An Act of Kindness

 I saw a quote the other day attributed to the actor, Morgan Freeman.

He reportedly said, “How do we change the world? One random act of kindness at a time.”

Great quote. I don’t know if he really said it or if it’s one of those things attributed to him by somebody. But my guess is, whether or not Freeman actually said it, he doesn’t mind getting credit.

There are all kinds of sayings about doing random acts of kindness. Who can object to an act of kindness?

Well …

I was reading in the Acts of the Apostles, that great history of the early church written by Dr. Luke, the historian.

In Acts 3, he tells us that Peter and John were going up to the temple in Jerusalem at the time of prayer (three in the afternoon), and they came upon a man who was lame from birth, who had people carry him every day to the temple where he would beg. The man sees Peter and John and asks them for money. Peter and John tell him they don’t have any money, but (in verse 7) “taking him by the right hand, he helped him up, and instantly the man’s feet and ankles became strong. 8 He jumped to his feet and began to walk.”

You might expect everyone to be thrilled.

But in Chapter 4, we see Peter and John have been arrested by the Temple guards because of what they did, and are called to appear before “the rulers, the elders and the teachers of the law … Annas the high priest was there, and so were Caiaphas, John, Alexander and others of the high priest’s family.”

They demand to know in whose name Peter and John healed this man.

Clearly, they’re not happy. But when asked, Peter gives this wonderful reply: “If we are being called to account today for an act of kindness shown to a man who was lame …”

It struck me that, for all the theological implications behind the arrest and interrogation of Peter and John, Peter himself describes what he did as “an act of kindness.”

I love thinking about the other people in these stories. While the Acts story focuses on Peter and John and the conflict with religious leaders, I can’t help but wonder about the man lame from birth.

He might object to being referred to as a secondary character in this story. To him, I’m sure this was all about him. After all, he’s the one who was lame from birth. He’s the one who went to beg every day at the temple. He’s the one who was healed.

It’s a great reminder that while the stories we tell center on us or the person we are focusing on, there are other people with different perspectives, who would remember that same story as being about them, and tell if from their perspective.

My wife was involved in an automobile accident quite a few years ago, from which she is still recovering. From our perspective, she is the central character in that story. Maybe our family or maybe the guy that hit her are key figures. But she, to us, is the focal point.

But there were other people involved. There were the witnesses to the accident. There were the first responders, the police and EMTs. There were the emergency room staff. And so on … each with their own perspective of that day; each perhaps changed in some way by what they witnessed or did or thought as a result. I have heard from a few of them over the years.

Recently, I was stopped by a Mountain Brook police officer for going a little bit over the speed limit. He saw my driver’s license and said, “Was your wife involved in an accident about 10 years ago, right down the road?” Mind you, this was 14 years after the incident.

I said yes, and he said, “I was the first one to arrive at the scene. How is she?” Fortunately, my wife was sitting in the passenger’s seat and we could say, “She’s all right. Thank you for your care.” He told us he’d never forgotten that day.

My point – in this case – is that the policeman had his reaction to that day, and the story he would have told about it would be different than mine, even though it was about the same event. He didn’t know about all that had happened afterward to us. He just knows how it affected him.

God works on a lot of levels, simultaneously.

There is a lot I could unpack just in that.

But I think of the man in Acts, lame from birth. All he wanted was some money. He had friends who brought him to this spot at the temple every day, I guess, where he begged for whatever people going into and out of the temple would give him. Seems like a good place to hit people up for money.

That was, for lack of a better word, his job. Maybe he shared what he got with his friends. Maybe it was all for him.

We learn later in the story that he was over 40 years old. He’d been at this a long time. He didn’t start that day expecting to be healed. When he saw Peter and John, all he was hoping for was some money to get him through another day.

Then he gets healed. He can suddenly walk. He’s no doubt excited. He can’t wait to tell his friends.

Then … this is my imagination, of course, but here is a guy with no apparent skill other than begging. My guess is he’d never had a job. He didn’t have a skill or a trade. He’d been cared for all his life. It might not have been a great life, but it was his. He had his routine.

And now – what do his friends say? They celebrate the miracle, of course. But now, do they expect him to take care of himself? Does he have to find his own place to live? How does he go about earning money to live on? Who teaches him the skills he needs to survive now? People treat him differently – what does that look like?

There are people he will meet, and he’ll tell them the story of the miracle, but they won’t care. They weren’t part of the miracle. They didn’t know him before, when he was lame. Maybe they just ask, “What do you do now?’’ And indeed, what does he do?

Then, take the religious leaders. They don’t seem to care that the man was healed. They are angry that it occurred. They would have preferred the man keep showing up, every day, year after year, begging on the temple steps. Maybe it made them feel good about themselves that they’d give him a few coins every day, that these beggars offered the religious people a chance to show generosity and perhaps do some good. Maybe they were proud that they allowed these beggars a spot on the temple steps every day.

As a side note, I always wondered why someone didn’t say to Jesus or to the Disciples, “Can you heal everyone else that sits out here?” Wouldn’t that be a great thing? Fix these broken, hurting people, and get them off the temple steps? Do away with all this mess? Instead, the leaders of the day always seemed angry over these “acts of kindness.”

There are ramifications to this story that seem almost endless.

But here is where I want to go, to perhaps the simplest lesson that I see here.

When God comes into your life, He doesn’t always give you what you want. The lame man wanted a handful of coins. He’d have no doubt loved it if Peter and John had given him a sack full and gone on about their way. That’s what this man thought would make his life better, solve his problems.

Instead, God (through Peter and John) changed the direction of his life. With it came a whole host of other issues the man had never had to consider before. The lame man was given a new life, in a sense. I assume he had to leave the other beggars that he’d been gathering with for years. He had to figure out a new way to relate to his friends who had taken care of him for his whole life. And of course there is the question, what does he do now?

Was his life better? We’d have to say the potential was there for it to be much better.

But was his life easier?

God doesn’t promise easy. He promises to heal, to restore, to make whole, not to give us what we want but what we need – for His Glory.

Doesn’t loving us mean God wants our lives to be easy and comfortable? Unfortunately, no. The Bible teaches over and over that God “works all things together for good” (Romans 8:28), which must mean that the difficulties are part of that working together for good. They must have a purpose. There are any number of verses that tell us that.

God’s ultimate purpose is for us to become more and more like Jesus. Peter writes about this in the letter we call 1 Peter (1:6-7) when he says, “In this you greatly rejoice, even though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been distressed by various trials, that the proof of your faith, being more precious than gold which perishes, even though tested by fire, maybe found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ.”

In other words, one day we’ll look back at our lives - how we lived, the decisions we made. Will we look back and be proud? Or ashamed? (Probably, for most of us, some of both). Did we honor and bring glory to God? Or did we do what was easy, or cut corners, or take a short cut even though we knew it might not be the best way to handle what we were going through.

I don’t know what the rest of the lame man’s life was like. But I know thousands, hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people have read about it, and perhaps been brought closer to God as a result. However difficult the rest of his life may have been (and maybe it wasn’t, we don’t know), truly on this day, he was healed for the Glory of God. And the impact of his story on other people has never stopped.

The irony of life – if it can be called irony – is that the very things we instinctively don’t want are often the things that shape us most deeply; not because suffering is good in itself, but because God refuses to waste it.

It says in Acts, “After further threats they let them (Peter and John) go. They could not decide how to punish them, because all the people were praising God for what had happened.”

Isn’t it amazing, what can result from one act of kindness?

Ending up where everybody knows your name

 Growing up, I wanted to be somebody.

As the joke goes, maybe I should have been a little more specific.

But you know what I mean; I wanted to do something important, be somebody important, be significant in a way that people would remember me for generations (if not longer).

Part of it was, sure, I wanted to be famous. I wanted people I didn't know to know who I am. I wanted people I didn't know to talk about me the way I talked about people that I knew were famous. I wanted to walk into a place have people whisper to each other, "Do you know who that is?" while I was too cool to notice, trying to act like a "regular guy" even while the maître d fawned over me, the waiters and waitresses made sure I had everything I wanted, the chef came out to offer me his not-listed-on-the-menu-but-he'd-make-if-for-me special.

But I didn't entirely want to be famous just for the sake of being famous (like a teenager I saw on an episode of Dr. Phil who said her goal was to "be famous,'' but when asked how she had no idea - she just wanted to be famous). I actually wanted to do something to deserve being famous. Even when I was going through my dreams of being an NFL quarterback or an NBA power forward or a major league baseball relief pitcher, at the end of that I still wanted to be a writer who would write books that would be in libraries and become required reading for future generations.

I was always enamored with the written word. I remember when my brother, David, taught me how to write my name, I held that piece of paper dearly, believing that - like Steve Martin's character in "The Jerk" when the phone books came out - once your name was in print, who knows who might see it and what opportunities might come your way?

To be honest, I have experienced a rather curious form of underserved fame. I apparently look like some vague character actor, and it really gives people fits. Particularly, it seems, Black people or college kids of a certain age who like certain Syfy or horror films. I can't tell you how many people who come up to me and say, "I know who you are!" They can't think of who they think I am but are convinced I'm an actor. One time I had a college student valet at a hotel in Greenville, S.C., who was so excited to park my car because he "loves my movies." (Although, in retrospect, maybe he does that all the time, hoping to get a bigger tip).

One time, years ago, we were at a Sheila E concert (which means mostly old people who remember the 1980s-90s) in Birmingham and a guy walked by me and said, "I know who you are. I'm a movie buff; I've seen all your films." I tried to tell him he was mistaken, but he refused to believe me. During the intermission, he came over to shake my hand and ask if he could have his picture made with me.

Another time, several years ago, my wife and I were vacationing in Antigua at a small, out-of-the-way all-inclusive resorts, and this guy comes up to me as we're walking to dinner one night and said, "I know who you are. I won't say anything, because I know you're trying to not be noticed. But I love your work." And, again, even as I try to tell him he's wrong, he refused to believe it. He kept saying he would respect my privacy but wanted me to know that he knew.

A woman at the drive-thru window at my local McDonalds wouldn't give me my debit card back until I told her who I was. I told her I wasn't who she thought I was, that she could look at the name on my card and see, but she refused to believe me.

As I said, this goes on frequently, at the most unexpected times. A security guy working a jewelry store in the Grand Caymans was so certain he followed me all over the store, but just couldn't think of “my” name. Finally, as we were walking out, I leaned close to him and whispered, "Go home and look at the Bruce Willis movie, "The Fifth Element." He got so excited, saying, "I knew it! I knew it!" (There is a character in that movie that I admit I do look like; I've even used a still shot as my picture on my Facebook page). I didn't say I was in the movie, I just told him to go watch it. Whatever conclusion he may draw is his own fault.

Now, the funny part is that people can't think of the name of the actor that they think I look like. The nice lady in the deli at the local grocery store went through the whole thing with me, and I said, "I know. I look like Brad Pitt." She, of course, said, "No, not Brad Pitt .." to which I always act hurt and say, "Just once, can't someone say I look like Brad Pitt?" For a long time after, when I’d go in she’d see me and call me "Mr. Pitt!" My youngest son went in with me one time, and she said, "Look - it's Brad Pitt junior!"

Being mistaken for someone famous - while fun - is not the same as actually being somebody famous.

However, the older I get, the more I realize in today's celebrity-driven culture where everyone, as Andy Warhol once said "will be world-famous for 15 minutes," it takes courage to be willing to be obscure and ordinary.

That sounds funny, of course. No one says to their kid, "You can grow up to be ordinary!" And I'm not saying we should strive to be ordinary. But I do think it's too easy to feel I am worthless because I'm not exceptional - and of course, by definition, everyone can't be exceptional. As a friend of mine likes to say, "50 percent of everyone you meet is below average." (I was afraid to ask him which side of that ledger he thought I was on.)

I have come to realize that an awful lot of really important work, work that matters and has a lasting impact, is done in obscurity. The Apostle Paul said as much in when he told his young protégé, Timothy, "If anyone teaches otherwise and does not agree to the sound instruction of our Lord Jesus Christ and to godly teaching, they are conceited and understand nothing. They have an unhealthy interest in controversies and quarrels about words that result in envy, strife, malicious talk, evil suspicions and constant friction between people of corrupt mind, who have been robbed of the truth and who think that godliness is a means to financial gain.

"But godliness with contentment is great gain. For we brought nothing into the world, and we can take nothing out of it. But if we have food and clothing, we will be content with that. Those who want to get rich fall into temptation and a trap and into many foolish and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction. For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil. Some people, eager for money, have wandered from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs...."

I'm sure even as Timothy heard that, he may have thought, "Sure, but you're Paul! I want to be like you!" - not realizing, perhaps, that being "like Paul" might mean suffering shipwrecks, beatings, jailing, and all sorts of assaults that no one in their right mind would ask for.

While even the Bible has these stories of these great men of faith, there are all kinds of people who are just mentioned, briefly, almost in passing. I think of Joshua's partner, Caleb. Or the relatively unknown Barnabas of the New Testament that, while we've created a whole idea of who he was and what we think we did, we don't really know for sure. Remember that (for a time) famous book about the "Prayer of Jabez?" What do we know about Jabez, other than those few words? What is there to know about Jabez other than these 50 or so words that appear in the midst of 1 Chronicles. Timothy, Titus, Luke, Silas, Tychicus, John Mark – they are names in the New Testament that carried a lot of weight with Paul, but to most of us they are just "the other guys," guys not named Paul or John or Peter.

There are people all around us who are "in the trenches,'' so to speak, the ones who follow the well-known, the leaders, and faithfully do the work.

I know it is human nature to rebel against obscurity. We have that innate desire to be known.

In today's world, I think it takes courage to be willing to be over-looked, to work in obscurity, to find satisfaction in knowing you're doing your best (or at least trying to) and knowing that you are performing not for the recognition of those around you but for that audience of One.

"If I could,'' author Emily Bronte once said, "I would always work in silence and obscurity, and let my efforts be known by their results."

The point is that while we may think we toil in obscurity, we don't. God knows us. I know this from the end of Hebrews 11, that famous chapter referred to as the "Hall of Faith." After a list of well-known names and stories, it says, "Some were tortured, refusing to accept release, so that they might rise again to a better life. Others suffered mocking and flogging, and even chains and imprisonment. They were stoned, they were sawn in two, they were killed with the sword. They went about in skins of sheep and goats, destitute, afflicted, mistreated — of whom the world was not worthy." (Hebrews 11:35–38)

We are all well-known in heaven. Let us live with both the knowledge and responsibility of that fact.

It may not get you the best seat at your favorite restaurant.

But it’s nice to know we’ll end up in a place where the one person that matters knows your name.

Getting Together (face-to-face, not screen-to-screen)

 The message Sunday was on Worship.

It was a good reminder of what worship is and perhaps what it should look like, that it’s more than just Sunday morning, or just being in church.

But something that my pastor said got me thinking.

He pointed out how easy it is not to go to church yet still fulfill the elements of what most of us think as worship. We can scroll through our phones to find a preacher we want to hear. We can scroll through sermon topics to find one we think we’d be interested in. If we want to hear worship music (unfortunately often one of the most contentious issues in a lot of churches), we can pick the musicians we want to hear and, like with sermons, pick out the songs we’d like to listen to.

In other words, we can tailor our ‘worship’ experience suit what we’re in the mood for, or what we think we need to hear, or what seems to strike us as interesting or timely or maybe addresses an issue we’re currently facing.

To what we want.

But maybe not what God wants us to hear, or see, or experience.

Doing those things – listening to your choice of messages, music, whatever – are not in and of themselves bad. And certainly, it can be “worship.”

But it’s not all of it. Hebrews 10:25 says, in part, we are to “not give up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing…” Or the way some of us learned it in the King James, “Forsake not the assembling of ourselves together, as the manner of some is...”

Why? What’s wrong with going off on a hillside by myself to listen to praise music or the audio of a sermon? There are fewer distractions, and I can be surrounded by nature, where Paul says in Romans that “since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen …”

Again, those are valuable tools in the worship toolbox (if there is such a thing).

But it isn’t enough.

There are practical reasons to “assemble together,’’ as Paul would say, not the least of which is the rest of that verse in Hebrews, which says we should meet together, “encouraging one another…”

We’re not meant live in isolation. Some of us do it better than others, and certainly there are times when almost all of us want to get away, to be by ourselves, to leave distraction behind.

But God said it in Genesis, that it’s not good for man to be alone. Indeed, being around people tends to energize us. There’s power in a group of people comping together, participating in the same thing together.

Think of a sporting event, where thousands of otherwise strangers will stand shoulder to shoulder, celebrating the same successes (assuming they are fans of the same team) or crying over the same failures. They’ll lift their voices with people they’ve never seen before – in fact with people from across the stadium that they’ll likely never see at all – and join in singing the fight song or some form of what we used to call “Jock Rock,’’ with songs like “Sweet Caroline” or “Living on a Prayer.”

For a few hours, we forget the troubles of our lives and join together in something else. And if the game turns out good, that feeling of euphoria can carry us through the next several days. We don’t have to see those same people we sat next to or behind or sang with from across the stadium every day to remember the feeling. We just look forward to getting together and doing it again.

It’s almost an act of worship.

I go to a church of several thousand people. I don’t know all of them. While I feel confident most of us are alike – after all, we live in the same community, we’re almost all the same race, we share a basic concept of faith – I know there are differences, too.

But I don’t need to know them all to know that, when something happens, they’ll be there for me and I, hopefully, for them.

Because they have been. We’ve been through a lot as a church. We’ve been through births and deaths and disabilities and marriage and divorce and hospital waiting rooms and funeral home receiving lines and delivered meals and mowed lawns and rehabbed houses in neighborhoods devastated by disaster and dug wells for clean water in areas that didn’t have it and brought medical care to people who didn’t have access to doctors and … well, we’ve shared life.

As the hymn says, “through many dangers, toils and snares” we have already come.

Preacher and author Alistair Begg said it this way in a sermon transcript I was reading the other day:

“And you know what one of the most encouraging things is for me? It’s simply this: that since we’ve been in this building—since ’95, was it?—we came in this building and we said to one another, “You know, this’ll never really feel like anything in here at all until we’ve laughed together and till we’ve cried together.” And it’s starting to have a feel now to me. Not because of stuff that we have in it, because we don’t have any stuff in it. And that’s purposeful. ’Cause we don’t want to look at stuff, we want to look at the Word of God, and then we want to look at one another. And in seeing one another enduring the difficulties, in running to one another in the experience of loss, in receiving from one another the enjoyment of restoration, we’re discovering that our hearts are being molded together in the bonds of the gospel, and that God is doing a quite wonderful thing. Oh, we’re not perfect, we’re not even close, we’ll never be till heaven; but nevertheless, we’ve come “through many dangers, toils, and snares,” and the wonderful thing is that we’re all still here. At least I’m glad about it, and I think perhaps one of two of you are also. ….”

We live in a world where we can connect with almost anybody, anywhere in the world. Yet the more we’re connected, the more it seems we become increasingly disconnected. We find ourselves beginning to withdraw from real-world interactions. How ironic that in a time when the world is connected as never before, too many of us are feeling a real sense of isolation.

Ultimately, it’s real relationships with real people, people with skin on their faces rather than images on a screen, that can give you a sense of security, a place in this crazy world. You might make friends that, even if you disagree with them on some pretty major issues, will still be there for you – or you for them – when something goes wrong.

And its’s a lot more fun to celebrate when things go right with people who can celebrate with you, because they know you. You have shared what it took to get where you are.

Forsake not the gathering of yourselves together.

It’s an act of worship.

An Unlikely (and unwilling) Exorcist

 It's hard to imagine just what an impact the movie "The Exorcist" had on us in the dark ages of the 1970s.

For those of you too young to remember, "The Exorcist" was a movie about a 12-year old girl who is possessed by demons, and a young priest who takes it upon himself to selflessly save her. It was pretty terrifying stuff, with what were considered pretty complicated special effects for that time period. According to Wikipedia, "The Exorcist" was voted scariest film of all time by Entertainment Weekly in 1999, by Movies.com in 2010, by viewers of AMC in 2006, and by the editors of Time Out in 2014. In addition, a scene from the film was ranked #3 on Bravo's The 100 Scariest Movie Moments. In 2010, the Library of Congress selected the film to be preserved as part of its National Film Registry as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant."

I was in college when it came out. I wouldn't go see it, because quite frankly the whole idea scared the be-jeebers out of me. As a kid, my family regularly hosted missionaries from around the world, and I remember hearing these stories of demons and demonic events in far-off lands.

However, almost everyone in my dorm did go see it. And they came back looking as if they'd seen a ... well, a demon. One guy was so shook up I remember he told me he didn't go to sleep at all that night but lay in bed reading a Bible.

Many of them actually went back a second time, and like most things, the more they saw it the less scary it became, and soon it became a running gag in the dorm, complete with attempts to re-enact many of the grosser (more gross? grossiest?) scenes.

And then, a few years later, I was asked to participate in an exorcism.

This was around 1976, one summer while I was working a summer job for a billboard company outside of Athens, Ga. It was a summer filled with crazy stories, working with some really good guys who were just hard-working country boys who took pride in what they did, groused about the boss (whom they called "Grump"), and slowly included me in whatever they were doing, which in once case included attending a true Southern country old-fashioned Pentecostal church.

They guys knew I was a church-going guy, that I'd gotten the job because the owner of the company was on the board of a Christian campus organization of which I had someone gotten elected president. They were also smart enough to know that just because I said I was a church-going guy, that didn't necessarily mean I measured up to Pentecostal standards of what it means to be a Christian. Fortunately, at the company picnic, I inadvertently "proved" my faith.

While I'd like to say I "proved" my faith to them with my deep knowledge and understanding of Scripture, or incredible acts of self-sacrifice and kindness, or a piousness which reflected in my every word and deed, remember these were good ol' country Pentecostals. What happened was that, at the company picnic, after I went through the barbecue line and got loaded my plate with ribs, corn on the cob, bread, beans, potato salad, and banana pudding, I went to the drink cooler to get something to wash it all down with. I reached deep into the ice, and the first thing I pulled up with a beer (probably PBR, or Falstaff).

Now, anyone that knows me knows I don't drink alcohol (but I do have a serious Diet Coke). It's nothing religious; I just have never liked the taste of alcohol. I've tried, but it's just not worth the effort. I've never had an alcoholic beverage that comes anywhere close to being as satisfying as sweet tea or a Coke (Diet Coke, these days). So, when I pulled up the can of beer, I dropped it and went fishing until I pulled up an ice-cold can of Coke. (We didn't have Diet Coke back then, only something called "Tab," of which my then-college roommate declared "the only difference between Coke and Tab is that Tab tastes bad!").

Later that day, the old man of our crew - a man we called Phillipi - came up to me and said, "Ray, I know you're a Christian. I saw you pick up that beer, and the way you dropped it and went for a Coke told me everything I need to know."

If I had known what was coming, I might have gone back for the beer.

Phillipi was the sign painter. While billboards in those days were mostly paper, they did have some that were custom painted, and Phillipi would free hand the most amazing signs. He was the only one who didn't leave the shop during the day. While the rest of us were out on trucks, going from billboard to billboard to change signs or cut grass or do repairs, he had a stool in front of a billboard on which he'd paint whatever the customer wanted. He had a radio that played Gospel, and sang along in this high, nasally tenor voice that rang out like one of the Happy Goodmans (google it; but in their day the Happy Goodmans were Southern Gospel music).

One day, for some reason, I was in the shop when Phillipi told me to get in the truck with him. This was unusual because, as I said, Phillipi didn't leave the shop. I could tell this was important to him, so I climbed in with him and off we went, heading out across hill and dale, river and woods, to a place I had no idea about.

I said, "Philippi, where are we going?"

He said, "To cast out a demon, son."

Hmmmm, I thought. Is he serious? And if he is, do I really want to be part of this?

He said, "I want you with me, because I know you're a Christian and a God-fearing man. I want someone who can pray with me when we confront this demon."

I said, "Wait a minute. How do you know about this demon we're going to confront?"

He said, "I got a call. Bobby Tom's wife called and said Bobby Tom was sweating and screaming and cursing and thrashing around and she needs help. He's possessed by a demon."

I don't know that "Bobby Tom" was the real name, by the way. I wasn't really paying that much attention.

We got to Bobby Tom's house. His wife had left and taken the kids. Bobby Tom was indeed lying in his sweat-soaked bed, thrashing and moaning and letting out these crazy yelps and calling for Phillipi (once he realized Phillipi was there) to help him. He'd been throwing up, and the room indeed looked like something out of The Exorcist. The stench was awful; the room needed a good hosing down. All that was missing, it seemed to me, was “Tubular Bells” (the theme from The Exorcist).

Phillipi - who was a Deacon or Elder or something big in the local Pentecostal church - walked over and sat Bobby Tom up on the side of the bed, laid his hands on his head, and said, "Ray, get in the corner and start praying."

He didn't need to say it twice. As for praying - I'd been doing that ever since he said the words, "We're going to cast out a demon."

"DEMON!" yelled Phillipi, bouncing Bobby Tom up and down on the bed. "COME OUT! I ORDER YOU IN THE NAME OF JESUS! COME OUT! SPEAK TO ME, DEMON, I AIN'T AFRAID OF YOU! SPEAK TO ME AND PREPARE TO LEAVE THIS GOOD MAN!"

Meanwhile, I was in the corner, petrified, but I was praying. However, while Phillipi was praying for the Demon to speak and be recognized, I was praying, "Oh, please, Demon, if you're really in there, don't say anything! Just leave! Please don't do anything or say anything!"

I might have been working at cross-purposes with Phillipi.

Anyway, Phillipi went on like this for a while, calling out to the Demon, ordering him, demanding, bouncing poor Bobby Tom up and down on the side of the bed, slapping his hands on Bobby Tom's forehead and temple, while Bobby Tom groaned and moaned and sweated and started shivering violently, which only encouraged Phillipi even more.

"I SEE YOU SHIVERING, DEMON!" he yelled. "YOU CAN'T RESIST THE NAME OF JESUS! COME OUT! COME OUT!"

And I was in the corner silently praying, "Resist, Demon! Don't say a word! Just go away!"

This went on for what felt like a half hour but was probably ... well, maybe a half hour. Finally, Bobby Tom let out this loud groan and collapsed back on his bed. Phillipi mopped his brow and stood back, looking at him.

"Get me some water," Phillipi said.

I went to the kitchen where, in the trash can, I noticed a bag full of crushed beer cans. Dozens of them. On the corner was a case of beer, half gone. There were various empty bottles of liquor and maybe even some cheap wine scattered around the counters.

I got the water and went back to Phillipi.

"Phillipi?" I said, quietly. "You need to come see this. I think I know the Demon's name - Falstaff."

For those of you of a younger generation, Falstaff was a popular and relatively inexpensive beer of the time.

I took Phillipi into the kitchen, where he looked around. "Demon Alcohol!" he roared, nonplussed.

We went through all the cabinets looking for alcohol and loaded up everything we could find in the back of the truck. Bobby Tom was passed out on his bed, and we left him there.

"You know, Phillipi," I said. "I don't think it was a demon. I think it was the DT's (Delirium tremens)."

Phillipi pulled over on a bridge that ran over the Ocoee River and got out of the truck.

"You call it what you want," he said, as he proceeded to dump all the alcohol into the river. "It's a demon either way."

We got back to the shop, and the other guys had come back. I told them about what we'd been doing, including dumping the beer over the bridge into the Ocoee.

"Which bridge?" was the question.

There was a second run that afternoon. I didn't go on this one. But I think it had something to do with a truck parked on the side of the road, and a bunch of good ol' boys clambering down the hillside into a local river.

Sometimes, one man's demon is another man's blessing.

Or something like that.

(This was first published on God n' Me at raymelick.substack.com. I am duplicating because, what this heck - it's mine).