jesus in all of China when he arrived. When Hudson Taylor died there in 1905, there were over 100,000!
But his life of relentless devotion and spiritual daring had left him weary and worn. Once, in 1900 (when he was just my age) he was preaching in a church in Boston and said, “You can trust the Lord too little, but you can never trust Him too much.”
Beautiful!!
But then he said it again. “You can trust the Lord too little, but you can never trust Him too much.”
And again.
And again.
And again.
A missionary scholar, A. T. Pierson, understanding that Hudson Taylor was in difficulty, went up to help him down from the podium, realizing that this moment was the first tangible sign of the beginning of a decline.
Pierson later wrote of this moment,
"There was something pathetic and poetic in the very fact that this repetition was the first visible sign of his breakdown, for was it not this very sentiment and this very quotation, that he had kept repeating to himself, and to all his fellow-workers during all the years of his missionary work? A blessed sentence to break down upon, which had been the buttress of his whole life of consecrated endeavour.”
I hope when I reach the day when I am repeating myself over and over, it might be something as beautifully and sweetly true as this!
I remember that John Newton, who wrote Amazing Grace, used to preach well into his 80’s and would often forget in the middle of his “talk”, what he was talking about!
“I am old and at times I can only remember two things consistently”, he quipped. “One, I am a great sinner. And two, Jesus is a great Saviour!”
And he always added, “And may God give you the grace that when you are as old as me and you can only remember two things, that it may be those two!”
Amen.