When thou vowest a vow

When thou vowest a vow unto God, defer not to pay it; for he hath no pleasure in fools: pay that which thou hast vowed. Ecclesiastes 5:4 KJV

Many years ago and a million miles from this heart,

I swore an oath of promise to the Lord my God.

As I lay deathly still in the rat infested, clinging vine growth of a sewer filled ditch with blood pouring from my eyes. I prayed in silence to almighty God. “Dear God, I know that wicked have been my ways, and troublesome my path, but I am too young to die Lord in the condition that I am. So please God, if you give me but one more chance, I will declare thy wondrous ways to all that cross my path.”

The only sound that my body gave off was the pounding of my heart. I lay as still as I could in the closing darkness. My eyes moved to the left and then the right as I watched my tormenters beat the bushes around me. I could hear the dark grumblings of their voices and could still smell the gunpowder clinging to the air. If they found me, I knew that I was dead. Why didn’t they just leave I thought…and why me?

The fear grew thick now in my chest as one of my assailants drew nearer. “God, where are you?” I promise that if you get me out of this I will…Then the one with the gun was two, maybe three feet from me now, a few more steps and he would be walking right on top of me. This is it I thought…this is it…

I prayed once more and I sprang from my hiding place with vengeance. I swung a small branch that I had picked up knocking my attacker across the head. I then with the speed of the wind took off running once again. I could hear their curses behind me and then the (pop) (pop) of the pistol. My only thought was for my survival at that point.

It was then that I noticed an elderly couple sitting in a car about a hundred feet up the road ahead. With blood streaming down my face from the beating, I ran up to the car and slung open the door and while waving my small stick I said drive.  Drive this car now I demanded…drive, to which in their own fear they did.

I did reach safety, my assailants were never caught. That was thirty-four years ago and to God my dues I still owe. It is only by His Grace that this to you I can even relate though for a long time I was reluctant to even mention it. However, as with my promise to Him, I must at last come clean and pay. For quite sometime now I have known that to Him I must totally commit. Therefore, much of my time as with this Thanksgiving weekend will be spent on writing to glorify Him.

Just in the last two days I have managed eighty-two pages of poems of old and some  new with running commentary and stories of hope to boot. This book, “THE LAST MAN STANDING; POEMS OF FAITH; POEMS OF REDEMPTION” will be dedicated wholly and completely to God.

I have owed this debt much too long and it is only by His love for me that I am even still around. I do this not for me, but for Him. I write this to you all because I love you all like He has loved me. We must try to all come into one accord and believe. Now I know that there are some out there who believe in many different ways and some who do not believe at all…yet even still in that I have a Love for you as well. So please keep an open mind and keep an open heart. Know that even in difference that the spirit of man shall not always cleave to the dark.  Thank you for taking the time to understand this plea.

In His Love…J. Allen Wilson 

ELEVEN 2006