Pleasant Lines

 January 28, 2022

What is a twelve-year old kid doing in the middle of all these older men drinking coffee and eating donuts at 11:00 pm on a Monday night? Ozzie Palmer, Chuck Bassett, Al Orgar, Merle Silver, Roy Comstra, Charles Ellis, John Helwig, Roy Beach, my dad…these, and others whose names elude me gathered every Monday evening at 7:00 for work night at the West Side Baptist Church. 

A skinny kid who didn’t really belong and had almost no ability, but was accepted by these men as one of them. They plumbed, wired, installed dry wall and ceiling tiles, while I mostly painted trim for the doors and windows. We worked for three or more hours before gathering in the kitchen where one of them would pull a jug of last week’s leftover coffee from the refrigerator and added the night’s brew to it. I’m betting that some of the original beans were still sloshing around years later.

My dad wasn’t much for joe, so they thumbtacked his teabag to a stud in the unfinished kitchen, to be reused like the coffee. Until one night, someone found a shriveled-up mouse and tacked it to the wall by the tail where his teabag usually hung. These men worked and laughed and prayed together. And they included me. Without a single formal lesson, they mentored me, taught me what Christian masculinity was all about. 

Sixty years later, these names roll off my tongue, flowing from my heart, continuing to embrace and bless me. Their influence is as unmeasurable as it was influential. Our church had its programs; I attended Sunday School, youth group, Christian Service Brigade, Youth for Christ, but I think Monday nights was where I learned most who I am, for I felt a misfit among my own age: I wasn’t athletic, played, of all things, the bassoon in high school band. I’ve never been cool. But I was accepted by these men as one of their own. 

The Bible says it best: “The lines have fallen to me in pleasant places; yes, I have a good inheritance.” —Psalm 16:6. Those lines helped shape me, told me who I am, preached more than any sermon that I was accepted by God, loved by Christ, and commissioned by the Holy Spirit for the work of ministry. Yes, those lines fell pleasantly to me, and I am deeply indebted to each one of those men who unknowingly had a hand in laying them down.