Heavenly Transportation
I’m writing this Manna on December 7, to be posted the following Monday. The fact that my best High School friend was born on this day is significant to me. The fact that this is Pearl Harbor Day, always made it easy to remember that this was also his birthday. He was only twenty-three days older than me. I was only fourteen years old and in the 9th grade when my father become Pastor of West End Baptist Church in Houston. That’s a rough age to move and have to get a new set of friends. On the first Sunday in our new church, I sat next to Jimmy Don Ulrich in Sunday School and discovered that we lived one block apart and liked all of the same things. Through High School we commuted to school together, played baseball and basketball together, double dated together. We stayed in touch as he went off to Vietnam, and I went off to college. Later we served as groomsmen in each other’s wedding. After Vietnam, he went to work selling cars for his father-in-law, eventually becoming the owner of Ulrich Motors in Crockett, Texas. The entire time he sold cars, I never owned a car unless it was purchased from him. He often called me to tell me he had a car that was just for me. I usually purchased it. I called him every year on his birthday, December 7, until his death a few years ago. As I was preparing to preach at his funeral, I had a new thought about heaven. I had never before thought about how we would get around in heaven. I read that the streets would be paved with gold (Revelation 21:21), but how would we travel on them? Then this thought came to me – don’t worry about transportation in heaven because Jimmy Don is already there, and he’ll take care of that for you. As the years pass by, I have more and more reasons to look forward to heaven. December 7 reminds me that reunion with Jimmy Don Ulrich is just another of those reasons.
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