Letters from Roscoe – Doing Things for the Right Reason

Doing things for the Right Reason …

Lately things have been pretty hard around here.  Cindy’s mom passed away, and she is still there in Florida trying to deal with her Mom’s estate.  My wife is a strong woman, she is a woman of even stronger faith and I know she will get through this and be the stronger for it.

Things have also been quiet too.  Ever since the day her Mom passed, I haven’t felt the Lord urging me to write a ‘Letter from Roscoe’.    Tonight I figured out why.

“Getting a little too big for your britches!” Would be what my Mom would have said first, and “You need to be taken down a peg or two!”  Would’ve been the second thing.  She would have been right.  I have been a little full of myself lately telling my friends and family that I write these letters trying to impress them with my writing skills.  Well, I think God did what my folks would have.  He took me down that peg or two without saying a word.

That’s just it.  He didn’t talk to me.

I don’t like that feeling.  I don’t like it at all.

You know, crow really doesn’t taste good.

But back to doing things for the right reason, remember in my first letters when I was telling you about the church of my childhood?  Remember that I said there were only two true Christians in that whole big church?  Let me tell you about them.

These two men were Mr. Grady Money, and Mr. James Parrish.  Those are their real names, they are both with the Lord now and have been for many years. So I don’t think it will hurt anything.   But the impact they had on me and no telling how many other young boys from that south Alabama town continues to this day.  They gave me and the other boys the most valuable currency they had.  Their time.

And a lot of it at that, Mr. Money and Mr. Parrish were the ‘go-to’ guys for the “Royal Ambassadors” or RA’s as they were called at the time.  They would drive the bus every Wednesday night around time picking up all of these rowdy, often dirty and often stinky young boys (we were far from being young men at that time) and they would take us to church.  We’d hold the RA meeting and then they would do the whole thing again in reverse.  Every week.  Without fail.

In the summer of 1966, they volunteered to take about 40 of us to Oklahoma City, Oklahoma for the National Royal Ambassador convention.  We were even supposed to see “Eb” from Green Acres there.  (He never showed by the way.)  I think back now to the time it must have taken for them to plan and prepare that trip…I know they had to have had God’s help, because it all went off without a hitch.  Even when they had to knock the scorpion off some kid’s back while we sitting around the campfire at Lake Norman, OK. on the way home, nobody ever mentioned anything about that to the kid’s Mom.

That wasn’t enough?  These same men were the ones that stood up and volunteered to be the leaders for the town’s Boy Scout troop.  So not only were they busy with us on Wednesday night, now they got to spend their weekends with us out camping.

About the time I hit seventh grade, my Mom had married my stepfather and we moved away so he could go to work as a Pharmacist in Dothan.  We returned a few years later, and you know what I found?

That’s right, these same two men, still spending the most valuable currency they had.  Time.

When I graduated High School, Mr. Money had even started teaching “Art Classes” out at the Trade school in the evening.  I still have one of the books he gave me, and I look every so often at it and I see the name of one of the finest Christians I have ever met right there on the cover.

Mr. Parish ending up buying an old Country store at the edge of town and ran it until he died.  The street that ran next to it now bears his name.

Now don’t get me wrong, I don’t remember them for the time they spent on me.

In Luke 18:16 KJV, Jesus said, “Suffer little children to come unto me, and forbid them not: for of such is the kingdom of God.”

See?  Mr. Money and Mr. Parish did it for the right reason.  That’s the reason I remember them.

Love to you all,

Roscoe
Christian in Training