A Weekend of Mixed Emotions

Heaven is too great to save for death. Let us live with the Risen Christ!

A friend of mine reminded me that God had called me into the Montgomery Transformation Ministry many years ago even though it had called by another name. A group of young ladies called my wife, Melissa, and told her that they wanted to have a reunion of “Charlie’s Angels” from the Bell Street Church. Last night we gathered in my wife’s shop to celebrate our friendship. I was honored when Kayla ask me to do her and her fiancee’s premarital counseling. Then she told about how Melissa and I exposed them to so many opportunities (thanks to the generous members of Frazer) that they have come to appreciate as adults. Several of the girls told me that I was the only father they had ever known and how much my preaching had meant to them. They said, “Pastor Charlie, you’re honest and tell it like it is!” They reminded me it was me that took them to counseling when the school required them to address their anger. I remember when one of the boys was caught shoplifting at the Calhoun Foods, and the manager called me. One of my friends reminded me that I took him to the emergency room when he was hurt because his mother was intoxicated. Melissa and I knew we could not save them from life but we could love them. Melissa had been their Sunday school teacher. Several of these young ladies are in college and credit Melissa’s encouragement empowering them to overcome their circumstances.

I got a news alert from Al.com yesterday that reminded me how limited I am as a human. There was a young man whom I spent more time and effort trying to guide than any other individual. The first day I meet him he was hanging on the back of the van. I stopped and told him to get off and that he could get inside with other children. He looked me in the eye and threw a snow cone with cherry syrup on the back on the van. He soon became my shadow and was following me everywhere I went. He attended tutoring 4 days a week and church on Sundays. One day at tutoring he was not talking. After a while he told me that his mother’s boyfriend had been beating her the night before and he stabbed him in the leg with a knife. He lived a pretty rough life for an eight year old child. His father had been in prison all his life. His mother was pregnant when his father was incarcerated. I contacted the prison commissioner and he arranged a meeting where I was able to take this child to a prison in Atmore to meet his father for the first time. His father is serving a 30 year sentence for committing a horrendous crime. This young man’s father has become a true Christian while he was incarcerated at West Jefferson. I listened to what his father told his son. It was evident how much he loved his son. Unfortunately, as a preteen he began to drift away from the Bell Street Church kids. He had no network of support; he was surrounded by users and enablers. Over the years I would see my friend from time to time on the street and sometimes in jail. Yesterday, the news alert informed me that this 22 year old young man who was supporting his mother and sisters through criminal activities had been arrested. He is in the Montgomery County Detention Center with a $257,000 bond for possession of cocaine with intent to distribute. This was a weekend of mixed emotions for me.

Saturday I saw the being of the resurrection of a dead housing subdivision into a community through God’s transforming powers. Sunday night, I saw how the love of the risen Christ flowing through Melissa and myself had given hope to bunch young ladies from a housing project. However, my heart was saddened as I read about a young man who had such great opportunities and possibilities but was unable to make the right choice because he lacked the tools of life and support of a community.

Everyone is given different measures of faith. Our job description does not call us to judge them, and it says we are to love them. Roger Ingram, a friend of mine who serves on the Salvation Army Board with me, sent the following quote this morning: “You cannot save people – you can only love them.” Eleanor Kendall, my mother, took me and my sister to the Masonic Home and housing projects to visit people as friends, not as a mission. We are to live in a community of love, loving God the only way we can, by loving people who were all created in his image. It takes a whole community to transform a person. Then those transformed people can transform a community.

My next step to go to Montgomery County Detention Center; to tell this young man that the risen Christ can give him a resurrected life here on earth, not just in the afterlife. Heaven is too great to save for death.