Christian Living

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Larry Lilly's Letter Tuesday November 6, 2007

"Set the suitcase of yo past down and walk on to yo future. Yo don’t need no baggage." Big Harry

The above advice from Big Harry, an ex-con who overcame his past, his environment and a host of odds is the essence of wisdom Harry gained after God gently brought him along from the ghetto, alcoholism, drug addiction and dealing, three "womenses" plus numerous girl friends to a life of forgiveness, mono marriage and serving Christ as music leader. Advice is said to be cheap and this aspersion is usually true. In Big Harry's case it is pure gold because it worked and is working for him and it will for anyone who will simply trust the Lord and let him work in their life. Harry does this with gusto.

Big Harry's story is told in New Century Publisher's book, Indiana Authors 2007, Inspiration From the Heartland.

My stories in this book are brutal as are several others and these stories, personal testimonies clearly reveal the grace of God is no respecter of persons, gender, color or status. From the ghetto, a dumpster, a stepfather's bed of molestation, to a death chamber in a state prison, the stories track the terror and pain filled path of these people to the city celestial. My thumbnails on each of the stories the last few weeks do not do justice the heart wrenching suffering chronicled in the accounts, nor can I, with quill though it were dipped in golden ink, adequately communicate the deliverance experienced by the men and women in the book.

Marietta is a pseudonym for a girl I grew up with from about the age of five. When she is five and I am six going on seven Marietta tells me one morning of her father raping her. I will always remember this confession and the advice I with all of my six years of wisdom to tell her older brothers, Marietta had done this and they told her to just be quiet about it. I told her to tell her mother, which she did, and was met with the collective solution of that time and place, warnings given in order to preserve the squalor of the status quo: "Be quiet about this or the police would put your daddy in jail, and then what would the rest of them do?" At 14 Marietta tells me of her pregnancy and that her father is the father. Marietta goes through a long downward slide, but, but the Lord intervenes in her life in a rather strange way, and up comes Marietta, earns her GED, through brutally hard work founds her own trucking company and while not living happily ever after she is a truly happy wife, mother and grandmother. Her story alone is worth the price of the book and I sincerely hope you will read of this amazing account of a battered violin of a girl who was touched and changed by the Master's hand.

Big Harry and Marietta grew up in two different worlds, Harry's a black ghetto and Marietta a farm girl with blue eyes and blond hair, yet though they have never met, they both know the tremendous power in Big Harry's statement that moves anyone toward tomorrow with hopes and dreams still burning in their heart:

"Set the suitcase of yo past down and walk on to yo future. Yo don't need no baggage."

Larry Lilly Copyright © 2007 Use with credit.

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