The first time I wrote about Jim was in September 2001. The roller coaster of addiction has been quite a journey the twenty plus years we’ve been friends, but this week marks three years clean.
Sunday, several of us gathered to praise God and encourage our brother. As you know, the encouragement works both ways as we each run the race God has given us to run.
Mary Grace is a friend of Jim’s who has also suffered the repercussions of drug abuse. Next month she celebrates twelve years of being drug free. No person was more faithful to Jim than Mary Grace while he was homeless on the streets of Atlanta. She would bring clothes, food, and a little money to help Jim know he was not forgotten.
Several others of us would pray constantly and occasionally go searching the dark places to see if Jim was ready to come home. Sunday we recounted the ways God worked supernaturally to bring about what He desired. To look back and remember builds faith in all of us.
Sunday, Mary Grace shared with tears her gratitude to God and His children. Others shared the things Jim has taught us as he has persevered, worked hard in a physically challenging job, and kept us all laughing with his uncommon sense of humor.
I was reminded of the old hymn Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing:
Come, Thou Fount of every blessing, tune my heart to sing Thy grace;
Streams of mercy, never ceasing, call for sounds of loudest praise.
Teach me some melodious sonnet, sung by flaming tongues above.
Praise the mount! I’m fixed upon it, mount of Thy redeeming love.Here I raise my Ebenezer; hither by Thy help I’ve come;
And I hope, by Thy good pleasure, safely to arrive at home.
Jesus sought me when a stranger, wandering from the fold of God;
He, to rescue me from danger, interposed His precious blood.O to grace, how great a debtor daily I’m constrained to be!
Let Thy goodness, like a fetter, bind my wandering heart to Thee.
Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it, prone to leave the God I love;
Here’s my heart, O take and seal it, seal it for Thy courts above.
“Let us hold unswervingly to the hope we profess, for He who promised is faithful. And let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds. Let us not give up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but let us encourage one another – and all the more as you see the Day approaching.”
Hebrews 10:23-25
(Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing written by Robert Robinson in 1757)