Surprised and Honored

Ever hear of Cherokee Heights?

I live in this obscure backwater neighborhood of Jacksonville, Florida, cutoff from the rest of the city by an expressway on one side and CSX railroad tracks on the other.

Our neighborhood, Cherokee Heights, was not named after the mighty Indian tribe—not named directly after them, that is.

No, long ago there was a steamboat company plying paddlewheelers along the St. Johns River; the company christened their steamboats with Indian names.

Then later, streets and neighborhoods throughout Jacksonville were named after those long ago riverboats.

Thus, I live in a tiny backwater neighborhood of an almost unknown city in the most southern of the United States.

Our cul-de-sac street ends in a circle where lost people can turn around.

Few strangers wander into the area.

This is No-where-ville.

I’d think that my little bit of work done in this obscure corner of the earth would have no effect anywhere else. I feel that most of my work disappears without leaving a ripple.

But, sometimes, I get surprised.

Yesterday as I worked cataloguing a section of my Florida History book collection for a sale, I received a snail-mail letter from InterVarsity Press.

Back in 1990 IVP published a little paperback I wrote called People Whose Faith Got Them Into Trouble. Hardly any copies sold and the book soon went out of print, so rights reverted to me. My writing did not leave a ripple.

I didn’t give up.

I felt it was a good book.

Still think that.

So, in 2005, I revised and expanded that text and published it at www.bluefishbooks.info under the new title— Strangers On The Earth

Well the IVP letter yesterday carries a request from a church in Singapore to use my book as a script in a radio broadcast which could be heard throughout the great Far East.

That tickles me.

I’m honored.

Yes, the Gethsemane Bible Presbyterian Church of Singapore asked permission to read my book over the air in their 24/7 internet radio broadcasts at http://www.biblewitness.com/webradio/index.htm .

I feel greatly honored that folks in that far country feel my work is suitable to be broadcast to their wide-spread listening audience.

I echo the prayer from their information page, “We pray that the Gospel of Christ will be declared throughout the world, to all nations, even unto the uttermost parts of the earth”.

Of course when I tried to tune in and listen to one of their broadcasts myself, I could not figure out how to turn it on!

Next time I see my son Donald, I’ll ask him how to work a computer radio thingy…

Or, maybe I’ll just keep cataloguing books in silence here in my obscure backwater and let the rest of the world listen… A prophet is not without honor, except…