POSTED PROPERTY

I have a small black 3-ringed notebook that contains this verse that I often used in the numerous funerals I officiated during my active years of church Ministry and following. The poem is entitled FRIENDS and it reads thus: 

The river flowing gently by, 

The rolling meadows, green, 

The mountains towering to the sky, 

The valleys in between 

Are all a part of God’s great scheme 

On which our joy depends,  

But greatest of them all, I deem 

Our friends. 

The sunshine and blue skies are fine, 

I’m thankful for the flowers, 

For they are truly gifts divine 

To cheer this world of ours. 

But flowers droop ad skies turn gray 

And oft the sunshine ends. 

God’s greatest blessings, so I say, 

Are friends. 

When sorrow comes and grief is yours 

And hope is lost in gloom, 

“Tis then that friendship comes to shine 

Within your darkened room. 

“Tis then that consolation sweet, 

Your bitter woe attends,  

For God hath made this world complete 

With friends. 

I glory in a summer day, 

And in the morning sun, 

But when my cares are put away, 

And all my tasks are done, 

When low the shades of evening fall 

And night time fast descends, 

Most thankful then am I for all 

My friends. 

In one of those Memorials, I laid to rest a consecrated Mother and Christian wife. She had been an inspiration to others, right down to her bed of affliction. What matters half a century later is not her name as much as how we remembered her: “But the pathway of the just is as a shining light, that shineth more and more unto the perfect day” (Proverbs 5:18). 

Among other things that day, we remembered her as one who turned her face, her heart, her whole life toward God and our Father set her feet upon “the pathway of the just. I paraphrased her as one who “gripped the hand of God / the hand that led and blest / And let that peace whose storm is calm / Hold kingship in her breast.” 

In her experience, as in the experience of every true disciple of Christ; evening was not the prelude of mistaking sunset and darkness; rather it was the coloring of a beautiful Eternal Dawn, for her. 

Think of stepping on shore and finding it Heaven! 

Of taking hold of a hand and finding it God’s! 

Of breathing a new air and finding it celestial air! 

Of feeling invigorated and finding it immortality! 

Of passing from storm and stress to a perfect Calm! 

Of waking and finding it home.  

How great is this power of memory and of friends with which God has blesses us. Of course, that still leaves us choosing how we conserve our memories and our friends, and whether we feel the pangs of guilt or the exultation of joy. That brings me to another of my friends, that being the books I read and take motivation from to feed my appetite for life. You ask what drives me at this late hour of my life; allow me to share a quote from my reading this morning. 

I quote from Richard Bell’s 2019 publication of Stolen, Five Free Boys Kidnapped into SLAVERY and THEIR ASTONISHING ODDESSEY HOME (ISBN #978-15011-6943-4). In chapter two, Bell describes what he calls BLACK HEARTS. He describes one John Smith as “the man who abducted Sam, Joe, Cornelius, Enos, and Alex, was a phantom, a conjuring trick, and a chameleon. Smith was one of his aliases, a convenient, generic, and forgettable disguise. His real name was John Purnell., and he made his living separating children from their parents, and trafficking them into slavery. 

“While some of the other kidnappers who stalked Philadelphia’s streets in the 1820s targeted adults and children in roughly equal numbers. Purnell preferred to prey solely on boys under the age of sixteen. Their size, age, and marginal status made them perfect marks. While young girls typically worked indoors, their brothers were more often out and about unsupervised, and Purnell, surely found ‘slim made’ boys like eight-year-old Alex easier to overpower or choke into silence than full-grown men or women. His snarled threats or the flash of a blade were more likely to intimidate children. Besides, if they owned freedom papers confirming their legal liberty, they rarely carried them with them” (33). 

We learn that Purnell was one of the very first of our nation’s “professional con men,” and that Philadelphia, the City of Brotherly Love was “teeming with strangers in the 1820s, and grifters seemed to be everywhere making use of “every possible variety of confidence trick, though the fundamentals were always the same. Cunning, conviction, and a silver tongue were necessities. So too was the ability to size up someone quickly and project the illusion of shared identity and common cause” (34). 

Does it sound familiar? Does it make you wonder just how far have we really progressed in our human journey? Would you believe I have encountered hundreds of fraudulent scam artists in my online journeys and fortunately I have learned to identify them fairly well. Would you believe that we receive dozens of scam calls, via robo and otherwise, on our house phone here in Kentucky every week that goes by? It brings me to the conclusion reached by the Apostle Paul , who agreed that “since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave then up to a base mind and to improper conduct” and he leaves a long list with which we are all familiar (Romans 1:31).  He then leaves this thought: “Though they know God’s decree that those who do such things deserve to die, they not only do them but they approve those who practice them” (v32). Paul’s list of dirty linen certainly has the approval of a huge portion of our global culture today, otherwise life as we know it would take on a far different pattern of behavior.  

The John Purnell’s are in ingrained in every strata of American society from the White House to Joliet Prison, in every ethnic color of humanity, and in every nation around our globe. I care not about your color and your culture; I do care about your creed, for that determines your behavior. We act out what we believe.  

From walkingwithwarner,blogspot.com, 

I remind you that God made you in his image and that makes you a piece of Art of inestimable value. You may be a stolen, abused, or failed piece of humanity, but... 

THE BIBLE SAYS YOU ARE POSTED PROPERTY AND YOU WILL NEVER BE BEYOND THE REACH OF GOD’S LOVE AND NOTHING YOU EVER DID IS BEYOND HIS ABILITY TO RENEW, RESTORE, AND REPAIR.