Where's Keith Green When You Need Him?

Dear Readers,

I’m glad you stopped by. Today I’m going to talk about a subject that I’ve been thinking about for some time. I talk about it fairly frequently with close family and friends.

It’s about Keith Green, a Christian songwriter, singer, and pianist popular back in the late 1970’s and early 1980’s before he died in a plane crash in 1982.

Keith became a born again Christian in about 1975. He and Melody, his songwriter wife, soon began taking in people who needed help into their small home in the suburbs of Los Angeles in the San Fernando Valley.

More and more people landed on their doorstep, including recovering drug addicts and prostitutes, bikers, homeless people, and many single pregnant girls needing shelter and safety. My brother in Miami University of Ohio, and a myriad of other college students all over America began subscribing to the Last Days Newsletter. (Wikipedia)

In 1977 the effort grew so much that Keith and Melody started Last Days Ministries and they moved to a 140 acre plot in Texas.

What was it about Keith Green that people were drawn to him? I think it was because he had a singular focus on winning people to Jesus, because he personally experienced the life-changing message of the Messiah.

I have not heard that Last Days Ministries had large fundraising campaigns, tithe challenges, and big name speakers to bring income and popularity to the ministry. It seemed that people were drawn to Keith and a group of persons that just deeply cared about their fellow man, and did not want anyone to go to hell.

I put a link above to a YouTube video that shows only a bit of Keith’s passion to reach others for Christ.

I long for a person like Keith Green to come into my life. A person with no agenda except to reach lost souls for Jesus. And just perhaps…that person will rub off on me.

“Asleep In the Light” by Keith Green

Do you see?
Do you see?
All the people sinking down?
Don't you care?
Don't you care?
Are you gonna let them drown?

How can you be so numb?!
Not to care if they come
You close your eyes,
And pretend the job is done

See you next time,
Arlen

Man With Paranoid Schizophrenia Shifts My Focus to View of Horizon

Dear Readers,

To give a little background I would label myself a fairly focused person. When I’m like that I tend not to look at any other thing, but usually walk with my head down, looking at my object of focus.

I am only slightly aware of my surroundings, perhaps only enough to stay out of a head-on collision. But I ignore persons coming my way, and have to force myself to acknowledge them.

The same holds true when I’m driving a car. You might say you’re glad I’m focused on the road. The problem is that I’m probably not as focused on the road as you might think.

What happens with a person that is focused like me? I was made aware of that one sunny afternoon about twenty years ago while driving down the hill of Claremont Avenue in Ashland, Ohio.

I work in community mental health and at that time I was with a man who has the disabling condition of paranoid schizophrenia. He was a wonderful young man who at times had bizarre behavior, but also was very observant and thoughtful.

I was my usual self thinking of my next task. The passenger in my car roused me out of my reverie when he encouraged me to look at the picturesque sunny horizon and the large blue water tower in the distance located atop a factory building.

The point is I had been driving that same way almost daily for about five or six years, and never once noticed the horizon view.

Here I was, an educated man, and people think of me as a sensitive and observant person. But it took a high school only educated person who was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia to urge me to shift my focus to finally observe the beauty of a horizon.

As a result of my then passenger’s observance, I more often, but not always, look at the horizon while driving down Claremont Avenue.

"I was there when he established the heavens, when he drew the horizon..." Proverbs 8:27

See you next time,
Arlen