What murders cannot kill

There’s a surprising grace that falls our way whenever someone unexpectedly sings a beautiful song.

It was a Susan Boyle moment whenever Angela Hockensmith began her solo in our church one Sunday morning. I could sense people looking wide eyed at each other. Like me, they were silently saying, “I didn’t know she could sing like that.”

Usually Angel

There’s a sat with her husband, Michael, and eight year old son, Andrew, and not in the choir. I suppose that’s why my mouth dropped when she began singing: I had no inkling she even had an interest in music. Thankfully, our music minister did.

After her musical debut, the choir latched on to Angela and held her tightly; they weren’t about to let her return to her former perch in the pew. I could sometimes hear her voice rise above the others, and I would break out in a satisfied smile, like I do when smelling coffee brewing or a rose blooming.

Because Michael worked in Danville, Ky., the Hockensmiths would usually arrive late for Wednesday night prayer meeting in Lebanon. But once there, they were all there. Andrew would be talking to anyone who would listen when Angela would take him gently by the hand and guide him to the children’s activities.

Then Michael and Angela would sit together. Michael would always have his Bible in hand, looking up every passage of Scripture I mentioned in my Bible study.

Angela would often request prayer, usually for someone else. The only time I recall her asking for themselves was when they needed a car. Several weeks later we rejoiced with them when they reported that God had provided a way for them to have an automobile.

We prayed for Angela throughout her pregnancy and celebrated with them when Naomi Grace was born.

And then they left as unobtrusively as they had arrived. “We need to live near Danville so I can be closer to the pawn shop,” he mentioned to me one Wednesday evening after prayer meeting.

Months passed.

Then, I received a text message from my wife during her lunch break, informing me that there had been a shooting at a pawn shop in Danville. I didn't think of Michael or the fact that he had become part owner of the pawn shop where he worked.

I wondered what went through his mind when the shooter lifted his gun in Michal’s direction, seconds before he and Angela were murdered.

I was told Angela begged for the safety of her little ones.

Naomi Grace was unharmed.

Little Andrew made the 911 call.

Shaking my head in disbelief, I thought of the twelve people killed in Washington’s Naval Yard, the sixty-eight or more killed and 175 injured in the shopping mall in Kenya, the 1429 reportedly murdered by chemical weapons in Syria, the 78 Christians killed in their church by a suicide bomber in Pakistan, and I asked myself, “Has the world gone crazy?”

No, the world hasn't gone crazy.

It’s always been that way. We've only made our instruments of violence more deadly, more prolific, and more accessible.

I wish we could unravel the violent mess we find ourselves in, not only as individuals but as nations. Is it possible to go back to a more peaceful, nonviolent time? I doubt it.

All I know to do now is keep praying and working for peace, and yearning for a day, someday, when “they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks (and) nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore.”

I recall the last solo I heard Angela sing in our congregation before they moved to Danville. It was the entitled (prophetically? ironically?) “Alive.”

“Alive, alive,” she sang in melodious tones I thought surely fell from heaven. “Look what Mercy's overcome/ Death has lost and Love has won!”

Murderers can’t kill what cannot die.

In that millisecond between the time the bullet left the gun barrel and entered her body, perhaps, just perhaps---a song rose from Angela’s heart and ascended to the heavens.

And then settled there.

Forever.

Enjoying the prime of your life

Usually when someone makes a positive comment about a picture I’m in, I take it because it doesn't happen often. Mr. Photogenic I am not. So when a dear, saintly lady in my church complimented the “wonderful” picture of my son Dave and me taken during this year’s Vacation Bible School, I had to take a second look at it because there was something about it I didn't like.

The picture was in a group of VBS photographs hanging on a wall in the church’s educational building. Dave at age 23 looks great. His arm is draped around my shoulder, and he’s wearing a handsome smile. I on the other hand, in my VBS T-shirt, look very unlike the Senior Pastor--- Senior as in the leader among several. But I did look very senior--- as in over age 55.

Whoever snapped that photo took it before I had time to flash my youthful smile instead of the fatigued “Is Vacation Bible School over yet?” forced grin the picture reveals.

I have thought of secretly taking the picture off the wall, somehow Photoshop a younger picture of myself onto it, and then sneak it back where it was.

Don’t get me wrong: I’m learning to accept the fact that I am actually over f-f-f-f-f-fifty-five. I get that my body doesn't replace cells as quickly as it used to. So what if it takes a little longer for me to recover from my weight training work outs? And though I miss it, I've given up outdoor running: My degenerative disc disease prefers the indoor elliptical trainer. And that little extra fold of skin on my neck doesn't look like a turkey’s gobbler, I keep telling myself.

Fifty seven may not be heaven, but neither is 37, or 23 for that matter.

Then I read where Geraldo Rivera celebrated his 70^th birthday by tweeting an almost nude picture of himself taken in his bathroom at 2 AM. “70 is the new 50,” he said.

This upset the gerontological harmony I had achieved. If 70 is the new 50, does this mean I am supposed to look like I’m 30 something when I’m really 50 something?

Trying to look 30 something adds more pressure to my life, stressing me to look ever more youthful, tempting me to Photoshop more pictures. And this worrisome race to reverse my age will only hasten the aging process, I fear.

Thank the Lord for the recent news about Diana Nyad. She’s the 64 year old athlete who a few weeks ago became the first swimmer to go the distance from Cuba to Florida without a shark cage.

What she couldn't do at age 28 in 1978 (this was her fourth attempt to go the distance) she accomplished at age 64.

When she reached the shore at Smathers Beach in Key West, Florida, she told the crowd, “You’re never too old to chase your dreams. “

And she said something else: “I may not look it right now but you catch me on a good day, I’m in my prime.”

She recognizes she doesn't look 40 something, and  that’s ok, because she can still strive to achieve; she can blossom at whatever age she is.

I suppose Arthur Rubenstein, who at age 89 gave one of his greatest recitals at New York’s Carnegie Hall would agree with Nyad, as would Albert Schweitzer, who at 89 headed a hospital in Africa. And Konrad Adenauer, who became Chancellor of Germany at 88, Benjamin Franklin, who at 81 helped in the adoption of the United States Constitution, and Grandma Moses, who was still painting at 100, and Winston Churchill, who wrote A History of the English-Speaking Peoples, at 82, and George Bernard Shaw, who wrote a play at 94 would all applaud her as well.  And let’s not forget the Biblical characters, Caleb, who at 80 was one of those selected to spy out the land of Canaan, and Moses, who was still leading the people of Israel at 120.

So, I walked down the hall again and took another look at that picture. By golly, my friend is right: That’s a darn good picture of a fifty something guy who has the best ahead of him and has yet to reach his prime.

No wonder his son is smiling like he’s happy for him. 

Got Directions?

I was remembering an old story the other day about a businessman barreling through the countryside in his Lincoln Town Car. The guy is hopelessly lost and stops in a little one horse town he happens upon, pulling into a service station in the days when service stations were actually service stations. The attendant saunters out, chewing on a straw, and asks the man what he needs. “I’m lost,” the businessman confesses.

The gas station attendant squints at the driver and asks, “Do you know where you are?”

“Yeah,” the businessman says, “I saw the name as I drove into town.”

“Well, sir, do you know where you’re going?” the attendant further inquires.

“Yes, yes, of course” the driver answers, growing impatient with the questions.

“Well,” drawled the service station worker, “if you know where you are, and you know where you want to be, then mister, you ain’t lost, you just need directions.”

Sometimes directions come from the most unlikely sources.

Driving through Southeast Texas, I had made a wrong turn somewhere between Cleveland and Cut and Shoot. The sun had dropped to a distant glow as I traveled westward, and the September heat was napping on an eerie, yellowish hue, enveloping my Ford F-150 like a fog straight out of Rod Serling’s “Twilight Zone.”

Let me back up. Years ago, I accepted a position with an evangelistic organization that I quickly became convinced would go belly up. Unwilling to move my family to their location, I was commuting 6-7 hours each week, staying home as late as possible before leaving, often driving through the night and straight to work.

One afternoon--having grinned and giggled our way through Mel Brooks’ “Young Frankenstein,” my family and I said our goodbyes, and  I, heavy hearted, backed out of our driveway, turning west, when I spied Dave, then age 8, in my rear view mirror, running toward me, yelling something.

Stopping, I rolled down my window and heard him mimicking the stilted, guttural sounds of Peter Boyle, the monster in “Young Frankenstein,” singing, “Puttin’ on the Ritz.”  

How did Dave know I needed to laugh?

I did, and then driving away, I cried.

It was later, down the road that it happened. With that mustardy film blanketing my truck, I thought I could hear Rod Serling voicing over the DJ on my radio: “David Whitlock thought he was driving to Dallas, Texas, but having made a wrong turn, he has just entered…The Twilight Zone.”

Was the Voice narrating my life journey? Describing my geographical location? Or both?

Trying to ignore the Voice in my head, I focused on the road map, not the road. And that’s when my right front tire hit something---a rock? a curb? ---causing my tire to meet a most untimely death.

.

Now, I’d not changed a tire since driver’s training. But I didn’t have to worry about it: The husband of the dear little lady from whom I had recently bought the truck suffered from Alzheimer’s, and between the time I had inspected the vehicle for purchase and actually acquired it, he had removed the spare tire and hidden it. Later, she and I would laugh about this, but that night, somewhere in the Twilight Zone between Cleveland and Cut and Shoot, there was no hint of a smile on my face.

I tried calling AAA; there is no cell service in the Twilight Zone.

It was beginning to rain when a pick-up truck loaded with about 150 Hispanics mercifully stopped long enough for me to hop aboard, and there I was, traveling with them, crushed between a large, bosomy grandmother and her several sniffling grandchildren---all singing in Spanish. I hummed along.

“Buena suerte,” they happily shouted as I jumped from the slow moving vehicle in the direction of a convenience store in the middle of nowhere.

I guzzled stale coffee while waiting for my only hope. Only one man in these parts could find a tire for me at this hour, the store manager informed me.

“He usually comes by about this time. Don’t know about tonight, though, seeing that it’s raining.”

“That’s comforting,” I thought. “How will I know him?” I asked.

“You’ll know him,” he smirked,  “looks a lot like Gomer Pyle.”

The manager was right. “Gomer” was tall, lanky, wore a crooked cap, and bobbed his neck in front of his body as he walked.

“Over there, maybe you’ll find one,” Gomer told me as we walked through his junk yard, which doubled as the front and back yard of his house.

Tripping over tires in the darkness, surrounded by a Transylvanian like fog, I suddenly had a horrible thought: “What if this was all a charade? What if the convenience store owner and Gomer are partners in crime---even serial killers? And no one has a clue where I am.”

 “Oh God,” I prayed, “don’t let Gomer kill me. Get me out of here.”

“That should do,” Gomer said as he finished changing my tire.

He wouldn’t let me pay him.

“You’ve had a hard night, just stop by sometime when you’re this way again.”

 And his kindness continued, “Now, let me give you some directions out of here.”

“Directions out,” I whispered, “a gift from the Lord.”

Miles down the road and deep into the night, I stopped at a Waffle House.

I slowly breathed in the aroma of bacon and eggs frying as the early morning crew hustled in, ready for a new day. Ignited by the promise of a crisp, fresh morning, I suddenly felt a surge of energy, and picturing Dave singing “Puttin’ on the Ritz,” I filled in the lines, “If you're blue and you don't know where to go to/ why don't you go…”

And so I did go, forward and onward---thanks to Dave singing and Gomer helping,

And closing my eyes, I let the pancakes slowly melt in my mouth.