Wednesday, March 1, 2023
(click here to listen to or read today’s scriptures)
Walking with Jack
Nineveh was an enormously large city; it took three days go through it. Jonah began his journey through the city.
My friend Jack (bless his soul) walked miles and miles around Champaign County in Illinois, mostly in Urbana and Champaign. At the time he was also spending hours with Mormon missionaries, and teaching two of my friends to pray in tongues, especially when they were doing deliverance. He kept his distance from those demons himself, but sometimes my friends just could not. Jack was invaluable in their protection.
Jonah announced, “Forty days more and Nineveh shall be destroyed.” Then the people of Nineveh believed God and proclaimed a fast. All of them, great and small, covered themselves with sackcloth. Then even the king of Nineveh covered himself with sackcloth and sat in the ashes.
I am sure Jack knew Jonah, in the spirit of course. Jack had no particular love or positive regard for the citizens of Champaign County, but he sure darn well prayed for them. They had no idea what he was doing, walking around on their sidewalks, gesturing to himself. We had no cellphones then; who could he be talking to? Why, God, of course.
Who knows, God may relent and forgive, and withhold his blazing wrath, so that we shall not perish.
I met with Jack every couple weeks for a couple hours, on my way to working the evening “shift” for the News Gazette circulation department. I knew the cities pretty well myself, because along with several other men and women, I hired kids to deliver papers and when they didn’t, I did. Mostly they did their jobs very well but still, driving up and down those streets for weeks and then months and finally years, I got to know the territory.
For awhile, Jack drove around the country in an oldish Cadillac. He had been both an attorney and an accountant (he worked for Motel 6), as well as a pastor. In his public housing apartment he had a big unabridged dictionary on a bookstand, but he did not use big words carelessly. He was born in Havana, Illinois (where he was eventually buried at the beginning of our covid crisis) was valedictorian of his class at Knox College in Galesburg and then president of a community college when the movement began in the mid-sixties. He played tennis for decades and organized a men’s movement in Champaign County. He hosted a radio program on a local station for years. Then amidst all of this, Jack was visited by the Holy Spirit one day in a church balcony, and after that all his other pursuits paled, as he prayed and prayed and prayed.
When God saw by their actions how they turned from their evil way, he repented of the evil that he had threatened to do to them; he did not carry it out.
Jonah despised the people of Nineveh and was displeased when God took mercy on their souls. Jonah was a smart guy too, like Jack. Both of them needed taming and guidance, so they would not get carried away by their own plans and various brilliances. God tamed Jonah, with the help of a broom tree. Jack’s own insecurity tamed him. He had trouble hearing God, because he was always saying to himself, “Oh, that might not be God. I’ll just listen some more.” But he didn’t trust his spiritual ears. He asked me, and others around him that he trusted, what we thought. “Should I buy that pair of shoes? What does God think?”
So walking around Champaign County was good for Jack, and undoubtedly good for those in the neighborhoods where he prayed. He didn’t have to wonder if he was doing a good thing. He knew God loved all those people, and sometimes he believed that God loved him.
Create in me a clean heart, O Lord, and renew a right spirit within me. Cast me not away from thy presence, and take not thy holy spirit from me. Restore unto me the joy of my salvation, and renew a right spirit within me.
Jack was isolated by covid in a Danville nursing home when he died. Covid also precluded the funeral he had planned. I visited his funeral home in Rantoul and viewed his body. His eyes were closed. He looked peaceful. I felt peaceful in his presence, and thanked the funeral home owner for giving us this time together. And then, a day or two later, he was buried. Looking forward, he had prepared his gravestone in the Havana cemetery – all but the date. On it he had written, “Free at last, free at last. Thank God almighty, free at last!”
My sacrifice, O God, is a contrite spirit; a heart contrite and humbled, O God, you will not spurn.
(Jonah 3, Psalm 51, Joel 2, Luke 11)
(posted at www.davesandel.net)
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