One time Daddy stole his grandfather.

Great-grandpa Clark was sitting in his wheelchair outside the nursing home watching the traffic below.

Daddy found him there, wearing his usual boggin and gloves in the hot summer breath of Alabama.

Daddy stood a moment watching his grandfather, remembering the once strong, cross-tie cutter now frail at the mercy of the world.

Some people might look on the old man and see someone who’d lost everything, but Daddy saw a man who’d reached the pinnacle of opportunity: the moment in life when you realize you no longer have anything left to lose.

A kind of freedom.

It is for freedom that Christ has set us free.

~ Galatians 5:1

 

“Whatcha studying on, Grandpa?

He was looking down the hill at a little restaurant.

“Shaw! I was thinking what I’d give to go down there for a cup of coffee.”

That restaurant might as well have been on the moon, because Grandpa was barely able to go anywhere these days.

Besides, it was across a four-lane chasm of traffic in the heart of town. Sipping coffee in a restaurant one more time was the stuff of bucket lists.

Taking a tight hold on the rubber wheelchair handles, Daddy’s eyes twinkled.

He asked Grandpa if he was sure he wanted coffee…

“Aw, shaw!”

And just like that, the two jail breakers made a run for it, daddy push-jogging, Grandpa shawing down the bumpy cement hill, across broad lanes into the parking lot of normal things.

Once inside, they felt undetected and content, sipping coffee together…two fearless outlaws thieving moments of joy from Life.

If only for a moment.

Out the big window they watched nurses swarming like hornets from inside the beige bricks on the hill.

Someone had escaped.

They nodded to each other, grinning, knowing what was coming, but sipped their coffee slowly as if it weren’t about to come to an end.

But end it did.

Daddy suffered a severe tongue-lashing from the head nurse over the incident, but the look of Life on Grandpa’s face was worth it all.

I suppose in Heaven when we drift up to the Shore and see Jesus waving His arms, calling out,

Friends! Did you catch anything?

~John 21:5

 

We’ll tell Him these stories sitting around a campfire He built for us, sipping coffee and laughing until our sides hurt.

For we are fishers of men.

Sent to spread the love of Jesus in dark places, catching human spirits one jailbreak at a time.

 

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Follow Me, and I will make you fishers of men.

~ Jesus

{Matthew 4:19}