Emory, pastor of First Baptist Church, was one of two featured speakers at Monday’s Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day celebration. The theme of the event, held at McBeth Baptist Church, was racial unity. As part of that theme, Emory was chosen as the celebration’s first white featured speaker.
Emory spoke of how lives are not only transformed but even pulled back from the brink of death when a person decides to “hitch your wagon to God.” Emory told the story of a man born in 1932 into a single parent home and had to be raised by his grandmother who lost almost everything she had to the Great Depression.
“Poverty can make you do extreme things, good and bad and she chose bad,” he said. “She sold her daughters into prostitution.”
Growing up in such a home proved devastating to the woman’s grandson. Emory said that poverty forced the young boy to leave school in the fifth grade to find work. Though he would eventually get some education and learn how to read somewhat, he never even wrote a check his entire life because of a lack of writing skills.
“For a time he made it on determination alone but eventually this left him so bitter that, on his 30th birthday, he was ready to commit suicide,” he said. “But there, on that basement floor he decided to hitch his wagon to God.”
The decision to give his life to God rather than end it in bitterness transformed the young man. Instead of killing himself he found a new reason to live and he went to work to build a better life for himself and his family. Though possessing little education, he eventually got a job making ball-bearings for the Apollo moon shot.
“I know it works when you hitch your wagon to God because that man’s son his now pastor at First Baptist Church,” Emory said, his voice breaking with emotion. “God kept him from dying in bitterness and three years ago he went home to sit at God’s banquet table.”
Post a Comment
