The ’60s Boys Meet Christ!

9/29/2020

All day long in our Blue Jug Alkaline Water store, music plays in the background. Usually, it is a composite of songs strung together from an assortment of genre  from Blue Grass to light jazz. This morning the Song In My Head is one of those songs. It is a backwards attempt to get the Lord to do something, a favor  for the writer/singer: “Into My Arms, O Lord”—Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds. Released in 1996/97 on an album. Didn’t get much play anywhere, but now I hear it pretty often. The writer claims to not believe in an “interventionist god.” I can’t say as I blame him, but he uses an ill conceived concept to culture a belief in receiving something from the Holy God, the Creator and Father of Our Lord Jesus Christ. So the song is non-Scriptural, even though sung as a prayer. The tune, however, is captivating.

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It’s been 11 days since I last wrote, but nothing more comes to mind than to continue one more blog-write along the lines of talking to the two young Hoosiers who came my way in 1960. Remember, I’m 78, they’re listening to me as if I’m their age, yet I’m trying to give them wisdom from 60 years hence! (I’m fully aware of the impossibility of this, yet I believe there’s value for younger people who might see and read this frivolity.)

I ask Stude and Hen if they knew what a computer was, they said yes, but didn’t know anything about it. I asked them if they knew how big one was. “Takes a big room,” they said. So, wanting to ease them toward the 21st Century, I said, “what if you could have a computer which would spit out anything and everything the world has to offer, and you could carry this around with you?” they laughed and laughed. So, I said, “In less than ten years, you’ll see a computer that will take up about one wall of a room; ten more years and it will take up a desk top. Add another 10 years and it will be half that size, and by 2000 you’ll have a desk top monitor like a small TV and the computer will be a small box on the floor. Ten years into the 21st Century and you can carry a fold up computer under your arm!”———no, I couldn’t say all that to them. How could I have told them all that? It was too preposterous to even dream of! Instead, I said, “Guys, I’m willing to predict the longer they make computers, the smaller they will get. And one day in yours and my lifetimes, we’ll be able to do all kinds of things with a computer without having to be taught very much at all. Won’t that be something?!”

“If you are right, how do you think that’s possibly anything we wanted to know about jobs, or living here in your town, or making any money?” they asked. “If it seems to you I might be right, you should prepare yourselves for that kind of a future. First, you do have to decide where to live, and I don’t think I can help you make that decision—go where you are comfortable living,” I said, continuing, “Indiana and Indianapolis is well positioned for future growth—didn’t you drive South on part of a futuristic highway called Interstate 65 and the KY/T?” they said sure, that’s how you now get South from Indiana. “Imagine that road taking you all over the USA and millions of people driving on it every day: that’s what’s coming!” Hmm, they mused, sounds scary. “Well,” I continued, “it will probably get thousands killed, but it will move millions.” Hen said, “I don’t like the sound of that.” “If you don’t like that, imagine the Bible prophecy of ‘wars and rumors of wars’ occurring and hundreds of thousands being killed by wars wh…” they interrupted, You think the A-bomb is gonna be dropped again? I continued, “no I think little never ending wars will pop up all over the world and somehow we will be drawn into all of them. Look, we fought for years in Korea and never won—came to a draw. You two ever heard of So. Vietnam? it’s already started there and nobody is paying any attention. Mr. Eisenhower warned us, already!”

They sat quietly for a few minutes so I did, too. When they spoke, Stude said, “I don’t want to be military or go to war.” “Me, neither,” said Hen. “Well, my friends, I would suggest you go home to Indy, get in touch with your High School counsellor and follow your older brothers to college. Find a profession to get in that will guard against being used by military. Perhaps follow the education route that takes you into the computer world,” I said. Then I said, “By the way, for peacefulness that will pass understanding, trust Christ as your Savior.” 

They looked at me and said, “Huh?” I said, “Look, do you know who the Lord Jesus Christ is?” “Yeah, we went to Sunday School. He went about doing good stuff a long time ago,” they said. “Well, there’s more to Him that just that: Christ died for your sins, was buried, and 3 days later God raised Him from the dead for the express purpose of justifying you before God the Father.” they thought for a while. Finally Stude said, “What we gotta do to get justified?” “Yeah,” Hen said, “there must be something to do to fix our sins.”…..”If you ‘fixed’ your sins today, how long you think it’d be till you committed another, or two or three…?”

They said, you make it sound hopeless. I said, “Good! that’s what I wanted to do! I’ve got really great news guys: you don’t have to DO a thing! Christ did it all! What God asked of you is this: Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ; believing He died for your sins, was buried, and God made Him to be SIN, so that by raising His Perfect Son from the dead, God could declare His own righteousness to belong to anyone anywhere who would trust the Son> So, Trust Christ as your Savior.”…..they thought some more. First one, then the other said, “I trust Him.

I shook hands with them, said take me home, my work is done. We drove to my house, I said, look me up in 2020 and tell me what I said wrong about all these things, OK? they smiled as they drove away saying, we will!

Thanks for reading, the Elder