Average

 May 25, 2022

In 1954, Marshall Grant and Luther Perkins teamed up as the “Tennessee Two” backing Johnny Cash. They were rank amateurs, rhythm guitarists all, but in order to record, Perkins learned how to do a single string lead while Grant picked up a second-hand double bass for the first time in his life. “I didn’t even know how to tune the thing,” he later admitted. A friend showed him how, taped “frets” to the neck so he would know where the notes were, and he was off and running.

He told Perkins to play an E chord, no changes, just E, and began to pluck and slap the strings. Before long, he had developed the iconic Johnny Cash “boom-chick-a-boom” sound. After both Perkins and Cash had died, Grant was interviewed about those early days. “We didn’t know what we were doing,” he said. Little did they know at the time that they would be on the cutting edge of modern Country-Western music.

Perkins and Grant had been mechanics when they met Johnny Cash through his older brother Roy Cash, Sr. Johnny had just completed a stint in the Air Force. Three young men who had a dream, but not much else, not even talent, reached for the stars and made it.

I’ve often heard people make excuses for why they are stuck where they are. “The boss is a jerk,” “I never get any breaks,” “It’s not what you know; it’s who you know.” All of those may be true, but if three relatively untalented men (by their own admission) could accomplish what they did, what’s my excuse for not trying? We live in crazy times, it’s true; Our regulatory bureaucratic state makes it difficult to start a business, inflation is eating up our money faster than we can make it, there’s always someone who can give us a hundred reasons why we can’t or shouldn’t attempt what God has placed in our hearts.

Often, the most talented people get left by the wayside as less gifted but more passionate people leave them in the dust. Talent is no substitute for vision and passion. Will you succeed like Marshall Grant? Maybe, maybe not. But you’ll never know until you try.

The Bible tells us that Abraham “went out, not knowing where he was going,” and became the model of faith and faithfulness in spite of more than one failure and a few rabbit trails, simply because he believed God. We don’t know how God spoke to him about leaving home to travel to Canaan; but however it happened, he knew staying in Ur of the Chaldeans wasn’t an option.  Wherever we are, whatever stage in life we find ourselves, God continues to call, not the talented, but the trusting. Fear of the future is real until we understand that it is God himself calling us into it.