Fred Harvey was a name almost every American knew in the late 1800s and early 1900s. This son of Britain had come to America and made his mark in the food industry. Working with the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railroad, he built a chain of restaurants across the great Southwest which became legendary for their insistance on quality and their devotion to the customer.

In his book, “Appetite for America: How Visionary Businessman Fred Harvey Built a Railroad Hospitality Empire That Civilized the Wild West,” Stephen Fried says Harvey originated the first national chain of restaurants, of hotels, of newsstands, and of bookstores–“in fact, the first national chain of anything–in America.”

You may be familiar with the Judy Garland movie on the Harvey Girls, another innovation of Fred Harvey’s. He recruited single young women in the East, then sent them to work in his restaurants from Kansas City to California. In doing so, he inadvertently provided wives for countless westerners and helped to populate a great segment of the USA.

All of this is just so we can relate one story from the book.

Once, in the short period before women took over the serving duties for his restaurants, Harvey was fielding a complaint from one of his “eating house stewards” about a particularly demanding customer.

“There’s no pleasing that man,” said the steward. “He’s nothing but an out and out crank!”

Harvey responded, “Well, of course he’s a crank! It’s our business to please cranks. Anyone can please a gentleman.”

Pleasing cranks.

Anyone can please a gentleman.

It’s our business.

Why did that line sound familiar to me, I wondered as I read past that little story. I know. It sounds so much like the Lord Jesus.

Think of it.

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The doctor’s office called last week. It’s time for my annual checkup. But before the visit with the physician, I was instructed to drop in on the lab in the hospital next Monday for a “blood workup.”

I’ve done it before and know the routine.

So, tomorrow morning, I’ll skip breakfast and the usual two cups of Community Coffee and head down to Ochsner’s Foundation Hospital first thing. It’s a short drive and a quick procedure. They’ll push up my sleeve, insert a needle into a vein, and drain off a few samples of my blood in vials. The lady will slap a band-aid on the wound and send me on my way. I will have been there for a total of 10 minutes, max.

Two weeks later, Dr. Robert Miles will tell me all about myself. What my cholesterol level is, both good and bad, and whether the thyroid stuff I take needs to be adjusted in strength, and numerous other details which escape me now. (Hey, I’m a preacher, not a medical person.)

Fascinating how they can take a sip of one’s blood and learn a hundred things about us.

Actually, it’s not so odd. You and I live by that principle, that we can learn a lot about a subject by a small sample.

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They called the other day and invited me to speak in chapel at a local Christian high school. I was delighted and told them what I usually do.

They said, “That’s fine. But another time. This time, we need something else.”

What I often do in high school assemblies, I told her, was to set my easel up on the gym floor and get two or three students out of the audience and caricature them. Then, for the piece de resistance, stand the principal before them and sketch him/her. After that, give them my 10 or 15 minute talk on lessons learned from a lifetime of drawing people on the subject of self-image, self-acceptance, and faith in the Lord who made us.

She said, “That sounds great. And we’d like to have you back to do that sometime. But we need something else from you this time.”

“One of our students is dying,” she said. “And it has shaken the entire student body. We need you to minister to us.”

The next day the student went to Heaven.

Today is Friday, the chapel service is Tuesday morning.

Get that? This Sunday is Palm Sunday, the next Sunday is Easter, and in between we’re going to have a service to talk about death and life.

And hope. That’s what this is all about. It’s certainly what Easter is all about.

“We have been born again to a living hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead” (I Peter 1:3).

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It’s come as a surprise to me that the 27th chapter of Proverbs has become a favorite in that vast book filled with maxims, truths, and adages. So much of that chapter is about friendship.

“Faithful are the wounds of a friend, but deceitful are the kisses of an enemy….. Do not forsake your own friend or your father’s friend…. Better is a neighbor who is near than a brother far away…. He who blesses his friend with a loud voice early in the morning, it will be reckoned a curse to him…. Iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another….”

As they said to George Bailey, “No man with many friends is poor.” Or something to that effect.

The person who can boast many friends is rich indeed. According to Facebook, my list of friends now approaches 1,800. Even if that were true–it refers to the sum total of people I’m connected to in that vast network–there’s no way anyone could have that many “good” friends.

That list–the special, “to die for,” friends–is tiny, for all of us.

For reasons I cannot fathom, lately I’ve found myself pondering those people, those men (and for me, they’re all men, mostly my contemporaries) who occupy a strategic spot in my mind, memory, and appreciation.

And I think I’ve identified a key element of that kind of close friendship. See what you think and consider whether it’s the case in your own intimate relationships. (I use the word “intimate” in its best and highest connotation.)

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As we approach the Easter event, many of us begin to reflect once again on the death of the finest, the purest One ever to walk this planet.

It’s quite the indictment of humanity that earth could not tolerate Him and so put him to death.

In Robert Bolt’s prize-winning play, “A Man For All Seasons,” Sir Thomas More is beheaded for opposing the ungodly doings of King Henry VIII. (Or, to be more exact, for not approving them.) As the play winds to a close, a spokesman comes center stage and addresses the audience:

“I’m breathing…. Are you breathing, too?…. It’s nice, isn’t it? It isn’t difficult to keep alive, friends–just don’t make trouble–or if you must make trouble, make the sort that’s expected…..”

At the trial of Jesus, they said of him, “He has stirred up the people from Galilee to Jerusalem.” They got that right.

Look at the world we live in. It could use another stirring up.

Following is my very brief four-point observation on the Church and Easter. You know that the whole point of Easter–the crucifixion, the burial, the resurrection–was the Church, don’t you?

“Christ loved the Church and gave himself for her.” (Ephesians 5:25) And then, “Shepherd the church of God which He purchased with his own blood” (Acts 20:28).

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