Once on a Friday afternoon a man and his wife had a blow out on their pickup truck on the highway right in front of the old farm house. Upon discovering the man was on his way to watch his son play football Grandpa handed over the keys to his truck without so much as a word—to a stranger. Because in his world there were no strangers. Just neighbors trying to get somewhere.
My grandpa grew up as a poor country farm boy in a place called Yell County. He became a hobo jumping trains in his younger days leading up to the Great Depression. He travelled the country finding work and sending money home to his struggling family. On one of those trips in Denver, Colorado he listened to a wheelchair-bound preacher talk about this guy named Jesus of Nazareth. That’s the day Grandpa and Jesus became friends. Later he became a logger, cotton picker, coal miner, custodian, farmer, and preacher.
It was the last two he would become known for. Preacher King as they called him carried a gentle, but firm, demeanor. He loved jokes. He loved fun. He loved Jesus. He loved his neighbors. He loved his family. He loved his farm.
My dad (the youngest of four brothers) grew up on that farm. The same farm that would later usher me from boyhood to manhood across its wooded acres and rolling fields. But as the farm of my father’s youth it was existing in a vastly different world. It was a world of extreme racism. As history has shown us, Arkansas was a deeply racist environment in the 20th century.
One of Preacher King’s principle forms of income for many years was the harvest and processing of sorghum molasses. Sorghum molasses is a thick sweet honey like substance gathered from a stalk not unlike a corn stalk. Grandpa King (with help from my dad and an old mule) would gather in his crop, process it, bottle it, and then haul it to a nearby town to sell. Pretty standard stuff.
But those trips into town weren’t only about carrying his cash crop. You see, there was a nearby community full of people on the opposite side of Jim Crow and the utterly broken laws of our land. A place full of folks long on good standing with Preacher King. He had worked the cotton fields of rural Franklin and Logan counties right alongside them—my young father in tow. He sold them his products when other men lived out segregation like it was a truer gospel. He also smuggled them into “whites only” parts of town during the peak of the segregation era—the season of the South when tensions were near to breaking and polarization of opinion was violent in response.
Preacher King never saw the distinctions in men others held as the status quo. He refused to believe there were black places and white places. He knew what God wants us all to know. There are only places. This world is beautiful and the variety of the people exists to add flavor.
Grandpa wasn’t afraid to break the law, because it was an evil law. He refuted what most accepted. He treated everyone like neighbors. Because they were. Even if he had never met them before.
Grandpa knew intuitively what Jesus had tried so hard to teach so many. Love doesn’t end at your address. It crosses the street. It crosses zip codes and county lines. It breaks down ethnic barriers, ignoring them altogether, as it boldly stomps across racial divides. It thwarts the evils of injustice. It doesn’t back down. It doesn’t give up. And it doesn’t give in.
Love knows there’s a neighbor trying to get somewhere, and we all have a chance to help. Love doesn’t look for an opportunity to get more it looks for an opportunity to give more. Love refuses to accept the stigmas and stereotypes. Love refuses the either or thinking of the day and finds a third way forward. Love makes its own way. Love doesn’t accept the status quo. Love works toward the big dream, and lots of little individual dreams too, seeing all men with the kindness of a father’s affection.
I never got to meet Preacher King in this life. He went to be with Jesus shortly before I was born. Cancer had claimed his life, but it never stole his joy. He loved fiercely right up until the end.
When I was a kid I would get very sad at not having ever held my grandpa’s hand or hugged his neck. I never heard him laugh. He never took me fishing, let me ride in his truck, or taught me how to fix a car. Thinking about it used to bring tears to my eyes.
Today I know the love Preacher King had for his neighbors didn’t end when he seemingly lost his battle with cancer. His love just changed addresses. A lifetime of love, faith, and working out the two in the coal mines and cotton fields landed him somewhere better—with Jesus.
Now his love lives on in the faith that nourished his family. It’s the kind of love that makes me a better version of me. It’s the kind of love that compels me to invite all my neighbors to an eternal neighborhood. One where they can meet Preacher King and this Jesus he loved so well. A love which doesn’t distinguish, doesn’t condemn, doesn’t condone, and doesn’t hold back. A love like that works for the way forward, for everyone, and doesn’t quit.
We all get one chance to love well. Like Preacher King I want to love my neighbors. I even want to smuggle a few into the places they belong someone is trying to keep them from. I want my handshake and morning greeting to be more than tokens of salutation. I want them to be invitations into a life that’s waiting for everyone.
My dad learned it from his dad. I have tried to learn it from him. Sometimes I’ve aced it—sometimes not so much. There were times it came easy, and there were moments when it was like pulling teeth from a tiger.
When Jesus was talking to some of his friends he challenged them. He invited them to walk and work with him. To see how he did it. To discover the rhythm of love which always blossoms amidst the music of grace. He also promised them to carry this kind of love around wouldn’t be heavy. It’s the kind of love which fits everyone who accepts their invitation to carry it around this world. Jesus’ love brings with it a freedom and a light different than anything else we can find.
Preacher King lived this love. The stories of my youth are filled with the evidence of a man who learned this firsthand from his dad. A man not afraid to defy the law of the land when it crossed paths with the law of love.
What God is teaching me about love doesn’t start with my city. He is teaching me it must first start with my neighbors. He is teaching me I don’t have to do all the same things they do. I don’t even have to like the things they do, but it shouldn’t stop me from loving them just the same.
We don’t have to participate in the stuff we disagree about in order to be agreeable. Because Jesus demonstrated incredible love, we have an opportunity to learn how to live out incredible love. One way we can do it is by being willing to help someone get where they belong.