#1926 Digging Around in the Graveyard

#1926

Digging Around in the Graveyard

            "The Potter's Clay" by Deborah Smith Plemmons

            I was but a lump of shapeless clay,
            Until I was touched by the Potter one day.
            With His hands, He started molding me
            Into what He would have me to be.

            I did not resist His gentle touch,
            Though I thought I'd not amount to much.
            He smoothed rough edges, getting rid of self.
            I really didn't want to sit on a shelf.

In the world's attempt to worship both God and mammon, God will lose out.  It is this writer's experience that today's youth, are only interested in one thing, getting rich.  I find that today's youth are not interested in long life (Sarah, Abraham's wife lived to be 127 years old).  The goal of the average American, in spite of Sunday School-in spite of targets of terrorism-targets of pain-targets of addictions-money and more money...After all, Bill Gates had an income of sixteen billion dollars last year.  Money has its own gravitational pull: greater than morality, greater than even going to jail, greater than anything Newton could have imagined.

This old blind, veteran, world traveler (Dr. Morris' passport has been stamped in 157 countries) never ceases to be amazed at what human beings will do for money.  God only had to say it once, "The love of money is the root of all evil" (1 Timothy 6:10).  Just last year, twenty thousand elephants were "poached"-killed so men could sell their ivory tusks.

This writer was raised in the heat and sweat of impoverished Eastern North Carolina, my parents-grandparents-etc never locked the barn-smokehouse-car.  I was raised thinking that everyone was as honest as the country people around us.  We think that wisdom and education is so great, that it makes people better, BUT it was when I went to the nation's first state university (from poverty I was smart enough to get in, worked my way through eight years of university-paid for everything myself, how many doctors can say that?).  I had worked so hard for clothing: I still remember my hardworking mother and me walking all over town attempting to find clothing cheap enough and good enough for me to wear at Chapel Hill.  The first week, I thought coat racks were put in buildings to hang your coat, my new raincoat and another coat were stolen right from a coat rack.  On every news outlet, of every type, we hear about honor and love for veterans.  Many years later, after university-military, this blind veteran-walking with a white cane was thrown down on the street near Broadway in Manhattan, my money and watch stolen.  Think of this, right off Broadway, hundreds of people all around, an old, blind, man laying on the ground having been robbed, not one person came to my assistance (I had no money for a taxi, the robbers had taken it.  I hobbled back to my address, where the doorman said, "What in the hell has happened to you?")  I will go ahead and answer your question, yes, I have been blessed in spite of everything, to have owned a condominium in Manhattan, as well as a house in the city where I live, as well as a house on the beach.  You see, when I started digging around in the graveyard, (it is hard to talk to tombstones, so always talk to your old folks-kin, before they die) I made the discovery that those washed in the righteousness of Jesus were always blessed.  The greatest prophecy and promise of my life, has been the assurance that those old people I knew as a child (many of whom could barely read and write, those who knew that the Creator of the universe only expected one thing from them, TRUST.  That they may not have been winners in life's lottery of good looks-sharp tongue-clever brain but they knew where true wealth lies).

Of greater consolation to me, as I have dug around the graveyard, even some relatives and people I knew who had great imperfections, not ideal church members, could be understood-even excused by many of us in our judgment because of our own imperfections.  NO perfect group or perfect church would have taken us in either. 

Habits are the invisible architecture of everyday life.  Show me a person's habits and I will tell you much about that individual.  It is so important for children to survive homes where good habits are instilled.  In my nearly sixty years of hiring young people to work for me, it is truly amazing how few I have known who had developed good habits (work ethic-honesty-clean language and thoughts).  Have you ever noticed how many people cannot get to work on time, people who always drag in late for worship services, never on time for class...or even a party? 

I had one young man working for me, both parents drug addicts, his father already dead from an overdose, he had never known his life without his mother being in a hospital or jail-drugs.  Yet, this young man, probably the brightest student I ever hired, graduated from high school at age 14, brilliant mind...a SLAVE to drugs.  Both of his brothers were drug addicts, also but they were straightened out by the Mormon Church.  I did everything I could for this young man but I finally had to give up.  I live just a short distance from the mighty Cape Fear River, with its strong current aimed toward the ocean, I can hear the traffic going across the bridge over that river from my house.  It is like my going to that bridge screaming-demanding that the river and its current reverse itself, start flowing north instead of south, to reverse what goes on in the mind of a drug addict.  This is something that only God can do.  ONE MAN, PLUS GOD, AND ANYTHING IS POSSIBLE.  This is what I have discovered at the graveyard, these old people, long buried there, their old worn out bodies returned to the Earth, which first gave them life (Genesis 2:7), lived through everything they encountered in their living.  I still remember the old instruments of surgery and birth in the museum at the university medical school.  Charles Darwin, Origin of the Species, wanted to be a surgeon but he fled the operating room never to return, when he heard the first screams of surgery without anesthesia (pain killers had not been invented).  Do you know how many mothers died during childbirth-how many workers died in accidents before the time of modern care? 

Each of us in our myriad of talents, habits, personality quirks still disguise most of our personality...our real selves.  Perhaps this is the reason for so many divorces, I certainly did not know the worst of my wives, nor did they know my lesser qualifications.  Just as man cannot know the holiness of God, just as man cannot even fathom a mother's love, just as civilians cannot imagine fear in a foxhole, much of the anguish as well as the anxieties, ambitions and answers of mankind goes into the grave.  In the graveyard, I found that in spite of the mansion we all want, the money vault we all want, the values and respect we all desire, each of us will get the same fortressed security, a fits-all grave.  Some may depend on pets, crystals, histrionics, magnificent bank statements, BUT, at the end, all repose in a fits-all grave.