There is a human being; young in mind but old in heart. This human, let's call her beth, lived in a small room and really didn't do very much. Beth was generally content, but sometimes she had a longing to bust out and really be somebody. Most of the time Beth stayed calm, believing that one day she would get her big chance. One day, while just sitting back and relaxing in her cozy little room, Beth noticed an odd change in her rather simple lifestyle up to this point. Her room, where she sat, was shaking as if an earth quake were taking place. Then, without warning, a large piece if metal came crashing through the wall and struck her. As Beth peered around, she felt extreme pain and soon noticed that her right arm had been severed from her body. The metal came crashing toward her again. It was cold and hard unlike anything that Beth had ever come across before. It cut her head and back severely. Beth could do nothing aside from lie there in her room, bleeding, screaming and going delirious. Eventually meeting her own, lonely, agaonizing death. Beth never got her big chance...because Beth was aborted.
Here is a poem written by a lady that lived in a box in downtown Tulsa, OK until some HMA workers found her and began to help her and work with her. We found out that she had brain damage from getting hit in the head with a pipe and she was literally living like an animal in a wooden box because she couldn't figure out a way to get the help she needed. We helped her with food and clothing, took her to church for over a year and I represented her with the Social Security Administration for six months and then finally Social Security awarded her physical and mental dissability and we helped her move into an apartment, get assisted living help, a post office box and an advocate to help keep her bills and doctors and things like that all organized. During the process of all of this she prayed, got saved, joined the HMA church and has been to chruch probably a couple hundred times. She has even been around to different fellowship churches in a couple of other states. Now I know what some of you are thinking right now. Ohhhh, we would help people like that if we could find them. Here is the problem. In order to find and help people like that, you have to work with the drunkards, the drug addicts, the gang members, prostitutes, etc. They are all mixed in together. You don't get to pick and choose. Ahhhh, that kind of put a damper on things, didn't it? Anyway, this is a picture of her in the very beginning, she is the one with the scarf on her head, and here is her poem.
It's called "OUR LORD"
Our Lord has been so gracious to me,
He has opened my eyes so now I can see.
What was faded and dark,
Has become clear in my heart.
When it was cold, He kept me warm,
Through all the rain and many storms.
I was wanting to just let go,
But Jesus wanted to save my soul.
Just trying to live day by day,
Then one day, I started to pray.
Our Lord has been so patient and so kind,
There is no other love that you will ever find.
Our Lord has been so gracious to me,
And now that I have found him, I am finally free!
This next poem was written in 2006 by a woman that had been on meth for a bout 10 years and every time that she got arrested, she would call and have me come and visit her in the county jail and pray with her. She always prayed a little and did a little better in jail and then when she got out she would always go right back to using meth. The last time that I visited her in jail, she asked me to pray that God would get her out of jail. I told her that the only thing that I was willing to pray was that God's will would be done in her life. A few days later she was sentenced to several years in state prison. When she got to prison a group of church people were going in and holding services. She fought it in the beggining, but eventually she started attending, got saved and delivered from addictions and other things and became a very model inmate and actually says that she would rather be in and clean and saved than out and messing up and lost. Here is her very touching poem. It is called "YOU":
I looked for You in a bottle, I looked for You in a pill.
I looked for you in a man, but nothing still.
I looked for you in a pipe, I looked for you in every puff.
I looked for You in a powder and that still wasn't enough.
But You were there all along.
In all of my writtings and all of my songs.
I would talk to you and not even know,
That you were waiting for me to surrender my soul.
You wouldn't let me die, or for one moment forget that You were there.
I just kept on messing up and acting like no one even cared.
Looking back now it seems so weird.
Remembering that all along it was You that I feared.
You were all that I had left, You are the only one that knew.
That You left me here for a purpose and there were things that You wanted me to do.
You had to lock me up and throw away the key.
Yet it was behind these bars that I was finally set free!
I wrote the first poem as a teenager, I was lost and just lashing out. It was actually filler for my first book. The other two were written by very newly converted ladies that knew absolutely nothing about church except what they had been taught in a few outreach services and what they were feeling in thier hearts. They are all a bit raw but I think we can get something real out of each of them.
More later....
your humble servant,
Rev. D. Todd Sloggett
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