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Let me just take a few more moments to continue with Jim Brown. Back in the late '90s I took a trip to Florida to see my mom and visit my nephews Todd and Darin and their families. I had promised Dad before he died that I would be sure to get down and see her at least a couple of times a year. I was good to my promise right up to the last month of her life in 2002. I didn't do it because I had promised Dad. I did it because I loved my Mom and because it gave me the chance to visit my nephews and my sister, Peggy, who always called me an only child. More on that some other time.

The trip that I took in 1999 was a solo for me. My wife, Becky, and I usually took one trip together and then I would take one by myself. When it was Becky and me together we basically drove down as quickly as we could. However, when I was driving solo, I'd dawdle just a tad and check out the lighthouses on the way. I have long been interested in lighthouses, those solitary outposts of sanctuary and warning. Earlier in my adult years I had seen a picture of a particular lighthouse and had fallen in love with it. My problem was, it was only a picture. there was no information included to tell me where the lighthouse was located.

In 1994 I saw the same picture again in a shop in Lexington, Kentucky. We were ministering with the Forest Grove Christian Church, Winchester, KY, at the time. I asked the shopowner if she knew anything about the lighthouse. "Yes," she replied, "it is the St. Simons Island Light." Could it be? Is it possible that the lighthouse I had chosen as my favorite one was located in HIS hometown? "Is that St. Simons Island, Georgia?" I asked. "One and the same," she answered. How could I have fallen in love with the lighthouse that is located at the birth place of the great Jim Brown? It was almost too good to be true.

On my trek to see Mom in 1999 I was taking the usual route; I-75 South to Knoxville, then I-40 East to Asheville, NC, then I-26 east to I-90 near the South Carolina Coast, then I-90 on to Palm Bay, Florida where Mom lived. I-90 passed just a few miles West of St. Simons Island, Georgia. I couldn't resist. I had to go see the lighthouse and the community in which Jim Brown was born. The area is a combination of quaint old coastal southern town and upscale beachfront community. Hovels and shacks were just minutes away from multi-million dollar properties. In the midst of them stands the lighthouse, silent, sentinel, a worn reminder that life was not always easy.

"And I, if I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all peoples to myself." John 12:32 St. Simons Island, Georgia, sits as a reminder of the drawing power of something. It drew people to its coastal profit 200 years ago and today still draws people to its ambience. Properties change hands there with regularity and people go there for the recreation and just to get away and relax with the past. Jesus still draws all people. He draws those whose lives were beset by hard labor and those who lives have been lived in the lap of luxury. He draws people by the power of His sacrifice and the promise of His return. Like the lighthouse there in St. Simons Island, Jesus reminds us that life isn't always easy, but as long as He is there, it is purposeful.

"Word from Scotland" from Sandy Shaw

Another Miraculous Transformation