Note Card: Symphony of Symphonies

Written on a 4x6 note card by Stan Julin.

Date Unknown
I can comprehend God destroying evil and the evil one.  There are many other things about him that I can understand (for he gave us his words to be understood).  The thing that stretches my mind the most is the so great salvation.  I am not saying I do not understand it; rather, it is such an amazing symphony of all the issues of truth directed by an amazing conductor.  I never tire of hearing the notes, the harmony of attributes, the resolution of the chords, the richness of its instruments, the purity of its sounds.  Who but God could have conceived such satisfying beauty and majesty? 

The Note Cards

January 15, 2011
It is a sad thing to drive a truck into the old, familiar driveway of our family’s home, with the intent of forever removing my father and mother.  They have lived in the same house for almost forty years.  In fact, my two younger brothers have no memories of my parents living anywhere else.    

However, my folks have been staying at my house for the last few days, and we have plans to turn this into some sort of a permanent arrangement.  Within the space of a few days, my Dad has moved to the next stage of Alzheimer’s.  My mother can no longer provide the care he will need for the rest of his life.  Were my mother in her thirties, my father would still be a handful, but she is in her seventies and struggling with arthritis.

My father has already seen his house for the last time.  It would be too disturbing to his mind to allow him to visit his old home, only to force him to return to my house thereafter.  The first time he had to wake up in my house rather than his own was traumatic enough.  We do not want to rip that Band-Aid off all over again.

The Mosquito Machine

Excerpted from a speech given at the local Rescue Mission, where my father was a regular speaker until recent years. 

May 2010
We called it the Mosquito Machine, for its sound mimicked that of a mosquito in close proximity to one’s ear canal.  As a boy in my bed at night, I would listen to the Mosquito Machine’s sound emanating from the depths of the scrubby forest that surrounded our Florida home.  Sometimes, the sound pierced a night so black that it seemed a wonder it penetrated the oppressive blanket of humid Florida air.  At other times, the screech was borne on white moonlight that fought its way through the oaks overhead to cast jigsaw puzzle pieces of light upon the walls and floor of the bedroom where my brothers and I slept.

To say we slept in that bedroom is, perhaps, overstating.  For we were poor and, though we lived in Florida, we did so without the benefit of air conditioning.  So it was that during the warm months – and there were many of those – bedtime was a sweltering experience, spent anxiously awaiting the arrival, through the screen of a nearby open window, of any possible puff of breeze – there were not many of those.  And while we lay there, willing our body temperatures lower, we listened to the sounds that came through that screen with greater regularity than any breeze.  There were crickets always, unless there was rain.  And sometimes, there was the incessant call of a whippoorwill.   There were the occasional muffled sounds, mixed with splashes of light, of automobiles that made their way down our country road and eased around the curve in front of our land.  Sometimes, leaves rustled nearby as a cat or opossum made its passage through our wooded property.