Faith

Amos 3:3 3Do two walk together unless they have agreed to do so? Dr. H.

I was Pastor of The First Baptist Church of Shelbyville, Texas when Mother called me from Center saying that she had invited Joe and Mimi Boland to attend our church. “They live at the Old Center community a few miles from Joaquin”, she said. “You’ll like them the first time you see them.” The next Sunday morning, Joe came smiling his way into our sanctuary. “I’m Joe Boland”, he said as he sat down. Two weeks later, he and his wife Mimi joined our church and even though they lived thirty miles away, they seldom missed a service. Joe knew how to encourage a preacher like no other. He made me smile, laugh and feel good. At times he would stand during the morning announcements and encourage the congregation with his testimony..

Our conversation was mostly about the memories of our childhood Christmases. After cutting a pine tree (one year a holly), we made our ornaments from Crayola-colored rings stuck together with water and flour glue. None of us ever saw or ate an apple, an orange or an English walnut until Christmas every year. On Christmas Eve, we lay whispering in bed till daylight. When Mother and Daddy called us, we ran to the fireplace, warmed and opened our presents. A cap pistol with several rolls of caps was for many years our Christmas toy and we each got an apple and an orange. I was so proud of my English walnuts one year that I hid one on a window ledge and enjoyed it several weeks later.

OBEDIENT FAITH Have you ever read 2 Corinthians 5:5-10? “Now He who prepared us for this very purpose is God, who gave to us the Spirit as a pledge. Therefore being always of good courage, and knowing that while we are at home in the body we are absent from the Lord – for we walk by faith, not by sight – we are of good courage.

It happened in my hometown of Center, Texas in 1939. I was six years old and had just enrolled in Miss Stanley’s First Grade Class. Mother asked me to go downtown (all by myself) to “ask for our mail” at the Post Office and to buy her a can of baking powder. It would be my first time to go to town alone.