He who did not spare His own Son–but delivered Him up for us all–how shall He not also with Him freely give us all things?  (Romans 8:32)

Behold, what manner of love the Father has bestowed on us, that we should be called the children of God! And such we are!  (I John 3:1)

First story.

I was doing a revival in Jerry Clower’s church.

The year was 1990 and we were in East Fork Baptist Church between McComb and Liberty, Mississippi.  Anyone who has ever heard the inimitable Jerry Clower tell his stories will have heard of this church where he grew up.

That week I was staying in the Clower camphouse, a block through the woods from Jerry and Homerline’s mansion.  We had morning services each day that week at 10  and evening services.  The Clowers did not miss a service.

The organist was Clyde Whittington.

Mr. Clyde had one arm.  You read that right; the church organist was playing the hymns with one arm.

We were at lunch one day–Jerry, and Clyde and I—and Jerry said, “Clyde, I want you to tell Brother Joe how you lost that arm.”

He was baling hay, he said.  The baler was the same kind we had used on the Alabama farm where I grew up.  You pull the baler over to the pile of hay, then uncouple it and turn the tractor around and use a conveyor belt from the tractor to the baler to operate it.  (Sorry, that’s as good as I can describe the process.)  Usually, baling hay would require several people. Mr. Clyde was doing it alone.

You feed the hay into the baler, then get out of the way of the huge arm with a claw slams down upon the hay driving it into the bottom area, then packing it and sending it down the tube to be tied off into bales.  Mr. Clyde was doing it all himself.

And somehow–I’m unclear on this–the huge arm with a claw caught his arm and drove it down into the bottom area.  Breaking it badly.

Not only was his arm now crushed, Mr. Clyde was stuck.  He couldn’t extricate himself from the baler.

And he is alone.  A half mile from the house.

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“My little children, let us not love in word or tongue (only), but in deed and in truth”(I John 3:18).

In our effort to encourage people to “love one another,” we must not leave the impression that words do not count.  While deeds of love and other expressions are vital, a lot of people need to hear the actual words.

“I love you.”  “You have no idea how much you mean to me.” “Thank you for being such a precious friend.” “I treasure you.”

Speaking love is a good thing to do.

First, something inside me needs to speak words of love.  It’s good for me.

One day, my young grandson said, “Grandpa, why do you tell me you love me so much?”

How perceptive, I thought. And such a good question. Why do I do that?

I said, “Grant, the love inside me keeps building up and I have to let it out. And the only way to do that is to say the words.”  Otherwise, I seemed to feel, I would explode.

This satisfied him. And it expresses the truth as well as anything I know.

Speaking love to someone dear to us can be a kind of pressure relief value.  We will explode if we don’t tell that person of our love.

For this reason, writing a love letter to our sweetheart can be almost as good as receiving one from them.

It’s good for us to say “I love you.”

We have all heard stories of a husband saying, “Honey, I love you so much it’s all I can do to keep from telling you.”  We want to scream, “Tell her! Tell her!”

You’ve heard of the trucker whose rig went off a Colorado mountainside in a snowstorm. He was found several days later, buried in the snow, his truck a crumpled wreck.  During the hours before he died, the man had written a note to his wife. He told her how much she meant to him, and added, “I’m so sorry I never told you.”

That line is nearly as tragic as the wreck itself.

In Dan Fogelberg’s tribute to his father called The Leader of the Band, one memorable line stands out:  And Papa, I don’t think I said ‘I love you’ near enough.

Most of us do not say it nearly enough.

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