September 4, 2020 (Friday)
When I was growing up, at least on our side of town, we kids were expected to get a job of some kind. For some kids, it meant earning money to help with household expenses. For others, the cash generated provided “spending money” for little extras that the family could not afford. My friend, Troy Conner, had a paper route. Every once in a while I would help him or take his place if he had to be absent. My first job was delivering orders from a drug store, but it did not last long because my grandfather objected to the dangers involved and besides, I was only 11 years old.
When I was about 13 years old, my stepmother got me a job in the produce department of our local grocery store. Thereafter I worked in several grocery stores around town. I worked in my parents’ restaurants, waiting on people. I worked in a movie theater downtown as usher, in a neighborhood theater cleaning up the place each morning, and in another neighborhood theater as ticket taker and popcorn maker, etc. I had jobs when I was in college: pastoring a church and working in “Baby Percy” medicine company. When I got to the seminary I worked in an ice cream factory in Fort Worth, and then as a “Department Clerk” in an automobile assembly plant in Arlington, Texas, and then in a feed store and grainary, doubling as a truck driver making deliveries. That job was hard at first because it involved heavy lifting, but my body responded and I got very strong.
In the meantime I pastored three churches as I attended college and seminary, beginning church work as a freshman on the staff of a county seat church. When I finally got my seminary education behind me, I became pastor of a small town church, then a suburban church in Dallas, and finally the First Baptist Church of Rockport. After retirement 31 years later, I was interim pastor, pastor, or supply preacher as the Lord kept me busy in His work until this year.
Adam and Eve had fun working in God’s Garden of Eden. Only after sin entered the picture did work become unpleasant with thorns, pain and suffering. Work is a good thing; it was part of man’s life from the beginning.
The present time through which we are living has caused millions of people to be out of work or out of business. It is a hard time for great numbers of people who want to work but cannot. It is an even worse time for those who have become infected with the Covid-19 Virus. For more than 185,000 people this pandemic has brought death and for millions of others great suffering. Sadly, many people working to help others medically have been stricken with illness and some have died.
What can we do? We can cooperate with those who are advising us on how to avoid becoming ill or involuntarily spreading this vicious virus to others. We can help where we can. We can pray, especially for those whose needs we know. Concurrently with the pandemic our nation is going through cultural upheaval, mostly without injury or death, but sometimes becoming violent.
What a time we live in. Pray as you have never prayed before, and never waver in your faith and love for the Lord. Do what you can; that is all you can do. Pray without ceasing for better days to come.