“How firm a foundation, ye saints of the Lord
Is laid for your faith in His excellent Word!
What more can He say than to you He hath said
To you Who for refuge to Jesus have fled?”
This old hymn attributed to Robert Keen in 1787 had long been a hymn of sanity to many people … Captain Lee got into his truck after that bruising meeting at City Hall and put his cassette in, and then ran it back as many times as he needed to in order to get calmed down.
Captain Lee's emotions were all over the place after the meeting. Obviously, he and Mayor Garner had been victorious … but the fact that it had to come to having to go that far to get the city of Big Loft to begin to do the right thing toward a public hazard.
Captain Lee's cell phone buzzed … it was his cousin, Ironwood Hamilton.
“How are you, Harry?”
“I don't know, Woody.”
“Well, you're not calling me by my full name, so I know you are relaxing.”
“Trying to, Woody. I've listened to 'How Firm a Foundation' about 20 times … here comes my favorite verse again.”
“Well, let's sing along.”
Captain Hamilton of Tinyville was smiling on his side of the phone. His prayers were being answered … Captain Lee was getting better at actively transitioning from one state of mind and emotion by taking immediate effective action. It had been a horrific day, of course, and there was only so much that could be done – there would be terrible personal consequences for everyone involved. And yet … it was a beautiful moment for the two cousins to harmonize over a verse of the favorite hymn:
“When through the deep waters I call thee to go,
The rivers of sorrow shall not thee o’erflow,
For I will be with thee, thy troubles to bless,
And sanctify to thee thy deepest distress.”
Captain Lee put the cassette on pause there, and sang it again, his cousin harmonizing again with him, soft and slow until Captain Lee's voice broke in a sob.
“That's all I have to hold to … today I saw how invested we are in this county in covering for whose who still want to make chattel of us all … but also invested in protecting those who would mow down Black people in their rage for Black people advancing and having equal or better life positions that allow them greater money and authority.
“Mr. Jonas Wright of the Big Loft Municipal Transportation Agency makes more than any 100 LookyLou huns combined, or any thousand since 97.5 percent of them are losing money. All he was doing, and gets paid for every day, is trying to keep them and everyone else in the city safe. I will not be able to sleep tonight because of what he told me … what he heard for hours before what the driver said that ran him down!
“We are also invested in protecting those who talk a good game about blue lives matter … but not when those officers are doing anything other than mowing down Black people and greasing their way to their fantasies of aggrandizement. Officer Thomas Baxter was cussed out for hours right along with Mr. Wright – pigs and you-know-whats to be slaughtered together! Finally someone tried to act it out … and we had to alter the entire political landscape of Big Loft tonight to keep it from happening again tomorrow – like it did not count that 1,029 people are in the hospital and 382 are dead! We had to change the entire political landscape to get people out of office that were just fine with all of that.
“I would have been among the dead, but Officer Joseph Lattimer gave his life for me – yet at that spot, God knew that He would need to design a little shelf below the road that would be built above it … and so Officer Lattimer survived instead of high diving a mile into eternity. But those who wanted to kill me cared nothing for him or me – just another officer in their way, fit to be destroyed!
“All of this – all the families managed and robbed in connection with this – all of these were sold to grave injury and death for a mere $1,000,000 spread out over 36 people. A little over $25,000 per corrupt official! A little over $700 per injured or dead person – adjusting for inflation, is that not the price some of our ancestors would have paid to exhaust a whole human life for their profit? And still, here we are in 2020, and vast tracts of our representatives want to keep this going!
“I have been near despair since preparing for the meeting in City Hall where it all at last came out … to sit there and stay calm and do what had to be done and watch those who had been bribed leave without any repentance. They have gone out without a job, but of the same mind and heart. All we can do is remove people from positions, but we can do nothing about their hearts!”
“But we know the One Who can, and keep our breaking hearts while He does it,” Captain Hamilton said.
“Yes … oh, yes … and that is why I am not in despair … I love the Lord because I knows He sees and hears all of this … He can save those whom He will save and judge those Whom He will judge, and He does not need me to be concerned with that except as I may witness His blessed gospel to them, and keep them in prayer. This is one of the reasons I ask the Holy Spirit to keep me calm in the presence of those enemies with whom I am not in physical combat … who knows what later years and interactions may bring, and how enemies today may be at peace and fellowship in Christ?”
“We both keep that in mind … and you should know that the little official whose life you saved during the water main break on Monday showed up at the Church in the Midst of Life and was saved today – his wife called my wife to tell me!”
“Really?”
“His wife said he came home shaken by what had happened, because he had insulted you and you saved him anyway, and asked her, 'Is that what you've been saying Jesus is like?' That got through to him, Harry!”
“Ah, Lord God, You are good! So good! Thank you – that You would use Your weak and sorrowful servant to do Thy will to bring light to another's mind!”
Captain Lee ran back the cassette, and he and Captain Hamilton sang along to the entire hymn. After that, Captain Lee felt well enough to head for home, and stop briefly by his fiance's apartment on the way.