BLOGGING TOWARD SUNDAY…

Fred Craddock, professor of NT and preaching at Emory University, loves to tell of his experience of growing up.  His father didn’t go to church, in fact, he was extremely critical of it.

Every once in a while, the pastor of the local church would come by and talk to Mr. Craddock, but he wouldn’t listen.  He’d say, “I know what you fellows down at the church want.  You want another name and another pledge.  Right?  Isn’t that the business you’re in?  Another name and another pledge.”

His wife was always embarrassed by that kind of talk, and she would run into the kitchen and cry.  Sometimes a revival preacher would come out with the pastor, but he couldn’t do any good either.  “You don’t care about me!” Fred’s dad would say.  “You just want another name and another pledge, that’s how churches operate.”

The last time Fred Craddock saw his father was in a Veteran’s Hospital.  He was down to 74 pounds.  The doctors had taken out his throat, because radiation therapy for cancer had burned him so badly. They had put in a tube so he could breathe, but he couldn’t speak.

Around the room were flowers everywhere‑‑‑on the table, in the windows, even on the floor.  There were flowers even on the table that swings over the bed to put food on.  And that was just as well because he couldn’t eat anyway.  Little cards were sprinkled in all the flowers, and every one of them said thing like:  Methodist Men, Men’s Bible Class, Methodist Women, Children’s Division, MYF.  Every group in the church had sent flowers, and there were stacks and stacks of cards from church members.

Mr. Craddock was a well-educated man, and on that day, unable to speak, he picked up a pencil and wrote on the side of a Kleenex box a line from Shakespeare’s Hamlet:

          In this harsh world, draw your breath

          in pain to tell my story.

Fred read it and asked his father, “Dad, I don’t understand, just what is your story?”  The speechless old man took the kleenex box back and wrote a confession:  “I was wrong!  I was wrong!”

What a tragedy that he had missed, all of his life, the security, peace, and satisfaction of a life that fits, and to have found it only as he lay dying.  I was thinking recently about people who actually plan things that way.  They think they’re doing themselves a favor by planning on accepting Christ in the last moments of their lives, thinking that somehow they might miss something if that decision were made sooner.

I hope that none of you are counting on that.  It is possible to wait until it’s too late to make a difference in this life.  Becoming a Christian is not just for the life to come, it’s for this life, today, here and now!  Jesus said, “I am come that you might have life, and life more abundantly.”   Life as it was meant to be lived!

Filed under: Blogging Toward Sunday