August 11, 1999
DOWN HOME:
You can go home again,
if love engulfs that place
___No matter what the old adage says, you can go home again. You can if you hail from a loving home.
___I know. I've been there. Just a couple of weekends ago, in fact.
___Former members of Key Heights Baptist Church traveled from all over Texas and Oklahoma back to Perryton, up in the far northern Panhandle, for our "home" church's 35th anniversary.
___We had a grand time. Key Heights has produced a symphony of solid singers, so we enjoyed great music. And that little church's former pastors can preach the Bible with the best of them. (I'm biased, since Daddy was the first pastor, but I'll stand by that claim.) Of course, we also ate well-- barbecue and beans and potato salad and homemade chocolate cake.
MARV KNOX
Editor
___But the best part of the reunion was what we always called "fellowship."
___The goodness of spending a couple of days with friends who have seemed like family for more than three decades defies description. We hugged and smiled, laughed and cried, shared pictures of children and grandchildren. Mostly, we basked in the comfort of each other's company.
___As I walked away from the building and climbed in my car, I thought the weekend couldn't get any better. It did.
___Chuck Waller had marked his 88th birthday in the hospital, suffering from a stroke. "I know Chuck would like to see you," Esther and Colleen both had said.
___So, I drove to the hospital, wrote a note on a card in case Chuck was asleep and stepped inside his room.
___As I laid the card on a table beside his bed, he opened his eyes.
___"Mr. Waller, I'm Marv Knox," I said. "You may not remember me, but I was in your fourth-grade Sunday school class."
___"Remember you?" he asked, incredulously, then smiling. "I've loved you for years. You were one of my boys."
___Generations of boys in Perryton never doubted Chuck's love. He lived out Christ's love for us--in the Sunday school classroom, on the banks of Lake Fryer, in his home.
___I still treasure the 1929 silver dollar Chuck gave me for memorizing the books of the Bible. No telling how many silver dollars Chuck deposited in fourth graders' hands through the years. No telling how much Scripture he deposited in their hearts and minds.
___And no telling how many boys in that little town accepted Jesus as their Savior because Chuck told them about Jesus' love for them and then showed them what that love was like.
___If I live to be as old as Chuck Waller, I'll never forget his beautiful words that surprised and gladdened my heart: "I've loved you for years. You were one of my boys."
___May all children have a Key Heights Church and a Chuck Waller to love them into God's kingdom.
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