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Send a letter to the editor to P.O. Box 1600, Dawsonville, GA 30534; fax (706) 265-3276; or email to editor@dawsonnews.com.
DawsonOpinion
WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 25, 2019
This is a page of opinion — ours, yours and
others. Signed columns and cartoons are the
opinions of the writers and artists, and they
may not reflect our views.
Resolve to make
a difference in
someone’s life
DICKYARBROUGH
Columnist
Have you thought about what kind of
difference you have made in this world by
your presence here? Or could make? Or
should make?
Dr. Bill Burch has stepped into the large
footprints left behind by the retired Dr. Gil
Watson, the World’s Greatest Preacher,
and has shown without doubt that he can
flat preach a lick or two himself.
Recently, he shared a story about the
difference one ordinary man made on gen
erations to come. I pass it along as food for
thought and to let Dr. Burch know, if he
happens to be reading along with you, that
I do indeed listen closely to his Sunday
morning sermons. They are well-prepared
and well-presented. Besides, there is
always the possibility he will veer off and
get to talking about me and my sins and
have everybody in the congregation turn
around and stare at me. It pays to stay
alert.
On this particular Sunday, he told of a
Sunday School teacher in Boston in the
1850s by the name of Edward Kimball.
One day, Mr. Kimball visited a clerk
working in a local shoe store. The young
man was from a poor family, had little
education and was employed by his uncle.
A condition of his employment was his
uncle’s insistence that the nephew stay out
of trouble by regularly attending the Mt.
Vernon Congregational Church, where
Kimball taught Sunday School.
In April 1855, Kimball visited the
Holton Shoe Store, found the clerk in a
stockroom, and there spoke to him of the
love of Christ and converted him. That
clerk turned out to became one of the
greatest evangelist of the 19th century,
Dwight Lyman Moody. D.L. Moody is
said to have to reached at least 100 million
people in his lifetime through his crusades
and books.
While preaching in England in 1879,
Moody met a pastor from small church
named Fredrick B. Meyer. The two
became close friends and Meyer made
several trips to the United States to preach.
It was on one such trip that Meyer influ
enced a young man named John Wilbur
Chapman, who himself became an evan
gelist. Chapman later hired a former major
league baseball player, Billy Sunday, to
help him with his evangelistic efforts.
Sunday later became a famous evange
list in his own right in the early part of the
20th century and is said to have reached
more than 100 million people. One of
those was Mordecai Ham. And yes, he,
too, became an evangelist.
In 1932, a group of men in Charlotte,
North Carolina, invited Mordecai Ham to
come to town and hold a series of evange
listic meetings. In attendance each night
was a 16-year-old boy named Billy Frank.
We know him today as Billy Graham, per
haps the greatest of them all.
During his ministry, Billy Graham
preached to more than 2 billion people.
And to think that it all started in a Boston
shoe store in 1855. Some bits of the story
may be apocryphal or even slightly exag
gerated, but not the point that it makes. A
life touched a life which touched a life and
soon.
In this case, it was a series of high-pro
file and charismatic Christian evangelists,
not including Edward Kimball, the
Sunday School teacher that started the
chain with a conversation in a shoe store.
As I sit here waiting for this year to end
and for the start of a new one, I wonder if I
have made a positive difference in some
one’s life. Did I say something or do
something or write something that made
somebody’s life better? I hope so.
Conversely, I hope I wasn’t a negative
influence. I can be a bit impatient and out
spoken at times and I suffer fools poorly.
My mentor, Jasper Dorsey, who headed
Southern Bell’s operations in Georgia and
taught me as much about life as he did the
telephone business, said we should all
leave this world better than we found it.
Otherwise, we have just wasted time and
space. Think on that one for a moment.
Maybe a good way to start the new year
is to make a resolution that instead of
pledging to lose weight or start a new
hobby or save more and spend less, we try
and influence just one life for the better
and see where it goes from there.
Who knows? Maybe a 165 years from
now, someone will tell the story of how
your kind and simple gesture changed the
world. I hope so.
You can reach Dick Yarbrough atdick@
dickyarbrough.com; at P.O. Box 725373,
Atlanta, GA 31139; online at dickyar-
brough.com or on Facebook at www.
facebook.com/dickyarb.
Ghosts
“I wish Christmas would
hurry up and get here!” I would
cry when I was younger. “It’s
taking it forever!”
“It takes as long as it takes,”
was Granny’s reply.
“Why does it take so long?” I
demanded.
Granny’s response was to let
me sit with my whine a little
while, usually continuing with
her sewing or washing dishes
while I awaited her wisdom.
Instead of her normal gruff
reply, she was often quite calm
and gentle with her answer.
“Child, it only feels that way
because you are young. Once
you get older, you will see that
time really goes by much too
fast.”
I crinkled my nose up at her
in disagreement.
“That doesn’t make sense,
Granny,” I said. “My time is 6
o’clock - are you saying your
time is later?”
She gave me a rare smile and
shook her head. “One day,
you’ll get it. Enjoy the fact time
is much slower for you now. I
really wish it was that way for
me.”
Getting from the beginning of
the school year to Christmas
took what felt like 46 months, at
least in child years.
In Granny years, it was a
blink.
I can remember looking at my
little calendar in hopes the days
were passing quicker.
of Christmas present
SUDIE CROUCH
Columnist
“How long before
Christmas?” I’d ask.
“About ten weeks,” Mama
would say.
“Weeks! Tell me days!”
“Around seventy,” she told
me.
“What - that’s longer!”
Mama probably wondered
about my math skills but instead
gently said, “Kitten, it’s not lon
ger; Christmas will be here
around three months.”
I groaned - three months?
Was she adding extra days in
there between Wednesday and
Friday? I think that happened
during the school week some
times.
The only good thing about it
taking a lifetime to get from the
beginning of the school year to
Christmas is that I had time to
get off the Naughty List.
Three months, 10 weeks, 70
days give or take, would surely
be enough time for me to repent
of my sassy ways and get on the
Nice List.
In actuality, it was long
enough for me to hop from list
to list and back again.
I’d even pray for time to go
by quicker, but that didn’t seem
to work.
It felt like I was in some kind
of chronological quicksand. No
matter how many days passed, I
never got any closer to
Christmas.
When I was officially an
adult, time went by a little by
quicker but not by much.
Instead of going at a snail’s
pace, it had sped up to a turtle.
My focus had shifted from
what toys I would get to how
much time off I’d have from
work.
Then, I became a mother and
suddenly, time picked up the
tempo.
I honestly can’t believe how
quickly this year has passed.
How quickly all the years
have gone by.
My son’s earlier Christmases
were mere blinks.
I look at photos and wonder
how some were a dozen years
ago.
“Wasn’t it just the other day
he was so small and wanted
Legos and Pokemon cards?” I
whispered.
The moments have gone by as
if they were fast-forwarded.
How had this happened so
quickly?
“It will go by in a blink,”
Granny used to say. “You’ll
miss it.”
“Miss what?” I asked.
She shook her head, looking
at nothing in particular as she
stared off in the distance. “All of
it. You’ll miss all of it.”
Children grow up into teenag
ers. like mine is now; then on to
the adult child living hours
away.
Things changing and time
passing so rapidly that we can’t
get back.
I used to wonder why Granny
would randomly stop and just
look at us during the holidays.
In the middle of us tearing
open gifts in front of the tree, or
as we shoved sweet potato pie
into our faces during dinner, she
would just be gazing at us.
I thought it was just because
she couldn’t believe she was
going to have to clean up after
our heathen selves later.
“What?” I asked.
“What - what?” she replied.
“What are you looking at us
for?”
She smiled. “I’m taking it all
in,” she said, nodding towards
the rest of the family.
“Everything can be different this
time next year, so I’m just tak
ing it all in.”
And just like she was so right
about the passage of time as an
adult, she was right about how
things can change from one year
to the next.
It may have taken me a few
decades to figure it out but now
I totally get it. All of it.
Sudie Crouch is an award winning
humor columnist and author of the
recently e-published novel, "The
Dahlman Files: ATony Dahlman
Paranormal Mystery."
LETTERTOTHE EDITOR
An irrational rant
To My Betters:
This is an irrational rant. People rant
on everyday and I have to listen. There
was a rant in the paper last week that
blamed Trump for every evil existing
today. In my rant there are none of the
expected expletives so you can read it at
the dinner table with your kids. Skip it if
you have read enough of these. After
all, it is Christmas which should be a
time for joy and hope.
To all my betters and by that I mean
all you all that have fancy titles before
your name. Those of you who attended
the best elite up eastern schools. Those
of you who hold high political office.
Those of you who took us into futile
wars and lost. Those of you who are
heads of departments in major universi
ties. Those of you who are editors of the
big city newspapers and TV feeds.
Those of you in the entertainment cess
pool. Those of you who call yourself
Democrats and see only virtue in your
selves and total evil in all others.
You need a good dose of humility.
For 50 years you have messed up and
messed over the people of the U.S.A.
You exported our industrial heartland.
You have created a fiction about the
nature of humans that has brought us
near the age of ruin because you insist
that all evil can be eliminated by a lov
ing attitude. In the space of a few years
you have created a toxic brew of politi
cal correctness that runs counter to the
accumulated wisdom of the ages.
What you cannot seem to achieve at
the ballot box you try and achieve in the
relativistic federal courts. You will use
every means to over throw the will of
the normal people who you hold in such
disdain.
The economy booms. People have
jobs that want them. We have an abun
dant supply of energy and all you can
say is “the sky is falling.”
We should remove you from power
and drive you into isolation because you
present a clear and present danger to the
rest of normal humanity. You have been
wrong about everything. And you want
the rest of us to join you. Go away. Go
far away.
Well, now I feel better.
Gary Pichon
Marble Hill
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