|
Wednesday, May 13 2020
LOVE "Do I have any pleasure at all that the wicked should die? "says the Lord God,"and not that he should turn from his ways and live?" Ezekiel 18:23 Most of my invitations to preach have been funerals, "Let the dead bury the dead, right?" Although I have done many, three stand out: Sammy, Wesley and Whistle. Sammy was an old Lake Worth hoodlum that I knew from elementary school and later in life picked him up when he got out of prison for murder. I tried to minister to him about the same time the young couple were at the mission, even taking the three of them to a Milt Green seminar in Dallas where they ended up leaving and walked back! Sammy had a good heart but couldn't turn away from his life of crime and ended up getting shot trying to collect on a drug deal. I did his funeral and told the truth about his life and after the service his cousin thanked me for telling it like it was, as with most preachers they sugarcoat a persons life! Laid out in his casket with his shirt unbuttoned down to his navel he looked like Elvis and in the audience there were three women I knew who mocked me as I preached. The burial was more like a Three Stooges movie where his buddies, who never were pall bearers, one with a cast on his arm couldn't figure how to carry his casket! "For I have no pleasure in the death of one who dies, "says the Lord God, "therefore turn and live!" Ezekiel 18:32 Your servant in Christ, Timothy Laughlin |