It only takes a spark....

From my deck, a  thousand feet below I am watching a half dozen hot air balloons rise in the air, observing people eating a pancake breakfast, noting the musicians and booth vendors setting up their paraphernalia to entertain the crowd that will soon arrive.  At 10 A.M. a stream of horses, Boy and Girl Scouts, decorated old cars,  dressed up in-patriotic-garb families,  bedecked dogs on leashes, fire engines with sirens screaming, police cars with loud speakers blaring and whoever else wants to be in the parade rather than watch it,  will pass by. That's a snapshot of life on this earth,  isn't it?  ...those in the parade and the rest who watch it.  For decades I have either headed up a parade or marched in it.  Now I watch the parade pass by through my binoculars, utterly delighted that I do not have to leave my deck to participate in life.

Do you want to take a trip back with me to the night of my graduation from high school?  You need not.   If you are still reading,  picture this:  ...a 17-year-old JoAnn Flynn, sobbing and stumbling along a dusty Kansas road.  My boyfriend, Ted had been forced to join the Navy the day before graduation to avoid being conscripted into the Army.  The darling German Shepherd puppy he had given me was killed that same day by a passing car on the road in front of our farmhouse.  Farm life was laced with  animal life and death; therefore my parents could not notice that my heart was broken. With Ted's leaving my only hope of escape from that primitive farm vanished on the train with him.  My parents and I had just returned from my high school graduation.  My class had but forty-some in it.  All were either farm kids who would be farmers all their lives or small town kids who had no plans to go on to college. There may have been scholarships available but neither my parents nor I spoke of that possibility.  My lonely life for seventeen years had afforded me time to read countless library books that fed my thirst for knowledge and the world around me. ...and don't forget Mrs. Ethel, my one-room country school first and second grade and fourth grade town school teacher who encouraged me to keep reading and learning.

That graduation night, as my parents and I arrived back at our farm home,  I worked up the courage to ask my dad if he would help me go on to college.   His response:  "No, I don't have that kind of money and besides,  if I did, the money would be wasted because you will marry some farm boy and you won't need an education for that!"   I ran out of the house, sobbing and stumbling along our dusty farm road. ... all night, screaming for somebody to listen.  Years later I realized that Somebody named "Jesus"  did listen,  but I had yet to hear His Name.  

Besides being a farmer, my dad was a self-taught mathematician who put food on our table by being the money clerk for farm auction sales and helping neighbors do their taxes. My dad had only a fourth grade school education, but he figured out what he needed to do to run a farm and a business.  I took advantage of  that business interest and asked if he would finance my going to Brown-Mackie Business School in the nearby little city of Salina, Kansas. Twang! He forked over $200 and I entered that school and graduated in a year, affording for me a needed credential  to apply to the State of Kansas for a job as a secretary at Kansas State College.  My hidden dream was to somehow become an actual student.   A young woman named Janet Ray from Wilsey, Kansas, the town close to our farm heard that I was in town and invited me to church.   I had been to church only once.  I accepted her invitation because I wanted to meet people. We walked into a store front with no steeple or sign that announced that it was a "church".   Inside were crammed-in young people sprinkled with a half-dozen adults, a Book in their laps, listening to a young man speaking with enthusiasm from that Book.  I was intrigued. The next Sunday my friend could not attend, so I went by myself.  Behind the makeshift pulpit was a different speaker.  His name was T.W. Wilson, whose name meant nothing to me.  I asked one of the adult men, Mr. Elmer Nelson why there was a different speaker.  His answer: "We adults are members of First Baptist Church. We have a burden to bring the Gospel to the students (...and oh, how I wanted to be a "student"  rather than a lowly secretary) so we rent this building. On Saturday night one of us travels to Kansas City and fetches the speaker for the Youth for Christ rally and brings him here to speak to students. You are hearing the cream-of-the-crop youth speakers from across the nation on Sunday mornings."  I didn't know what the "Gospel", the  "cream of the crop" or  "Youth for Christ" or "youth speakers"  were,  nor did I know that T.W. Wilson was Billy Graham's best friend and co-partner in ministry.  I had not heard the names of either of these men, so wasn't impressed.  What was impressive was the Name of Jesus.  I went up to T.W. Wilson and said, "I have never heard of this Jesus you are talking about. Who is He?"  "Sit down, young lady"...and he opened that Book to John 3:16 and 17 and in a matter of minutes I crossed from death to life-in-Christ.  The next Sunday I returned to this little gathering and the speaker was a lanky, drop-dead-handsome twenty-nine-year-old Billy Graham.

Fast forward:  Several months later Mr. Nelson invited me to go with his three-carloads of young people to Chicago to attend Moody Bible Institute's Founders Week....whatever in the heck that was. I went.  Billy was the speaker before thousands of Christian leaders from around the world.  Half way through the week Mr. Nelson took me to lunch with Billy.  These were Billy's life-changing words to me:  "Jo Ann, Mr. Nelson has been watching you.  He tells me that you are worth an investment. I am the new President of Northwestern Bible College in Minneapolis, Minnesota.  I want you to come to my school and I will see that you owe no tuition for a year".   Shock!  The next day I flew out of O'Hara airport, landed in Minneapolis, Helen and George Wilson,  Billy's financial Administrator and wife met me, gathered me into their arms and took me to the school where housemother "Mother R" gathered me into her arms....and the rest, as the saying goes is history.  I don't recall that I had ever been gathered into anybody's arms, except for the guys I had dated who had no interest whatsoever in serving me.   THESE "arms"  were the SERVANT ARMS OF JESUS and somehow I knew the difference.

Do I understand why the God Who made Heaven and Earth and everything in it had a plan for me?  Of course not.  I don't get that "chosen"  thing at all.  As a matter of fact, yesterday I was not prepared to teach Romans 9  (...but then, who is?)  so asked my girls for another week to prepare.  I actually know a pastor who called in sick rather than teach this chapter.

I have kept in touch with T.W. Wilson all these years until he went Home several years ago.  His words":  "Jo Ann, our ministry is frustrating because we keep moving on. You are one of the very few that write or call me and bless me, giving me courage to continue to shadow Billy, taking care of details he cannot possibly tend to. You have no idea what your words mean to me."

Several years ago I read a communication from Franklin, Billy's son, asking people to write his dear Dad and tell him what his ministry has meant to them.  I did, never expecting a response.  This week, I received this letter from Stephanie Wills, Billy's secretary:   "I had the privilege of reading to Billy Graham your recent letter to him.  At the age of ninety-five, macular degeneration makes it impossible to see to read his own mail now. You will never know what an encouragement letters like yours are to him in his later years. Your testimony is especially meaningful since it began so many years ago, and God has led and used you and your husband in your own ministry since those Northwestern days. Thank you for taking the time to write and tell him--and thank you for being such a blessing" .

For how many minutes did Billy personally touch my life? ...perhaps sixty,  at the most.  When he showed up at Northwestern, we would talk for a couple of minutes. ...maybe.  That was all.  He was launching his ministry then...a ministry that would reach at least a billion people.  Only our Lord knows how many.   His family says this about him: "He never knew he was Billy Graham". ...and I believe it.

Never underestimate what a few minutes of your time can mean to someone whose broken life you touch.  It only takes a spark to start a fire going. ... and what a segue that song provides for today's blog.

                                            PASS IT ON!

It only takes a spark to get a fire going
And soon all those around can warm up to its glowing
That's how it is with God's love once you've experienced it
To spread His love to everyone;
You'll want to PASS IT ON!

What a wondrous time is spring when all the trees are budding
The birds begin to sing; the flowers start their blooming
That's how it is with God's love, once you've experienced it
To spread His love to everyone; it's fresh like spring;
You'll want to PASS IT ON!

I want for you, my friend, this happiness that I've found
You can depend on Him; it matters not where you're bound
The Lord of Heaven has come to me; I want to PASS IT ON!
I'LL SHOUT IT FROM THE MOUNTAIN TOP
I WANT THE WORLD TO KNOW THE GOD OF LOVE WHO CALLED TO ME
I WANT TO PASS IT ON!

Love, Jo