April Days

Four April days stand out to me (and a number of secondary days such as my sister’s birthday, the OK City bombing, the Columbine slaughter, Saigon falling, and others):

1. On April 8, 1966, Time magazine’s cover asked the question: “Is God Dead?”  It was a shocker!  Who’d even think such a thing in the USA, let alone utter it in 1966?  I remember that Sunday morning, April 10, going to church and approaching Willow on Front St. and Dad talking about what Time had dared to say.  It was impactful then as it is yet today.  That same year Philip Rieff wrote The Triumph of the Therapeutic, in which he said that declaring the death of God was the beginning of a new culture in which there was no outside force or guide so people were free to seek their own pleasures.  People were not pilgrims, but sojourners, with the authority to set their own goals and agenda.  It was the full flower of Genesis 3 where man was baited with autonomy and drank the lie, “You shall be as god.”  “God dead” brought on the sexual revolution, gender revolution, and history revolution we are experiencing today (more on this next week).

2. On April 9, 1865, General Robert E. Lee surrendered the Army of Northern Virginia to General Ulysses S. Grant at the little village of Appomattox just east of Lynchburg, VA.  In 1991, I stood in the parlor of the Wilmer McLean home where that event happened.  The Civil War was horrible both then and now as was slavery terrible, both then and now.  There are too many today who are slaves of the government that provides their housing, food, health care, and other freebies and keeps them subservient to the system.  Most do not see themselves as in bondage, but they are. 

3. On April 14, 1865, President Abraham Lincoln was shot and died the next day.  Just two years ago I stood outside of Ford’s Theatre in D.C. where it happened.  It was a terrible loss that is still being felt today.  These very days there are numerous cries about Jim Crow 2.0 concerning the recently enacted Georgia voter law claiming it is about suppressing the black (and brown) vote.  I am convinced that the rebuild and restoration of the South would have been much more civil had Lincoln been around to direct it.  Rather, the South was subjected to terrible things which drove bitterness into the very fabric of that culture and brought about Jim Crow and Ku Klux Klan activities.  Lincoln’s death left us reeling then and impacts us even today. 

4. On April 16, 1966, I worked all day at our church camp with three other teen boys scrubbing tar off of facia on a new building with a flat roof.  It was a messy, hard job.  (It is good for boys to learn to manually  serve their church.)  About supper time, one of the four called asking if I wanted to go to a Youth for Christ rally in a neighboring town.  I declined as I was tired, but another agreed.  So, two went off to fellowship and sing to Jesus.  

The next morning, a Sunday, I was delivering papers on my bike in some pretty thick fog when a car pulled up and asked if I’d heard about Tommy – the one who had called asking if I wanted to go with him the night before.  I said, “No”.   I was told that he was killed on his way home by a drunk driver on the wrong side of the road with his headlights out (I hate alcohol in any amount for what it does to the one and to those around – I hate it!).  The other boy in the car had only a broken arm and lives today on the northside of Omaha retired from an OPS teaching career.  

Tommy, who loved the Lord immensely, was the starting quarterback on the football team, captain of the basketball team, held the state pole vault record for a period of time, always attended church, listened to Christian radio with its choirs, quartets, and preaching, and carried his Bible from class to class – was exceptional!  And God called his name.  (His brother showed up on my Dad’s door stoop a couple of months ago and asked if he could clear snow as a service to Dad). Tommy, now on the other shore for over a half century, is yet a force in my life.