Be thou faithful unto death, and I will give thee the crown of life. (Revelation 2:10)

Yesterday morning, the phone call informed me of the death of Dr. Clarke Bozeman. This good man, nearly 90 years old, a deacon in the First Baptist Church of Columbus, Mississippi, and a veterinarian in that city for 50 years or more, had been in declining health for some time. His homegoing was not unexpected. The funeral will be a celebration of a life-well lived this Monday.

Two hours later, another call came from the same city (where we served as pastor from 1974-86). J. C. Perkins, longtime member of the First Baptist Church, prominent businessman, husband of Margaret Perkins who has headed the church’s library and media center for a generation or longer, had an accident while working with his boat at the lake. Alone and unable to summon help, he died there.

Two good men, two supportive and loving families. Two lives well-invested in service for God and mankind. A church and city filled with sadness today.

At moments like this, we find comfort in a hundred places: in remembering a thousand events and incidents, in notes and mementoes around the house or in the office, in the hugs and soft words of friends, and in the nearness of those we love most and best.

For disciples of the Lord Jesus Christ, nothing comforts like the assurances and promises of God’s word to His children.

Throughout this weekend, those two families will be opening God’s Word from time to time to claim anew His words to those who love Him. Friends who appear only for a few minutes of comfort will whisper scriptures which they have found most assuring.

“Be thou faithful unto death and I will give thee the crown of life.”

Tomorrow–Sunday, September 11, 2011–is the tenth anniversary of what shall ever be known in American history simply as Nine-Eleven. Pastors will be sharing their own stories of that fateful day as spiritual applications for their people.

I love to tell of Al Braca. This brother-in-the-Lord has been in Heaven for a decade now, but his example and inspiration linger.

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Once you have been clean–I mean really clean–you are never satisfied again with anything less.

If anyone cleanses himself….he will be a vessel for honor, sanctified and useful for the Master, prepared for every good work. (II Timothy 2:21).

Recently, at an outdoor event a church was staging for the community, I sat under a covering sketching anyone and everyone, people of all ages. At one point, something offensive hit me. A man with a body odor that indicated he had been weeks away from the bathtub approached to see what I was doing.

Later, I reflected on how rare that is. In the civilized circles I run in, we almost never encounter the unwashed and the odorific.

But we used to. In fact, it’s very possible I used to be among them. After all, I grew up on the farm and getting dirty and taking rare baths were part of the culture. More on that in a minute, however.

Sometimes when I am out west riding with the cowhands, moving a herd to the trailhead or fighting outlaws or just branding the dogies–I read Western novels a lot, in other words–something occurs to me: these people must have been filthy.

You almost never read in a Western novel of the main characters taking baths. If they do at all, it’s usually a swim in a creek or a formal bought-and-paid-for hot bath in town at the end of their journey.

They seem to wear the same clothes day after day and sleep in them at night.

Is it unfair to conclude that these people were dirty most of the time? Not only that, but I think we can assume it wasn’t just the dusty cowhands on the trail, but the townspeople also–the preacher, the schoolteacher, the sheriff, the merchants–who took rare baths.

The obvious question is: Weren’t they repulsed by the (ahem) fragrance the dirty bodies gave off?

Apparently not. When everyone smells the same way, no one notices.

Bill Glass asked a fellow at the Fort Worth stockyards once how he could stand the smell. He said, “What smell?”

We can get accustomed to anything.

Here’s the story of this (now) citified farmboy regarding baths, with a little application to the spiritual.

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Some of the special days this country observes have more history attached to them–like the tail of a kite–than others. The birthday of Martin Luther King, Jr., for instance, is a statement of regret over centuries of persecution and pain inflicted upon his people by those in power in this and other countries.

Labor Day is one such holiday. The existence of this day on the calendar admits that for untold decades and, yes, centuries, that class of humanity we call “working people” were mistreated and dishonored.

…in lowliness of mind let each esteem others better than himself. Let each of you look out not only for his own interests, but also for the interests of others (Philippians 2:3-4).

“You’re a preacher. What do you know about work?”

Enough to know how to appreciate those who do it. Enough to appreciate my present retirement. And enough not to respond to that kind of barbed question with the sharp retort it deserves.

Last weekend, preaching in Grace Baptist Church of Palmyra, Illinois, I said to Pastor Jim Allen, “You have something going for you many of us preachers do not. You have logged a full career in farming and the business world. When you speak to your people about integrity in work and sharing faith in the marketplace, they know you know whereof you speak.”

My brief history of (ahem) work looks like this: raised on the Alabama farm with all that that implies, part-time jobs through college in bookstores, print shops, men’s clothing stores, and the railroad terminal, then, for two years after college working in a cast iron pipe plant. When the Lord gave me a pastorate that paid full-time so that I did not need to hold down a job on the side, I was one happy camper. And extremely grateful.

Of course, pastors work, too. Brother, do they ever. But for the most part–if you will allow me–I will say, it’s not the kind of work we are honoring on Labor Day.

On Labor Day, we honor those men and women who go unheralded the rest of the year. Those who make this country go: coal-miners, farmers, sanitation workers, sewer workers, plant and factory employees–well, you get the idea.

Most of what I know about the labor movement in America, I learned from the best teacher imaginable: my father who lived through it. At the age of 12, he dropped out of the 7th grade to begin earning a living. That was 1924. For two years, he carried drinking water to workers at a planer mill for 50 cents a day. At 14, he began working inside the coal mines alongside his father. He would tell me, “I was doing a man’s work for a man’s wages.”

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