Pilot Lights

I am a part of the "Fellowship of the Unashamed." The die has been cast. The decision has been made. I have stepped over the line. I won't look back, let up, slow down, back away or be still.

My past is redeemed, my present makes sense and my future is secure. I'm finished and done with low living, sight walking, small planning, smooth knees, colorless dreams, tamed visions, mundane talking, cheap giving and dwarfed goals.

I no longer need preeminence, prosperity, position, promotions, plaudits or popularity. I don't have to be right, first, tops, recognized, praised, regarded or rewarded. I now live by faith, lean on His presence, love with patience, live by prayer and labor with power.

My face is set, my gait is fast, my goal is heaven, my road is narrow, my way is rough, my companions are few, my Guide is reliable and my mission is clear. I cannot be bought, compromised, detoured, lured away, turned back, deluded or delayed. I will not flinch in the face of sacrifice, hesitate in the presence of adversity, negotiate at the table of the enemy, ponder at the pool of popularity or meander in the maze of mediocrity.

I won't give up, shut up, let up or slow up until I have stayed up, stored up, prayed up, paid up and spoken up for the cause of Christ. I am a disciple of Jesus. I must go till He comes, give till I drop, preach till all know and work till He stops me. And when He comes for His own, He will have no problem recognizing me. My banner is clear: I am a part of the "Fellowship of the Unashamed."

This writer feels that he was always on the outside looking in. Astounded that mere mortals wanted to bargain with the Creator of the Universe. Always people think that God needs them. He needs them to worship him. For God to be God, he does not need anything. Rewards should not be our motive for right living, we live right because we are a creation of God. Stand in awe of his holiness.

The wood burning cook stove was invented in Germany in 1557. I so remember my mother, grandmothers building fires in the cook stove in order to cook a meal. I remember sticking a match to kindling to start a fire in a cook stove myself as a child. Each year we would prepare special wood to use in the cook stove. The stoves my ancestors used were referred to as "home comforts." I was raised as was my ancestors on a dirt road without electric power lines, phones lines, water lines, or lines of any type which would bring fuel for any stove other than wood. It was in college that I learned about the gas cook stove, pilot lights. This was before the time of the electric stove. The pilot light is a small gas burner kept continuously burning to light a larger burner when needed, such as in a stove, hot water tank or home heating system. The first pilot light design came about around the year 1820. Of course, my mother and grandmothers were happy with a wood cook stove. Their mothers had cooked in an open fireplace, iron pots hanging over fires. I have here in my house a iron fireplace cook pot which probably came over with my ancestors from England in 1677. God deliver me from politicians, pastors, people who have no understanding or appreciation of what our early ancestors endured.

In spite of ourselves, chosen people of God have, themselves, been pilot lights exhibiting through their lives, through their faith, the evidence of His love.

We still see this evidence, every day, in many ways. This old blind veteran gets Meals on Wheels, a system whereby disabled people, unable to cook (The last time I tried to cook, I almost burned my house down, attempting to cook some eggs). Volunteers deliver meals to these people prepared by the Department of Aging or churches. Yesterday, Nettie and Estelle brought my meal. Nettie is 92 years of age. She brought the meal into the house, Estelle does the driving, but they both wanted to come in and meet me, talk with me. These two wonderful ladies are real pilot lights, spending the sunset years of their lives in real Christian service. For I was hungry and you gave Me food; I was thirsty and you gave Me drink; I was a stranger and you took Me in; I was naked and you clothed Me; I was sick and you visited Me; I was in prison and you came to Me (Matthew, 25: 35, 36).

Pilot lights are set of fire, remembered from many sources. One never strays so far from home that he does not remember his family around the eating table, perhaps even his mother's prayer before eating the food. Pilot lights are often ignited because of rejection. This writer has stated from many pulpits, on radio programs "We hear about all the problems of this world, children going bad, prisons full, but it amazes me that most children turn out as well as they do considering from where they came." There are many recurring images in my mind, such as the one I talk about so often, the migrating refugees at borders, a burden on my heart for which I pray everyday. Hungry children dragged along by parents attempting to escape the horrors of war, the Christians in the concentration camps of North Korea. God wanted this Writer-Doctor-Military Officer to sense the depravity both physical and spiritual of people in the poverty of Bangladesh-Africa-Asia BUT, closer home, I so remember the black school house near my home. A clapboard building painted white, "outhouses", water from a hand pump, the only bright thing about that black school and I can see it in my mind 70 years later as if it were yesterday, cutout flowers pasted on the windows, the only things the black children saw of beauty. Each day they passed the brick school where the white children went to school with their inside bathrooms, water fountains. Yet, from these cesspools, depots of bigotry, children got a spark from a pilot light, rose and conquered their backgrounds.

I still remember black teachers who were patients of mine, white teachers who were patients of mine, describing to me the desperation of children who they had taught. Some who went to school and no one had ever taught them even to tie their shoestrings... knew nothing about basic hygiene, but had been drilled into them that they were inferior. In my military career I encountered so many young men and young women (I was stationed on the staff of an army hospital at the WAC Center of the army, Fort McClellan, Alabama). So many young men and young women swallowed up by the military because they had no better place to go. Yet, even from these training facilities, some went on to greatness.

It is God's business what He does with those who do not believe, those who do not love Him. He loves them anyway, in spite of themselves. A person can go to a doctor who they hardly know, take from him a piece of paper with words and writing they do not understand. Then, go to a pharmacy to give the RX paper to a man they do not know, take a bottle of pills from the pharmacy and put these pills which they do not know or understand in their body... trusting the doctor, piece of paper and the one who compounded the pill... wrong diagnosis-chemicals, instant death. Yet, many do not trust the Creator of the Universe, the One who is the pilot light of the entire world. All God requires is trust, in spite of rejection, in spite of the past. The past and the future are Satan's playgrounds. Satan knows we can do little about the past or the future. We only have the pilot light of today.