Dear Jimmy,
Since its been a spell since I've written, and since your Uncle Orley ain't around to distract me, I figured I'd drop you a line or two. Orley has gone with some of his farmer friends over to the junior college to get learn how to plant soy beans. Now, mind you, they's been aplantin' soybeans since Heck was a pup, but the county agent says he's got a “new technique that'll increase their yield.” Honestly, Orley already knows more about farmin' than he's practicin'. It seems to me that the problem ain't in knowin' but in doin'.
Every year Orley and I slow down a little bit and every year this ol' farm takes more motivation than we've got just to keep it goin'. Sometimes I wonder whether the farm is here to keep us goin' or whether we're here to keep the farm goin'.
I've been droppin' hints for some months now that it may be time for us to look into takin' up residence in the Baptist Home but so far I might just as well have been talkin' to the pump handle. One of these days I wouldn't be surprised if he brings it up over grits like nobody ever thought of it before and suggests that we drive to Culpeper and talk with Dr. Robinson about gettin' in.
I was talkin' only last week to Bertha Bledsoe on the telephone. You might remember hearin' Uncle Orley or me tell of her. She was the woman who flew airplanes off the coast in the second World War lookin' for German ships. After the war, she had engine trouble and had to land in the Bledsoe's corn field. Young Felix just happened to be cultivatin' that very field behind a team of mules when she just dropped in and eliminated several rows of his income. Well, as I heard him tell it, Felix ran over to the stalled plane debatin' with hisself whether to express his excitement that the pilot was alive or his annoyance that some dad-burned fly boy had just plowed under a sizeable portion of his profit.
But when Bertha stepped outen that plane, language abandoned him. It was like cupid let his arrows fly in all directions at once. They were both smitten where they stood — in the middle of ground-up corn stalks. Well, anyway, after Felix died a couple years back she moved to the Baptist Home and she says she just loves it.
I don't know what got me started on that because I had something else altogether I wanted to say. I've been studyin' on what you said a few weeks back 'bout how us Baptists are not baptizin' folks like we used to. Brother Bobby, our young preacher down at Bluebell Baptist, is fixin' to lead us through another round of witness trainin'. Sometimes I think that's the reason we don't actually accomplish more witnessin' is because are too busy learnin' some new way to do it better. Just like those farmers who are learnin' how to plant beans. You can study new techniques till the cows come home but sooner or later you've got to actually go out into the field and put seeds in the soil. After that, you've got to cultivate what's been planted. But still you got to get out of the barn to do it. I can't help thinkin' our witnessin' problem ain't so much in knowin' but in doin'.
Now, I'm not takin' issue with Brother Bobby, but to me it seems pretty simple. If I really believe my neighbor is going to hell when she dies unless she knows Jesus as her personal savior, I'd best be doin' whatever I need to help her see that. I just try to put myself in her place and I ask, “How would I want to be told such news?”
Well, now, I think I might resist hearing a preacher I don't know well goin' on and on about how I was hangin' over hell on a rotten limb. I think I would be more apt to listen to somebody I trust. Somebody who has shown me lots of times that she cares about me.
If somebody who I know cares about me asks to share something with me, I'm going to listen. Now, I may not go along with what they say right away — maybe I never will — but at least I'm going to listen! If they ever get around to talkin' with me, that is.
I can't image being saved and carin' so little for another person that I wouldn't go out of my way to tell him about Jesus. Why, you'd have to hate somebody powerful bad to want to see him spend eternity in hell. And if a person did hate somebody that bad wouldn't you have to wonder if they really know Jesus at all?
I've thought 'bout this a lot and I can't help but wonder if maybe a lot of Baptists kind of figure that God is gonna come up with another way for folks to get to heaven. Some of 'em might be a little fuzzy about the whole idea of hell even. I've noticed it's not a popular topic of conversation down at the Style and Pile Beauty Shop — or even in our Sunday school class, for that matter.
Maybe I'm seein' it all wrong. Maybe I do need another witnessin' class to set me straight. But I spend a lot of time readin' the Bible and Jesus seems pretty clear on the subject.
Well, nephew, I hear Orley's old truck speedin' up the lane. No doubt the county agent has gotten him and the others all fired up to get out and do what needs doin'. I pray Brother Bobby has the same success!
You keep sayin' you're gonna come see us, but it takes more than talk, Jimmy. See you soon, I hope.
Love,
Aunt Ida