Year: 2015

I used to sing an old gospel song named ‘Turn Your Radio On,’ written by Albert Brumley in 1938.

Turn your radio on and listen to the music in the air
Turn your radio on, heaven’s glories share
Turn your lights down low, and listen to the Master’s radio
Get in touch with God, turn your radio on.

The song was written at a time when radios were new to general public, especially those in rural areas. Radio broadcasts were played by stations with call letters and numbers on a dial and to pick up the broadcast you had to have your radio turned on and tuned in to the number on the dial.

I remember particularly Chicago station WLS which was 890 on the dial which I listened to late at night on a little battery-operated transistor radio. It could only be picked up in our area late at night after all the closer stations had quit broadcasting. They played the latest and greatest songs. In the 60s when I was a teen, they had a late-night music broadcast with the Top 40s, playing all the 60s hits, like the Beatles’ songs.

We could tune in to WLS all day long, but would usually only get a few sounds, maybe a little bit of a song, but by 10 p.m. it was mostly loud and clear. Of course the quality of our radio limited the quality of our reception and there was interference of every kind in the air—bad weather, other stations broadcasting, brick walls.

Father God is broadcasting loud and clear all the time. He never stops sending out the signal to us, but we can’t hear or understand his program content because of interference.

God is saying, “You will seek Me and find Me, when you search for Me with all your heart.” Jeremiah 29:13 NKJV.

Seeking God’s will is hard work. Don’t let anyone tell you that it’s easy, because it’s not. You have to search for Him with all your heart.
Lavon Hightower Lewis

The home where I grew up was across the alley from the creek. Bull Creek was a very shallow, lazy creek. Never one time in my life did I see a boat on Bull Creek. Even if someone had tried to float a boat on the creek, they wouldn’t have been able to float under the low bridge on Tahlequah Street.

That’s what made the saying so strange, “When our ship comes in…..”

I often wondered when I was a child what it really meant when someone said, “When our ship comes in…” Oh, I knew it meant that they expected the ship to bring their fortune, to bring them money, but how or why, I didn’t know.

Then in history classes I learned about the early settlers of America and how they depended on ships from England to bring them supplies. I figured it out, that’s what it meant when they said, “when our ship comes in.” The early-day settlers had to carefully watch what they used and use things from nature in their new home in America to “make-do” until the next ship came from England with supplies from home.

Mama would even make a joke about it, “Our ship couldn’t make it up Bull Creek.” The absurdity of that idea of an ocean vessel trying to come up Bull Creek would make us all laugh.

Mama taught us to work hard. We all had to work in the garden which was the biggest one on the block, and yielded the best green beans, corn, tomatoes, beets, all canned in Mason jars to feed us kids during the winter.

She taught us to give to the church, to give to others who were in need, and help out our neighbors and friends when they needed a hand. Mama also taught us to believe in God to supply our needs and not some make-believe “ship coming in.”

King David said, “I have been young, and now am old; Yet I have not seen the righteous forsaken, nor his descendants begging bread.” Psalm 37:25 NKJV.

When I started the third grade, we were assigned a story to write about how we spent our summer vacation. That happened to be the only summer vacation I had ever taken, to California with our cousins.

While we were there, we went to Seal Beach, where we found sea shells and made sand castles in the warm sand. I loved the water, but was also afraid of it. As the shallow water lapped my legs, I enjoyed the warmth, so I moved a little closer to the sea.

I felt the waves climbing higher and higher; first my waist, then my neck, then my mouth. I could taste the saltwater in my mouth and nose. I couldn’t breathe. The sun grew dimmer and dimmer. I was going to drown. The waves pulled me out to sea, but just as I was going under for the last time, the strong hands of the lifeguard dragged me back to shore.

However this was happening only in my mind. The gentle waves were too weak to even draw the seashells out to sea, only deep enough to wash the sand off my tiny feet. I had the feeling that I would drown, but my mother and aunts were keeping a close watch on us little ones.

That was the first story I wrote, but that experience stuck with me and I was encouraged to write poetry by a high school assignment. My senior year a poem I wrote in the form of a sonnet was published in the Oklahoma High School English Teachers Anthology.

I’ll never forget the moment that inspiration came to me, when I suddenly saw, really saw a one-way street sign, so that was the first devotional I ever wrote—that there is only one way to heaven, through Jesus Christ.

God has a great plan for us, and I’m so glad that I seemingly stumbled into God’s plan for my life—to be his writer.

“For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.” Jeremiah 29:11 NIV.