OUR CHANGING WORLD

 

      We have waited to make this announcement until we could be sure. The Lord willing, once this journal ceases with next month 's issue we will continue to keep in touch with our subscribers by way of a newsletter, probably every month except the summer months. The name will be Last Time Around, and there will be no subscription price. Every person now on our mailing list will receive the newsletter free. Names may be added by anyone and without charge, no limit. It will regularly be an 8 by 11 inch fold (four pages), but we may occasionally add inserts on special topics. We will continue such features as Changing World, Book Notes, and Readers' Exchange, but the names may change. There will be space for two or three short articles. Ouida is less than enthusiastic about this, saying that if I am going to quit I ought to quit, but like the good sport she is she is going along. But it is a tenuous arrangement with no commitment as to time, maybe a year, maybe longer. We'll see how it goes. I tell Ouida it is like breaking any habit. Sometimes one has to let go gradually. So, if all goes as planned, you will receive your last Restoration Review next month, then in January you will receive the first issue of Last Time Around. There will be no renewals and no one dropped from our mailing list, except those who move without giving us their new address and those who write and tell us they do not want to receive it.

      Ouida and I drove to Tulsa last month where I conducted a series for the Memorial Drive Church of Christ. It was a delightful experience that enabled us to see a number of longtime friends. When I am with a congregation like that, one filled with good works and eager to learn more of God's truth, I am reminded what a great people we are. This month we will drive to Springfield, Mo. to hold a similar series for the Glendale Christian Church. On that trip we will get to visit with some of Ouida's family who live in the same state. It is such a delight to have Ouida with me after her being preoccupied with more pressing matters for so long. The folk out there in the churches, who have read about Ouida in this column all these years, are pleased to get to meet her. We are beginning to plan a number of things now that we are freer, including a possible trip to Australia.

      Our next issue will be the last of Restoration Review, and we are going to have something very special, an article by Ouida! It will be about angels. She has prepared this material for her "class with the girls," as I call it, and I have at last persuaded her to pass some of her findings along to our readers. This will be her first-ever article. What a way to bring a journal to a glorious demise, an article about angels by an angel!

      Our front yard has been the scene of some excitement of late. A bike-a-thon was the occasion of some 700 bicyclists riding by our house on a recent Saturday, all day long. One of them, a middle-aged fellow who was trying to do a 60-odd mile trek, fell at curbside right in front of our home, a heart attack it turned out to be. Ouida summoned the emergency crew, who were here in a matter of three or four minutes. While our neighbors huddled in our yard, quietly and prayerfully,

the medics worked for thirty minutes or so to save his life, first on the street, then in the ambulance where they were well-equipped. He never made any response; we all supposed he was gone. We later inquired and learned that the news was bad; he was alive but in a coma. The next day Ouida and I visited his distraught wife at the hospital, a stranger to us of course, and prayed for her husband. The last we heard he had been taken to a hospital near his home, still in a coma. Things like that bring neighbors closer together, and reminds them how tenuous life is.

      While less significant and dramatic, someone in a car stole two packages of books, intended for the postman, from our mailbox out front. A neighbor saw him and told us, but she failed to get the license number. Ouida reported it to the postal authorities, but there was little they could do. After an hour or so a thoughtful citizen came to our door with two empty jiffy bags, duly addressed and stamped, that he had found discarded a few blocks away, thinking they might be important to us. Ouida surmised that a thief would have no interest in religious books and would discard them or maybe even mail them, while I supposed he would at least try to take the several dollars in stamps. He threw away the stamps and kept the books! These included Carl Ketcherside's The Twisted Scriptures and my The Hope of the Believer, along with our joint writings, edited by Cecil Hook, Our Heritage In Unity and Fellowship. Now, isn't that a good recommendation? If a thief would steal them perhaps you should buy them. See Book Notes for prices. But I keep thinking about that thief reading those books. Wouldn't it be great if they turned his life around and affected where he spends eternity. Would that be stealing your way to heaven?

      Ouida and I plan to attend Restoration Forum X, to be held at Skillman Church of Christ in Dallas, Nov. 10-12. It is a unity conference for Independent Christian Churches and Churches of Christ. The previous nine gatherings have proven to be conciliatory. This is the first one to be held in Texas. Noted speakers are scheduled from both sides, including Charles Hodge, Lynn Anderson, and Carroll Osburn from Churches of Christ and Knofel Staton, Marshall Legett, and Sam Stone from the Christian Churches. Call the church at 214-823-2179. I will be one of the few there well acquainted with both sides, and probably the only one there that enjoys beautiful fellowship with both sides. I am, for instance, acquainted with all six men named, and gladly claim each one as a dear brother, with no distinctions made! I have only one complaint: no women are on the program. Unity will continue to elude us until we include our sisters and cease being male-dominated.