Happy New Year!

As the world sixteen years ago anticipated the end of the 1900s and the coming of 2000, novelist John Updike wrote a story about two young couples who planned a memorable evening to welcome the new decade, the new century, and the new millennium.

One of the husbands had made reservations at an upscale restaurant, guaranteeing their table with his credit card. They got together at one of their houses in the suburbs for drinks and reminiscences before beginning the quest to “ring out the old, ring in the new.”

After several rounds of drinks, with both wives and one husband feeling dizzy headed, they agreed they made a wise move when the other husband had agreed to be the designated driver.

Light traffic on the freeway. They should easily get to the restaurant by nine.  Have time for a leisurely meal. Perhaps a little dancing and more drinks before the floor show begins.

Looking forward to ending the old year in fine fashion, they went down the exit ramp and onto the surface streets.  They saw few cars on first few blocks, but when they turned onto a major four-lane street, traffic moved at the proverbial snail’s pace.  

Not to worry.  Plenty of time. Only a couple more miles to the restaurant. Table’s reserved.  Paid for.  But then:

Traffic slowed to a crawl.  Then stopped all together.  A multi-car accident blocked the entire road.  Ambulances.  Fire Trucks. Police.

Minutes turned to hours.  They were so close, they actually could see their restaurant across the median.  Just a couple of blocks away.

Midnight came and went.  1999 left them.  They welcomed the first ninety minutes of the new decade, the new century, the new millennium in the car, irate, swearing, sweaty, tipsy. 

Updike was a faithful Christian and churchman and successful novelist and poet whose stories often quietly offer morals.  They don’t hit you in the face with preaching.  He leaves it to the reader to ferret them out.

Beyond Bobby Burns’s  obvious “The best-laid schemes of mice and men gang aft a-gley,” we can look deeper:

Some might say, “If they hadn’t stayed around the house getting drunk, they probably would have been ahead of the wreck.”  And that may be true.

On a still deeper level, even sober and clear-headed, the foursome probably loaded more weight on that one evening than most evenings could bear — even this “night of nights” as one decade, one century, and one millennium pass with the striking of midnight. The new day, week, month, year, decade, century, and millennium likely will look strangely like the ones they left behind.

As we sing “Auld Lang Syne,” toast to our friends, and make high-flung resolutions, we may benefit from the reminder of the writer of Psalm 90:

The years of our life are threescore and ten,

or even by reason of strength fourscore;

yet their span is but toil and trouble;

they are soon gone, and we fly away. .  .  .

So teach us to number our days

that we may get a heart of wisdom.

Home for Christmas

The call to come home is as old as the human race. In the holiday season, that voice reverberates through the echo chambers of our souls.

Early in life, I learned I was expected to be home for Christmas. So I was with my parents every Christmas for 34 years. In those 34 years, I had graduated from high school, college, and seminary; I had worked full-time as a minister, college professor and writer-editor; I had taken unto myself a wife; I had lived in Kentucky, South Carolina and Georgia.

Even after I became a father, for as long as my parents were alive, a strong inner voice silently yelled, “Let’s go to Texas!”  Sometimes that call still comes, though Daddy and Mother and some of our siblings have gone to that Eternal Home.

When Johnny Mathis gives out with “I’ll be home for Christmas; you can count on me,” in my mind’s eye and in my heart of hearts, I am once again part of a happy throng of six brothers and sisters, spouses, and children, overflowing one of the modest houses or apartments Mother and Daddy called home over the years.

I have missed a great deal over the decades by not being around my brothers and sisters and their spouses and oncoming generations. Now, our sons have followed my example as they live and work, far from their parents: Russell in New York and Jonathan in Chicago. They have their own individual patterns for the holidays, and I say, “God bless them for it.”

People often ask, “Don’t you wish your sons would come home for Christmas?” I usually just smile or grimace, but I think to myself: “I would love to see them, but they are at home. They’re away from us, but they have their homes in Chicago and New York.  They have their lives. They have their responsibilities. It isn’t easy to travel long distances, especially with children.”

In “The House of Christmas,” G. K. Chesterton described the call to come home this way:

For men are homesick in their homes, 

        And strangers under the sun,

And they lay their heads in a foreign land 

        Whenever the day is done.

Those lines suggest that every human being is away from home.

The Christmas story is about One who left his Father’s home, who was born in a manger, who in adulthood had no place to lay his head, who was buried in someone else’s tomb, who identified his family as larger than his mother and birth brothers and sisters, 

a family “born, not of blood or of the will of the flesh or of the will  of man, but of God” (John 1:13).

So, whether we are with our human families this Christmas or spending the time alone, we need to listen for the call of God, welcoming us to the warmth of his family. Jesus came to earth to call all his brothers and sisters back to his Father’s house.

Tribute to a Dear Sister

My older sister, Leta Joy (Webb) Culp died December 2, 2015, at age 87 in Houston, Texas, where she lived with her youngest son, Lloyd Culp, and his wife Susan.  The funeral and burial was in Waco, where she and her late husband, the Rev. Jeff Culp, lived for many years.  Her pastor in Houston brought a short sermon or homily after Lloyd and I gave personal reflections and reminiscences.  My funeral remarks follow:

Remarks for Leta Joy Webb Culp’s Funeral
Waco, Texas
December 5, 2015
Lawrence Webb

    We are here today because Travis and Vandelia’s first child was so significant that some of us came from halfway across a continent and some from halfway around the world.  But if you came only halfway across Waco, Leta was significant in your world.
    As I try to say how Leta’s life was significant to me, I think back to a similar gathering in 1979.  My brothers-in-law, Jeff Culp and Don Way, and I were sitting in an office in the mortuary waiting for the mortician to lead us into the chapel to lead the service for Daddy.  I had written what I wanted to say, but I began to doubt whether I could say it.  I even asked Jeff whether he would read my message, and, without hesitation, he said he would.  But I decided I would do my best, and with God’s help, I made it.
    I think of a similar setting in 1986 when Jeff and I did the service for Mother.  It’s not easy to say public goodbyes to a parent or sister or brother.  But it’s an honor to be asked.  So here goes.
    Leta was Big Sister —the firstborn of our generation. She was there, strong and wise, all my life.
    Let me tell you about the first time I remember her giving me advice: I was five, so Leta would have been eleven.  Through most of our growing-up years, our family moved two or three times almost every year.  This particular move was across Sweetwater [Texas], from one house to another. We stopped at a store, probably so Daddy could get some groceries for supper, and he gave Leta Joy and Lee Roy and me a nickel apiece.  Lois Marie and Leonard Morris were too young to get money, I guess.
    As that nickel was burning a hole in my pocket, my all-wise sister counseled me: “Don’t spend that whole nickel on one thing.”  I know that sounds like a joke.  But she was serious.  She advised me to buy five pieces of penny candy.  You could do that in 1939.  Well, I totally disregarded this sage advice.  I blew the whole nickel on an R-C Cola.  In retrospect, I’ve wondered whether she had an ulterior motive: If I bought the candy, maybe I would share it with her!
    Leta was helpful to me in many ways.  I remember her reading to me before I learned to read.  I especially remember when I was seven, and she was thirteen, we were living with Grandma Roberts out on the Divide, south of Sweetwater.  Eight of us in her little three-room house.  Our Great Aunt Annie,  came all the way from Dallas to spend Christmas with her sister and family, making a total of nine in those three rooms.
    Aunt Annie wore sweet-smelling perfume, and she brought us presents.  Her present for me was a book about a bear named Bear Brownie.  Keep in mind, Bear Brownie didn’t have friends who were donkeys or baby kangaroos, and Bear Brownie didn’t complain about somebody eating his soup.  He was a real bear who slept in a real cave with a lot of other bears, sort of like we slept at Grandma’s.
    I was thrilled to get the book, but it had some words I wasn’t quite ready for, so Leta Joy read it to me and helped me read it.  Later, she helped me with homework, and I enjoyed hearing her quote poems she learned in English class.  And I remember she took Home Ec in school and learned to cook dishes such as Eggs a la Golden Rod.
    Later, she gave me advice about preaching.  She wasn’t at Lamar Street Baptist Church in Sweetwater the Wednesday night when I made my first effort.  That was just as well.  I was in the pulpit every bit of three minutes.  It seemed like an hour. 
    But she was on hand a few weeks later when our pastor, Brother Clarence Powell, gave me another opportunity.  I did a full-length version that night. Afterward, Leta gave a critique — mainly that I should wear a tie instead of an open-necked white shirt.  Good advice.
    If I had stayed in Texas instead of running away from home and going to seminary in Kentucky, and then spending most of my adult life in the Southeast, I’m sure I would have benefited year by year from Leta’s loving care such as many of you have known. 
    The counsel that benefited me most came in the spring of 1945 when I was ten-going-on-eleven.  Leta would have been sixteen.  In those years, we had a regular pattern of moving three times a year.  In summertime, we lived with Grandma out on the Divide.  Then, in the fall, we moved to Uncle Jim and Aunt Chessie’s farm near Roscoe.  Aunt Chessie was Daddy’s youngest sister.  They had about two hundred acres of cotton, and we pulled bolls for them as we lived in their garage. [An aside to my cousin: "Nina (Basham Sanders), you remember those years."] At the end of the boll pulling season, Daddy would find a farm job, and we would move there.  Then, inevitably, something would go wrong between Daddy and the farmer, and we would move back to Grandma’s.  Then at summer’s end, we pulled bolls for Uncle Jim and Aunt Chessie, then Daddy would find a farm job until that went bad and then we moved back to Grandma’s.  You get the picture.  Leta probably wouldn’t want me to spell out those difficult years.
    By the way, it occurs to me: Some of you don’t even know what pulling bolls means.  It’s like picking cotton, except you pull the boll off the stalk, break off the stems and leaves and put the boll in your cotton sack to take to the gin.  Leonard talks about our family picking cotton. [An aside to my younger brother: "But, Leonard, you never picked cotton a day in you life!  We pulled bolls."]
    In the spring of 1945, the farm job was near Inadale on beyond Roscoe, toward Hermleigh.  We didn’t have a car, and in that community, we didn’t know anybody who could take us to church. In  cases like that, Mother always had the radio on for church services Sunday morning and Sunday night over K-X-O-X in Sweetwater.  The Sunday night broadcast was from Lamar Street Baptist Church where we later would become members and where I preached my first sermons.
    The night I got Leta’s best advice of my life, she and Lee Roy and I were the only ones home.  Mother and Daddy and Lois Marie and Leonard Morris were at a neighbor’s house playing the official West Texas game of Dominoes.
     Leta Joy had the radio on for the Lamar Street service, and when the Invitation Song began, she talked with Lee Roy and me about our need to give our hearts to Jesus.  Neither of us made that step that night, but the seeds were planted. 
    Several months later, when we were back out on the Divide, I made my public profession of faith under a revival tent the Nolan Baptist Church set up each summer for its two-week revival meeting.  So I will be eternally grateful to Big Sister Leta Joy as the first person who talked with me about my need for Christ in my life.
    When I was twelve or so, Leta met this tall, dark, and handsome Air Force veteran named Jeff Culp as we all attended the Wastella Baptist Church near Roscoe.  Then, when I was about thirteen and a half, they got married on April 2, 1948. 
    They developed a practice early in their marriage that continued throughout their years together:  reaching out to people in need, welcoming them into their home for food, clothing, and shelter as they could determine need.  After Jeff died, Leta continued this ministry as long as she was in her house.
    At one time or another, every member of our Webb family enjoyed the hospitality of their home on an extended period.  That included Mother, Daddy, Lee Roy, Marie, Leonard, Lew, and me. 
    My time was while I was at Hardin-Simmons.  They had moved to Abilene, and Jeff worked in the oil fields.  They lived a few blocks north of the campus.  In the summer between my freshman and sophomore years, I worked on the campus yard crew.  I slept on a cot in their home and ate many meals that Leta cooked.  As I said, every one of our family experienced this kindness.  But it wasn’t just family.  Someone would come through the neighborhood, needing food or a place to sleep.  They welcomed that person. 
    After Jeff died, a jobless, homeless woman showed up at Leta’s church one Wednesday night, asking for help.  Leta took the woman in.  Many of us in the family felt Leta was the one who was taken in as the woman mainly received free room and board. Her children strongly objected, but she welcomed the woman in the name of Jesus.
    Come to think of it,  her treatment of the woman sounds a great deal like words Jesus spoke:
    Come, O blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world;  for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me.
    When I think of these unselfish acts by Jeff and Leta, I think of what the poet Wordsworth described this way:
       
    that best portion of a good man's life,
    His little, nameless, unremembered, acts
    Of kindness and of love.

    Jeff and Leta did so many “little, nameless, unremembered, acts Of kindness and of love.”

    I’ve tried to tell you some of why Leta was significant in my life, and you brought your own testimonies of why she was significant in your life.  Now, I’m going to end my part in this service by reading a letter Leta wrote.  It lets us know what she thought to be most significant.

From Leta Joy Webb Culp
A Letter Titled
“To Be Read at My Funeral”

    When you, my family, hear these words I have written, I will be in my new home in heaven.
    The first thing that I want to say to you is, “I love you all!”  And I hope to see you here at some later date in this lovely place.  The streets are paved with gold and there is no need for lights because Jesus is the Light.
    I hope each of you will make the decision (if you have not already done so) to trust Jesus as your  (own) personal Savior before it is too late.
    [Then she instructs the reader: "Here read John 3:16 & 17."]
    For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.  For God sent his Son into the world, not to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through him.
    [Then she continues:]   
    That Scripture says God loved mankind so much that He sent his only Son, Jesus, to live in the world — yet without sin — & be crucified on a cruel Roman cross as a sacrifice for our sins.  He was raised on the 3rd day.  That was a miraculous act which only God could have accomplished.
    We cannot save ourselves by doing good works, by joining a church, by being baptized or any other way except by believing in our hearts —not just in our heads — that Jesus is who He said He was, the Son of God (even the devil knows (in his head) that Jesus is God.)  We need to ask God for His forgiveness of our sins & turn our lives over to Him to be used as He wishes.
    Don’t wait (1) until you have accomplished all you want to, (2) raised your family, (3) gotten rid of all your anger & unforgiveness in your heart, (4) made a ton of money, (5) done all the traveling that you want to, (6) or any other thing standing between you & (God) (salvation).
    Don’t think that you have done nothing bad enough to keep you out of heaven.  Remember when God gave Moses the Ten Commandments? It is impossible to obey all of them all the time because we are simply human beings.  For example, one commandment  says, “You shall not bear false witness,” in other words, ‘deceive someone’ or lie.  Another, the first one says, “You shall love the Lord your God above everyone or everything else.”
    And don’t think that you have done too many sinful things to get into heaven — because Jesus died for all.  When Jesus was crucified between two thieves, one of them asked to be remembered when Jesus came into His kingdom.  Jesus replied, “Truly, I say unto you, this day you shall be with me in paradise.”
    Just listen to that still, small voice telling you to trust Jesus as your Savior & follow Him for the rest of your life.  You can do it now.  When you do, you’ll never be sorry!
    And then I will see you again.  As one hymn writer says, “I Want To Stroll Over Heaven With You!”  [She concludes:] What a wonderful, amazing thought.

    [And let me add, What a wonderful, amazing woman was my Big Sister, Leta Joy Webb Culp.]

Tribute to a Dear Sister