Ken's dad was the pastor of the 1st Baptist Church in Pryor during the forties.  I was between four and nine at the time.  I remember many of his sermons.  I didn't know Ken.  He graduated from high school when I was in the third grade, went to Tulsa University for a year, hated it, joined the Marine Corps and a year after that was in flight school--then the Korean war--flying and doing ground support.  Over a hundred missions and getting hit regularly.  He was a Captain when I met him.  I was very young.

Later, I had the privilege of living with Ken's dad and mom for a few months when Ken spent thirteen months in Okinawa, or Japan, or the Philippines or all three.  I can't remember. He was at all those places one time or another.  During that time, I got to hear his dad speak again.  By that time I wasn't a child anymore.  I heard his wisdom with the ears of an adult.  Well, simi-adult.  I was twenty-two at the time with two little girls.   He was even better than I remembered.

When he finished preaching and if there was a baptism,  he would step forward in the water and take hold of the glass front and begin to sing.  He had a beautiful voice.  The song he usually sang was "The Ninety and Nine."

When I was telling you about lost boxes and lost coins yesterday, I thought about the verses of the lost sheep and hearing Ken's dad singing about them.

Matthew 18: 12-14 "If a man has a hundred sheep, and one wanders away and is lost, what will he do?  Won't he leave the ninety-nine others and go out into the hills to search for the lost one?  And if he finds it, he will rejoice over it more than over the ninety-nine others safe at home!  Just so, it is not my Father's will that even one of these little ones should perish." (Jesus is speaking.)

I don't know about you, but I am distressed over the people that I know, family and friends, that do not know the Lord.  They are wandering around lost and don't know it.  My prayer is that God will burden their hearts with their condition.  I pray that God doesn't give up on them.