It's All Right

 

Tuesday, May 10, 2022

Whether it be good, or whether it be evil, we will obey the voice of the Lord our God, to whom we send thee; that it may be well with us, when we obey the voice of the Lord our God.  Jeremiah 42:6

I’m convinced each of us has a treasured memory or two (or maybe two hundred) that is triggered by a word or phrase, perhaps a place, sound, or even a smell.  One of my triggers is a phrase:  It’s all right.  It was one of those phrases that defined my friend Vernace’s friend, James May.  In some ways James and Vernace were cut from the same cloth.  They were men of the land, few words, and just about as much as humanly possible, without guile.

When I first arrived at Bethany church, James was in a nursing home.  I was working on meeting my new church family, so I planned to visit the homebound first.  Vernace asked if he could take me to meet James, as they were friends.  When we walked into James’ room he looked at the two of us, and his jaw dropped open in surprise – deep surprise, about three feet from uppers to lowers, and then he smiled from East to West.  James May always greeted you that way when you walked into his room.  He could be as surprised as anyone on earth. 

Yet, some things never rocked his world.  Bad things mostly.  James was as simple as a doorknob, in the very best sense of that description; he was truthful, thankful, and unpretentious.  But the most shining characteristic of James May was his faith that God had stuff, particularly bad stuff, well in control.  His favorite phrase was, in an inimitable whisper:  It’s all right. 

We lost James the same year I met him.  Over the past few decades I’ve been mulling over that phrase, It’s all right.  It’s just a few words, but it always triggers the same warmth and exhuberance of faith I sensed in James May, and his dear friend, Vernace Pugh. 

Vernace died a little less than 5 years after James.  It was a tragic accident that took my friend.  But from the time we lost James until the day we lost Vernace, I heard that phrase at just the right times.  Whenever something gloomy started clouding the horizon, I could see it coming in Vernace’s eyes:  He’s be on the verge of offering a word of hope:  Well, it ain’t purty, but it’s all right….and then he’d smile that knowing James May smile. 

It’s taken awhile, but my mind, which is slower-than-most-folk’s-on-the-uptake, is catching-up.  I finally figured-out Vernace’s purpose for holding James May’s signature line in plain view for me…Vernace loved me enough to recognize this preacher sometimes needed a little unvarnished, and untarnished plain truth – the kind that lets you see more clearly than the clouds of doubt and fear want you to see. 

He wanted me to get it…it really will be all right.

For You Today

I hope you’ve got a friend like James, or Vernace.  And more than that, I hope you can BE a friend like James or Vernace.  We all need to pass that all right down the road.

You chew on that as you hit the Rocky Road with Jesus; have a blessed day!  

[1] Title image: Pixabay.com   Unless noted, Scripture quoted from The New Living Translation^©