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Patriarch's Vision > That Old Friend's Religion


2 Mar 2019

I was sitting in the café across from the big church, having Monday’s menu special around lunch time, when I overheard the preacher and a deacon in the next booth.  They were talking down a dear old friend of mine.  It seems they'd seen him at the pool hall where none of them would dare go and they saw him walking shirtless down the street.  "He is always out of money.  Guess he spends it all on whiskey.  He’s just not a man you’d want your friends to meet!"

Then they spoke of how he’d been seen talking with the woman known as the queen of the red-light part of town.  It seemed like they talked forever, each mean word cutting deeper.  If they knew him, they would never put him down.  When I'd heard as much as I could before I'd come up screaming, I walked over and I begged some of their time.  I said, "If I knew no better, I would think you speak of Jesus.  Let me tell you about this dear old friend of mine."

At the pool hall he was hunting the daughter of my cousin, and he gave her his own shirt to keep her warm.  All his money, he would give to the hungry homeless families, the ones the big church folk would rather shun.  And the red-light queen he talked to wanted him to take her baby, because she didn’t know a better man than him.  It seems he has some things in common with my other friend named Jesus.  You should really get to know the both of them.

I had never seen this preacher without a word worth saying, but in silence both of them soon hit the door.  I thought nothing more about it until a few weeks later, when I saw something that was sure worth waiting for.  There I saw my old friend praying with some kids outside the pool hall and a couple older fellows by his side.  They looked up as I approached them—the preacher and the deacon, both with tears of joy and smiling ten feet wide!

At the pool hall, they were healing the lost and hurting children and they brought them food and clothes to keep them warm.  The church doors were now wide open to the hungry homeless families and pride’s the only thing the church now shuns.  They found work for the former red-light queen of our town and introduced her to the best Man ever known.  Now we all have more in common with my other friend named Jesus and the big church is where we all now call home.  Give me that old friend’s religion; give me that old friend’s religion, and I’ll walk the streets of gold right next to him.

Patriarch Bp. J. David McGuire, DD

 

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