OUR CHANGING WORLD

 

Christie Yeck, our 14-month old granddaughter, lives with us a lot of the time these days, and she has a way of stealing our hearts. We are helping out since her father was drowned in a swollen creek last May a few miles from Denton. Our daughter Phoebe, a widow at age 26, is hanging in, still living on the farm in the county, the home of her late husband. The other child, 6-year old Ashley, was with his daddy and saw him drown, but had the composure to hang on to a tree limb and cry for help. An upstream fisherman heard his cries and hurried to the scene and pulled the lad from the raging creek. The story made the front page of the Denton paper, with a picture of the bewildered boy at creek side being comforted by his paternal grandfather, telling the newspaper reporter, “My daddy drowned.” I would have told of this sad story before now, but I can hardly write about it. Ouida and I took little Ashley to the Ozarks in the summer, less than a month after the tragedy, and it was medicine for his soul. Dear sisters and brothers several places in Arkansas helped to love him back to health. There is still a lot of good in this old world! He is after us to take him back to Arkansas, and is adamant about moving there someday, which is to say that at this point he is not making a very good Texan!

We will all miss Carl Ketcherside’s autobiography, which ends with the next issue. It has been with us through six years and sixty installments, and it will take its place as an important biography in our history. For this reason we hope to issue it in book form eventually, with Carl adding an epilogue on his latest years and perhaps I an introduction. In the meantime most of it is available in our bound volumes, or will be. I have invited Carl to continue writing on other themes.

Julius Hovan of Gallatin, Tn. sent us a mailout of a Church of Christ in Stockton, Ca. that reports on its mission program in Ethiopia. The report tells of efforts to convert Independent Christian Churches to “the Lord’s church.” It tells of rebaptizing 180 of our Christian Church brethren, along with the preacher, and 53 more churches are targeted for conversion. This is one Church of Christ’s concept of doing mission work in Ethiopia. While this is of course tragic, portraying such sectarianism in the face of those who need Christ, we can take heart that this sort of thing among our people is on its way out. While we are certainly capable of such partyism, such instances are becoming rarer and rarer. Julius expressed sadness over such a report. Yes, but we have blessings to count. I am confident that a large majority of Church of Christ folk --- my educated guess is 85 % --- are turned off by such blatant bigotry. A new day is dawning, so I am happy, not sad! (I will send my report to said church so that they can see that they are going to be left behind!)