Francis and Dorothy Green lived in Metairie for all their married lives, the last 39 years. In the early 90s, someone recommended they attend the First Baptist Church of Kenner, and that’s how I became their pastor. They were a wonderful and faithful couple and a joy to have as friends. Today we held her funeral in McComb, Mississippi.

I used to ask Dot, “Do you ever think of moving to Vicksburg, to be closer to your daughter Debbie?” Her only child. “Oh no,” she would say. “This is my home.” Then Katrina hit. They sold their flooded house in Metairie and bought another in Vicksburg and joined the First Baptist Church there. Today, their pastor, Dr. Matt Buckles, and I shared the honors at her service.

Dot was a painter. The first time she mentioned this to me, I thought, “Oh yeah. Sure you are.” The way people are who take a 6 weeks class at a community college, then try to sell their amateurish doings for big money at an art sale. Then I saw her work, and believe me, she was an artist. In fact, she once served as president of the New Orleans Art Guild and belonged to several other guilds.

One day she said to me, “Take your pick of all my paintings.” I was like a kid in a candy store. The one I chose she had painted in June of 2002 and titled “Misty Bayou.” It has hung above our bed ever since. Monday, I took it down and carried it to our office. Freddie and Ninfa removed it from the frame and laid it across the color copier and made a reduced copy of the picture, then ran off a number of copies. I carried it with me to McComb and gave to daughter Debbie to share with their family and friends. Margaret had given me notice that I was not to carry the original; she was afraid someone would try to talk me out of it. “You’re such a softie, if someone asked for it, you’d give it away.”

I was pleased to meet Dot’s sister Kathryn. I said, “I have told a story about you for years. Now, I want it from your mouth so I can get it right.” Dot had told me the funny story, and I had told and retold it so many times, the details were hazy.

Here’s the story. Waylon Bailey–lover of great sermon illustrations–take note. This one is for you.

Kathryn said, “I was talking to my family about smoking. I said, ‘I hope none of you will ever take up that filthy habit.’ Megan, my 11-year-old granddaughter, moved over and put her arm around my neck and said, ‘Grandma, that’s one thing you’ll never have to worry about with me. No cigarette will ever touch these lips.'”

“Megan was quiet a moment, then she said in all seriousness, ‘Unless I’m drunk.'”

True story. I told it at the funeral, and added, “Dot loved a good story. And she got a special joy out of seeing people enjoy the stories she told.”

That’s why I told the other story in her service.

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From my earliest memory, I have known of and loved the Lord Jesus Christ. At the age of 11, I became one of His disciples. Ten years later, He decided I would serve Him in the ministry and called me out. As I write, I am 67 years old. You can do the math.

Through these years of reading Scripture, of praying, studying, obeying, trying to grow and striving to honor Jesus by serving His people, I have learned some things about the ways of the Lord. Few of these insights came in advance, but only after the events, when I looked back and gave thought to what the Holy Spirit had done, to how He had led and taught me.

Jesus promised His people that the Holy Spirit would be our Teacher. “He will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all that I said to you.” (John 14:26) “He will guide you into all truth…He will take of mine and will disclose it to you.” (John 16:13-14)

The best I can figure, there are 984 ways the Holy Spirit uses to teach any of us. So far, looking back over all these years of serving the Lord, here are the top ten ways the Holy Spirit has taught me.

1. The Holy Spirit teaches us in our failures.

As a college student, I struggled in my attempts to witness for Christ. Before attempting to share with friends or strangers, I literally sweat bullets, the inner agony was so horrific. Then, after three or four years of this–by now I was a student in seminary–I picked up a booklet in a Christian bookstore that might as well have had my name on it: “Here’s How to Win Souls.” A Texas minister had put in print and even in photographs the method he used to present the gospel. I bought the booklet, studied it, learned it, and went across town and led someone to Christ using the principles Gene Edwards and the Holy Spirit had cooperated to send my way.

2. The Holy Spirit teaches us in our everyday experiences.

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My Atlanta friend Jim Graham has a granddaughter–her first name is Graham; wonder why–who is so bright at the age of 9, she could qualify to be a McKeever! The ultimate accolade. Anyway….

This week, Jim told me something Graham did when she was 3 years old. “Darlene and I had gone overboard materialistically,” he said, “and bought her a ton of Christmas presents. On Christmas morning, she was opening her gifts. After unwrapping the third one, she looked at me and said, ‘That’s enough. Give the others to Baby Jesus.'”

Out of the mouths of babes.

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The clipping that dropped from my files is undated and evidently came from the Memphis Commercial-Appeal. The thrust of the article was that the relatives of a victim killed in a bank holdup are suing the bank for failure to provide security. But that’s not what caught my attention.

The four robbers who invaded Peoples Bank that day, taking more than $18,000 and the life of 79-year-old bank customer Willie Pearl Carter, did something truly bizarre. According to the shooter–he’s identified as Ramon Laroi Shorter and a minister’s son, now serving a long sentence in the penitentiary–they wore ski masks and carried .40-caliber Glock pistols. And they prayed.

Just before they entered the bank, the little group of bandits bowed their heads and prayed for success in their venture. Shorter says, “I know it’s kind of awful to say we prayed before we do something illegal, but after we prayed, that’s when we went in and did the job.”

The bank bandits were not the first and won’t be the last to seek the approval of God and the blessings of Heaven upon their wrong doings.

The wife who left her minister husband was certain she was in the will of God, and prayed for the Lord’s blessings upon her new life with another woman’s husband. She was so enthralled with her new circumstances, it just “had” to be the will of God.

The deacon who was embezzling money from the church offerings, often stood at the pulpit in the worship service and called down God’s blessings upon both the gift and the giver.

I have no doubt whatsoever that there are abortionist doctors who bow their heads and pray for success in their procedures.

The evidence just keeps accummulating proving that man is lost.

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On Christmas Day, 1939, Britain’s King George VI, the father of Elizabeth II, decided to do something he detested and speak publicly on the radio. He had a speech defect known as a stammer, but determined he would revive a custom his late father had started and bring an annual message to the British people. This being the first Christmas of the war with Germany, he rightly thought they could use the encouragement.

While the king and his staff were working on his broadcast message, someone sent a clipping from the Times of London to Buckingham Palace. The little article contained a prayer of sorts that had been found on a postcard in the desk of a deceased Bristol doctor. That man’s daughter had used it on greeting cards, one of which was received by a Mrs. J. C. M. Allen of Clifton, who had kept it. Realizing the words were appropriate for her country at the outbreak of the war, she passed the postcard on to the newspaper.

Just after 3 pm on Christmas Day, King George began with these words to his people: “A new year is at hand. We cannot tell what it will bring. If it brings peace, how thankful we shall all be. If it brings us continued struggle we shall remain undaunted. In the meantime I feel that we may all find a message of encouragement in the lines which, in my closing words, I would like to say to you.”

Then, he delivered the lines which had come their circuitous route, from the doctor’s office to his daughter, to Mrs. Allen who sent it to the Times, and thence to the palace. Now, those words were being given to the world.

“I said to the man who stood at the Gate of the Year, ‘Give me a light that I may tread safely into the unknown.’ And he replied, ‘Go out into the darkness, and put your hand into the Hand of God. That shall be to you better than light, and safer than a known way.'”

In his book “1940,” Laurence Thompson tells what happened next.

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1) Wednesday, I stood in line.

The line at Honeybaked Ham in Metairie stretched back and forth inside the store and half a block outside along the sidewalk. The line at the post office in Harahan was only 20 deep, but only two windows were open and each customer seemed to be doing their entire month’s mailing. The line at the bank was 20 deep. The line at Piccadilly Cafeteria at 3 o’clock, when everyone thought it would be cleared out, was lengthy.

The ‘rush and crush’ of the Christmas season is upon us, I suppose. Take a number.

2) The political season now shifts into high gear.

We have this celebrity here in New Orleans. In a city filled with characters, this guy is in a class by himself. I’ll not name him for reasons in 3) below, but if I did, many readers would recognize him.

He’s, let’s say, 60 years old and looks 30, thanks to the wonders of cosmetic surgery. In fact, it’s not exaggerating to say he is gorgeous. Broad shoulders, a Hollywood smile, jet black flowing locks, and apparently charm enough to make all the ladies line up and swoon. Several women have had a go with him. He throws weddings to make the queen of a small country envious, renting museums of art or a cathedral and endowing the word ‘lavish’ with new meaning. And when he and his current wife decide to go their separate ways, he sends her off with large alimony checks, although sometimes only because the judge orders it.

Everything the man does is outrageous. Now, got that?

Sitting across the table from a friend one day this week, I don’t know how the celebrity’s name came up. He said something that shocked me. “Did you know he has implants in his shoulders and biceps? To make himself look more impressive.” I did not know and was stunned that any human on the planet could be so vain as to pull such a stunt.

My friend said, “I’ve stood close to him and you are knocked over by those broad shoulders. I mean, he is something!”

The naive country boy in me is still trying to absorb this. Why would anyone do this? Why would anyone want this? Why would a medical doctor use his/her skills for such foolishness? What is the point? Why go to so much trouble to look good when there’s nothing but silicon behind it? Who does it impress and why would he want to impress such shallow people?

And then I read Jim Graham’s column on the current political situation as candidates for the two parties vie for their party’s 2008 presidential nomination. See if you don’t agree it all ties in together….

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I love the tale that comes out of Benjamin Franklin’s childhood. He noticed a daily routine that went on in their household. His mother would take meat from a barrel where it had been salted and stored, would cut off enough for that day, slice it, cook it and serve it to the family. Everyone would gather around the table, bow their heads, and Ben’s father would offer thanks to the Lord.

“Father,” the young future genius said, “I have a suggestion. Instead of giving thanks for the little portion of the meat we consume each day, why not give God thanks for the entire barrel of meat at one time?”

I heard that story from Dr. Wayne Dehoney of Louisville a generation ago. It came to mind this week as news arrived of his homegoing, only a few weeks after his beloved wife had died.

Dr. Dehoney told the story and added, “Isn’t this just like us. We want to cram all our thanksgiving into one day a year, when God would have us to be grateful every day.”

We generally think of giving thanks as a duty to other people who have served us or helped us in some way. It is that, but so much more.

Giving thanks is something I do for myself.

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Sunday at Port Sulphur Baptist Church, Pastor Lynn Rodrigue said, “Eighteen years ago, I was in a motel in Alabama more miserable than I had ever been. That night, I picked up the Gideon Bible and read it and gave my heart to Jesus Christ.”

He said, “I cannot tell you that everything changed for me immediately. The next morning, I got up and went on to work. But I found myself with a hunger to read that Bible and learn what it says. That hunger grew stronger and stronger and I got more and more into the Word.”

And that was how he knew Christ had heard his prayer and saved him: the new love he had for the Lord’s word.

Jesus said, “If anyone loves me, he will keep my word….He who does not love me does not keep my words; and the word which you hear is not mine, but the Father’s who sent me.” (John 14:23-24)

One chapter later, He said, “Now you are clean because of the word which I have spoken to you.” (15:3)

In His great prayer of John 17, Jesus prayed, “Father, the words you gave me I have given to them, and they have received them….” (v. 8)

Among the fifty or sixty wonderful cards I received from friends and family members after our Dad’s homegoing, at least six said a certain number of Gideon Bibles are being given in honor of Carl J. McKeever. Mom says she has received several with the same message. Together, it probably means a hundred or more Gideon Bibles in Dad’s memory will be out there serving the Lord.

A family member who read one of those cards asked, “What do they do with the Bibles?”

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Port Sulphur is a little community thirty miles downriver–and we’re talking about straight downriver!–below Belle Chasse, which puts it some 40 miles from New Orleans and at the halfway point of the thinnest, skinniest parish in the state, Plaquemines. I said to my son Neil, “Think of having a county in Alabama that would be 10 miles wide and reach from Nauvoo to Birmingham.”

Sometimes one mile wide seems more like it. Driving down state highway 23, you see the Mississippi River on your left and the wetlands just off to your right. Orange farms pop up frequently along the uneventful drive, then once in a while a huge installation of some kind on your left sitting alongside, atop, inside the levee for quick loading onto the river, and dwellings of all kinds. A mansion here, a trailer park there. Names of little unknown towns appear only as road signs with nothing, and I mean nada, in between that and the next town. This used to be a thriving area, but Katrina is not to blame for all the absence of people; the oil bust of the 1980s gets credit for that.

Port Sulphur Baptist Church was one of five Southern Baptist churches in lower Plaquemines prior to Katrina. This church, Buras-Triumph, and City Price churches managed to maintain congregations large enough to carry on ministries. Riverview at Buras and Venice (at the end of the road) were drying up, down to only a handful of hardy souls.

Katrina put them all out of business. Between the hurricane-force winds and the storm surge, almost nothing in this part of the world survived. The churches were gutted and their beams twisted and everything they owned was ruined. Church members scattered along with another million residents of our part of the world in every direction across America. Many are still where they landed and will not be coming back.

The major difference I noticed between post-Katrina Plaquemines Parish and this morning was how clean and neat everything appears. All the destroyed houses have been removed, the litter is gone. A lot of rebuilding is going on and it will be another five years before any sort of normalcy is restored. But it’s so much better than it was.

Sunday morning, Pastor Lynn Rodrigue announced to the houseful of worshipers, “God has done a mighty thing for us.” We were seated in the newly rebuilt sanctuary, gathered for the formal dedication of this worship center. Behind us and to our left were new buildings which housed Sunday School classes, offices, bathrooms, a kitchen, and the weekday school. Lynn told me recently they’re up to sixty students (I think that was the number). He was delighted because, among other reasons, that is the break-even number financially.

Sam Porter, disaster relief director for Oklahoma Baptists, was on hand. He said, “People where I live ask, ‘Why would someone rebuild on ground that is below sea level?’ I answer, ‘Well, someone down there might ask why would you rebuild where you have 57 tornadoes a year? The answer is: it’s home!'” (He got a chorus of amens.)

Sam told the congregation, “There’s a map in the conference room at the Baptist Association of Greater New Orleans with the metro area divided into zones. We Oklahoma Baptists have taken the zone which includes the Ninth Ward, the area around the French Quarter, and Franklin Avenue. Virginia Baptists took this area. But we have been glad to partner with them down here.”

Nichole Bulls was on hand from the Virginia Baptist State Convention to accept our appreciation and to offer up a prayer for the healing of this region and the empowering of the future ministries of this church.

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I don’t think I’ve ever seen an actual election with real candidates where one won with 91 percent of the vote. That happened Saturday when Newell Normand won election as sheriff of Jefferson Parish. He defeated Peter Dale, chief of Harahan’s force.

Normand actually ran the sheriff’s office through much of Harry Lee’s years as sheriff, we’re told, and Harry had groomed him to be his successor, sending him to the FBI schools and such. From all reports, he’s an able leader and we’re fortunate to have him. Apparently, the electorate agreed.

A political analyst on television last night was awed by the numbers, as were the rest of us. “Even Harry Lee himself would not have pulled 91 percent of the vote!”

In other elections….

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