Betrayal and Ballast Stone

"Each of you should give what you have decided in your heart to give, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver."

2 Corinthians 9:7

            I was asked to give the eulogy at his funeral. I am trying to remember what I said because over the years, so many people have pilfered through my things I have lost the actual words.

            Anyway, in my long life of meeting unusual people all over the world, he remains a giant.  Born on a creek in the mountains-poverty of West Virginia, to a coal miner and a "coal miner's daughter", he attended a one room school.  God marks special people. Julian was marked by a speech impediment (stutterer).

            Someone, somehow, recognizing his quick mind and yet impossible chances for advancement, suggested that he go to Martha Berry College in Rome, Georgia, a college famous for taking in poor students and allowing them to work their way through by working in the farm fields.  Graduating from Martha Berry, having remarkable skills in the fields, he came to eastern North Carolina because one couple he met there had a special place in their hearts for him.

            Honest, reliable, he found  a job working in a feed store.  The owner of the feed store, among many other properties, owned a small house on a acre of land just outside the city limits.  He told him that he could live in that house, have the advantages of gardening, etc., for as long as he wanted to...and then it would revert back to his estate.  In the mean time, Julian had made friends at a local church.  Men in the church helped him refurbish the house.  Women in the church with the help of the Salvation Army and others, helped him furnish the four room house.  Julian was known for his garden, his chicken yard.  He had a list of people in town; shut-ins, disabled, widows, mothers raising children alone, (regardless of religion or skin color) to whom he carried produce from the garden and eggs from the chicken house.  He never owned a car, and never drove a car.  He walked everywhere.  Another employee of the feed store would pick him up each morning for work.  He said that in all those years he would stand by the road, rain or shine, ready to go.  He was loved by his employer, other employees and customers, who said that he was always helpful and kind.

            His was a simple life.  He worked in the garden so he could give produce to his friends, taking care of his chickens so he could give eggs to his friends.  He never had but one suit; that black suit which he wore every Sunday to church.  He was always there, even though he walked.  Sunday, mid-week prayer services and all special events.  There did not have to be a special evangelists, special singers or special program for him to be at worship and prayer services.  The money he earned was mostly given away except for dire personal needs.  He said to this writer, eulogist at his funeral "I feel that I have betrayed God. One born with empty hands, unless I leave this world with empty hands." God has supplied every need and I cheerfully give everything back to Him."  One person in his church said that he probably gave more money to the church than many of its wealthier members.

            not included in the eulogy, before his death at age 75 he had become ill.  Two of his male friends who had lost their wives, moved into his house to care for him.  He had made friends with the black undertaker in town and had asked him to bury him...cheapest way in a cheap graveyard.  This was done, as he wished.  Probably, his funeral at his church would have filled the church and run over but, at the small private service for just his two friends who had cared for him, his immediate neighbors living close to him, the employees who had worked with him, he was buried in the only suit he had ever owned, the cheapest casket available.  He left nothing except a good reputation; Christian testimony. 

            In his garden, the garden which had fed so many people, he had dug up a ballast stone (a ballast stone is the stone in the bottom of a ship to stabilize it.  Constant motion on the sea causes the stones to become smooth).  His ballast stone was used as the marker on his grave, in that remote, poor, black cemetery.

            Mortal man always thinks he is going to get by with something.  No one gets away with anything.  God has the very hairs on your head numbered. (Matthew 10:30)  The more I am around today's young people, the more I realize just how lost they are.  They think that celebrity/success lies in what they possess, not what they profess.  They will find just how much they have been betrayed by the promises of the world/flesh/devil.  Veterans have learned how they have been betrayed.  In 1968, a Broadway play 'Promises, Promises', the world, particularly the American government, is good at making promises.  So few are actually fulfilled.  Most citizens never learn that it is the greedy, not the needy, who betray every principle of God's book and the American Constitution.  Even your grocery store betrays you.  Your grocery store items, 90% GMO.  Your healthcare system betrays you - 50% of all x-rays are completely unreliable (mammograms, etc.). 

            At oxford University, Cambridge, England, The Future of Humanity Institute, academics are attempting to determine just how quickly mankind will destroy itself through technology, armed bacteria, robots, drones.   Calibrated risks determine how quickly population control can be obtained.  It started years ago with John Foster-Dulles and John D. Rockefeller; traveling the world, seeing the poverty of the world, determining that poor populations must be controlled.  Margret Sanger called these black producers of population "weeds".  Six of the ten fastest growing nations are in Africa.  Population control proponents propose to cut the population from 7 billion to 2 billion.

            Exactly 60 years ago today, May 29, 1953, the Coronation of Queen Elizabeth of England.  On that same day word came that Edmund Hillary, a bee keeper from New Zealand, became the first man to look out and across the Himalayas as he reached the peak of Mount Everest.  Sir Edmund Hilary died in 2008.  Many have climbed Everest since.  His camp sent back the message "All is well".  The only way any one, any nation can say "All is well" to know what Julian knew.  Do not betray your Creator.