I was trying to write an article for an editor of a Christian magazine in another country, the subject being “What I wish I had known when I was 25.”  It was to be primarily a piece about regrets, things I could have done differently.  And that’s how I came to realize…

I don’t actually have a lot of regrets.

I may be the most blessed person you will ever meet.

Consider, for instance….

1.  My parents brought me up to love the Lord. Being born to Lois and Carl in a Christian family was not something I chose.
2. When I was five, my mother got me started to drawing.  I became a professional cartoonist, among other things.  — Okay, what she did was to sit my little sis and me down at the kitchen table, give us pencil and paper, and tell us to “Sit there and draw!”  She was mainly interested in keeping her precocious son busy so she could get her housework done.  But–this is true–I discovered that day that I loved to draw. I kept at it and when I started at the first grade (Nauvoo, AL elementary school), the other children would gather around and watch me draw.  I figure I have sketched 100,000 people over the years and have done many thousands of cartoons for various publications.
3. When I was eight, my coal-miner dad asked me to walk with him off the West Virginia mountain where we lived and up the railroad tracks to the next town (Sophia, WV)  There, we went into a variety store and he asked me to pick out a Bible. I chose a black (ha, they were all black!) KJV (ditto!) with a zipper around it.  It was lovely and cost $2.98.  Of the six children in our family, I was the only one to be so favored.  He never said why he did this.
4. When I was perhaps 12 years old, a cousin got me into memorizing scripture.  When I could recite the verses on a page he had given me, he presented me with my very own New Testament.
5. When I was sixteen, my older sister who had taken a job as a telephone operator, offered to pay for my correspondence course in cartooning with Art Instruction out of Minneapolis. It was $10 a month for thirty months.  I kept it up until they tried to teach me how to design draperies.  I still recall some of the lessons.  The wonderful Charles Schulz used to teach for this company.

1. At the age of 19, I was asked by the same sister and her husband to move to a college in their city and to live with them.  Her husband would be traveling in his work and she and the baby would feel safer with me there.  That move–to that city, to that college, and to a nearby church–changed my life.  In three years time I was baptized, met my wife, was called into the ministry, was married and ordained.  As I say, I initiated none of this.  In fact, the night we visited that church (West End Baptist on Tuscaloosa Avenue in Birmingham), I protested that it was too big, that I would go once and never again.  God had other plans.
2. At the age of 21 when God called me into the ministry, one of our ministers on staff taught me about seminary.  Until then, I had no idea that to minister I would need a theological education.
3. My brother Ron paid for most of my college.  (When I was a sophomore, Dad had a heart attack and had to retire from his job in the coal mines in north Alabama.  It was several years before he was approved for disability income, so there was no money for me.  My big brother stepped into the gap.)
4. Same brother, Ron and a pastor friend recommended me to pastor my first church.  Since I was an inexperienced Baptist with a degree from a Methodist college, no church was eager to employ me, until they recommended me.
5. In seminary in New Orleans, I was blessed again and again by classmates and professors.  A fellow in one church where I preached recommended me to his mother-in-law as a possible pastor for their church.  I spent three incredible years there.
6. The next church, my third, resulted from the recommendation of a classmate.
7. And every job after that–three more pastorates and one staff member position–all came from the recommendation of friends.
8. Oh, in one church I had recommended to the pastor that a former professor from the seminary would be excellent to teach the annual Bible study to our people.  And he’s the one who told me about the new doctor’s degree the seminary had approved.  Three years later, I was Doctor McKeever.
9. After my fifth pastorate, the most difficult ever, I spent a year in a paid leave of absence.  At the end of those 12 months, I would be wanting to pastor a church.  But now that I was between churches, even small churches were afraid of me. So, the pastor of the greatest church in Mississippi–the First Baptist Church of Jackson where I had spent three years on staff 1971-72-73–Dr. Frank Pollard called to ask me to preach for him three Sundays in a row in the summer of 1990 while he and his wife took a vacation.  We lived in their home during that time.  And on the last Sunday, a search committee from the First Baptist Church of Kenner, LA (in metro New Orleans) came to see us.  My income from the previous church ended at the end of August and my employment at the Kenner church started September 1.
10. My last official position, after pastoring the Kenner church nearly fourteen years, was as “director of missions” (sort of a district superintendent) for the 130 churches of metro New Orleans.  And it was not my doing.  In fact, I was on the committee to find the next DOM.  After electing the chairman, a local pastor whom I had total confidence in, we took a coffee break.  Two men approached me and said, “Joe, you need to do this.”  I said, “I don’t need to be chairman; he’ll do a good job.”  They both said, “We’re not talking about chairman. We’re talking about being the director of missions!”  That was a new thought.  And a few months later, that’s what happened.   I am remembering something.  After I resigned the Kenner church, the next day I was driving somewhere in the city.  I recall exactly where the car was when I prayed, “Lord, are you sure?”  And just as clearly He answered.  I had to look it up to see where this is located.  “Faithful is He who called you and He will bring it to pass.”  That’s First Thessalonians 5:24.  And so He did.  I logged five years in that position and retired in the summer of 2009.

That’s my story.  I tried to be obedient but I initiated very little of all the wonderful things He did in my life.

I’m recalling something a friend said about his retirement.  When Frank DeVorss retired, he was in our church office where his wife Norma worked.  He said, “Well, I’m retired now.  I guess the next big item on my calendar is death.”

We laughed at that.  And it proved not to be true.  The airport authority took over the land where they lived and condemned all the houses.  When they sold out, they moved across the lake into the Covington, LA area.  We heard at one point that Frank had cancer or something.  So, retirement did not mean a life of boredom for him.

Same with me.  Too much to tell here, but the brief version is my wife of 52 years went to Heaven in January of 2015.  Two years later, I sold my house and moved 200 miles north and married Bertha Pepper Fagan, the widow of a pastor friend whom I had known since our seminary days.  Next January will be ten years for us.  But just over two years ago, Bertha fell while walking in our neighborhood and spent five days in the hospital for a concussion.  This seems to have triggered something in her brain, because ever since we have dealt with dementia and now full-fledged Alzheimer’s.

God is faithful.  And I want to be also.  I treasure Revelation 2:10 which says, Be thou faithful unto death and I will give thee a crown of life.