Just an Ordinary Guy

Along came Joe, just an ordinary guy.
He made some wings of sucker sticks
And sailed into the sky.

Joe was an ordinary guy--actually sub-ordinary, if there is such a category. He failed to graduate from high school, though later he acquired a college degree. He never had a good job or made much money. Joe's house was by most evaluations, substandard.

Is there any way you could say that Ordinary Joe did succeed? Well, according to his idea he did. He wanted to know the truth--not the Trivial Pursuit type of truth and certainly not the type suited for a profession. But he wanted to know about the world itself, not by man's standards, but by God's.

He had never found a place in the world and was convinced he never would. For Joe believed he did not belong here. He belonged to another realm and sought to know as much about it as he could. Very slowly his world view became a heavenly one. Heaven would be his home.

Isn't it amazing what 30 or forty years can produce in someone who only had fleeting moments of happiness?

He had been attracted by worldly knowledge. And strange to tell, though he later repudiated it, such knowledge became valuable. He used it to talk to those still caught in its web.

Enough of negatives. What was Joe's secret of escape?

Very simply, it was the Bible. He could remember when he turned in the old wisdom of man for the wisdom of God. He became a Christian, and this made all the difference.

He had been reared in church--not Biblical--creeds. As he read and thought, the old creeds fell away. He learned the Reverse Way of Thinking. Instead of starting with beliefs and ideas and using them to interpret (or ignore) parts of the Bible, he learned the Bible and used it to judge church teachings and often pagan-infested dogma.

He had discovered how to be lonely. But as a wise saint once said, "The truth is a divine thing, a better friend than any human friend." Some day, in heaven, Joe would no more be lonely.