Dear Reader,
Thanks for joining us in The Three Taverns. Please encourage others to join with us if you think they would be encouraged to share with like-minded people.
We learn by watching others, then doing along with others, then finally doing it ourselves. Almost everything we have picked up in our life has followed this trajectory.
I have been working on a book full of stories. They are stories from a couple of decades of life encounters and I am lifting them out of old journals or memories that I have where the UNLIMITED did a rescue operation for me or for someone I met. The reason I am putting them into book-form is because I learned from watching others and my hope is that these stories will encourage readers to take the message further.
Below is one such story...
RED-HEAD HULK
I was out walking and making friends on Dickerson Road in Nashville, TN, one of my usual harvest fields.
At one point I looked down the road and saw this large red-haired man limping my direction, not necessarily coming to me but simply walking up the street.
I made my way toward him and made sure we encountered each other. When we were within 10 feet I stuck out my hand to shake his and said, "My name's Tod. What's yours?" He was as tall as me but far larger with shoulder-length red hair.
The usual reaction crossed his face that was something like, "what the hell do you want?" He stopped and looked at me suspiciously then put his hand out and said, "My name's David." I said to him, "David, it's great to meet you. Something tells me you have a mother who prays and she has been praying a long time for you and hoping you will be ok."
He got a strange look on his face and asked, "How do you know about my mom?" I told him I had no idea who he or his mother was but I had a feeling about her being a praying woman. "Am I right?" I asked.
He looked down and kicked at the gravel on the roadside, then he said, "Yeah, I haven't been home in over two years. I know she is worried sick about me, but I am too ashamed."
I said, "Let's go get a cup of coffee and something to eat. I'm buying. Are you up for that?" He agreed and we crossed the street to a local dive called Charlies Bar and Grill. It was the only thing in the area but it would do.
He told me his last name and he was from East Nashville. His mother still lived in the house where he grew up. We sat and sipped coffee and ate together, and finally I asked him, "David, what happened to your leg? I noticed you limping." He told me it was blown off below the knee in a drug deal gone bad and he showed me his prosthetic leg.
I said, "Maybe that's what your mother is praying about because she knows in her heart you are caught in a lifestyle that is leading you down the wrong path." He bowed his head overcome by emotion and agreed. I said, "What if we went together, you and me, and totally surprised your mom by showing up at your house right now, TODAY?! I will go with you!"
He looked at me and I could see him visualizing what that might look like in his head. Finally, after a few minutes of him trying to say, "I'm too ashamed. She will not like how I look. I am too far gone," and all the other excuses, he finally agreed.
When we got to his house I got out of my car first, then he slowly got out and we walked up on the porch together. Before we got to the door and knocked, it opened and this small woman about 5 feet tall stood there with her hands to her mouth looking at David. She gave no attention to me at all. Then she walked out with her arms up to hug him and suddenly David was like a little boy. Both of them wept.
I spent a couple of hours with them that day, and prayed with David, with his mom joining in, thanking Jesus for canceling his sins, and David received Jesus Christ as his new master. In a few days David moved back home. He was baptized in his mother's church a few weeks later and got a job at a muffler shop.
Sometimes people are trapped in a prison of darkness and shame. We can help them build a bridge to walk out.
Looking up,
Tod Bell
Chief Tavern Host
COMING UP….
“Tavern Talks” at 6:30am, Tuesday mornings starting on April 9 at The Mission Cigar, Spring Hill, TN.