A Lesson Learned

The photo is another view of two of Frank's curing barns. I took the photo in April 2010.

Life has been hectic lately. It’s also been frigid here. A woman was in my office today and she complained about the weather. “Aren’t you from Michigan?” I asked. “Yes,” she said, “I’m from Michigan, not Minnesota.” The snow is sticking around and I have been able to get out regular on skis. I skied twilight this evening, a favorite time of the day with nice color across the skies. As I was coming in as the first stars were popping out. I wrote this part below as I was thinking about Uncle Frank, but I didn’t include it in that piece as it really has nothing to do with Frank, but with my cousins and me.

I must have been around 11 or 12 years old. My brother and I were staying with our cousins on their farm; the four of us boys were sharing the same bedroom. We’d been joking around for much of the night, when we should have been sleeping. Instead, we found ourselves talking quietly and saying things boys shouldn’t but do. It was then that I called one of them a fool. I don’t even remember who it was, but Tim, my youngest male cousin immediately said that I was going to burn in hell. That’s a sobering thought when you are a kid. “How do you know?” I asked. He said it was scripture. “Show me,” I demanded. Tim got out his Bible and I think we put the lamp on the floor between the beds so that no one outside the room could see that we had a light on and Tim started looking. And he continued looking. He kept thinking it was here or there, flipping the pages back and forth, but he couldn’t find the passage and soon we went on to other topics. Everyone forgot about it, except for me. But then, I was the one being threatened with hell-fire; this was serious business in my world. Then next day, at my grandparents, I got out a Bible and with the help of a concordance, I searched and was shocked to read “if you say, ‘You fool, you will be liable to the hell of fire.” (Matthew 5:22) I didn’t share my new discovery with anyone, but I’d heard enough about hell in my short life that I made a change. Just in case I wasn’t too late as I didn’t like hot weather even then, I stopped calling other people fools. And to this day, I am bothered by that word.