Note Card: Slightly Used and Greatly Reduced In Price

Written on a 4x6 note card by Stan Julin.

[Blog Author's Note:  In the note card that follows, my father contemplates the nature of his existence before Christ.  From other notes on the same card, it is evident that, in writing this, he was planning his thoughts for an upcoming Rescue Mission sermon.]

I could tell about various people who helped me as a youth:  

• Mr. Thomas, the hardware store owner, 
• Mrs. Blake who saw me when a thief (though she did not see me seeing her, so that I was able to cover my tracks), 
• Roger, the junk man, and Vernon, his brother, (I was sneaky both in thievery and in lying, skilled at deceit and selfishness.), 
• Mrs. Barnett, who successfully engaged me to learn English better, 
• Mrs. Champnany [Blog Author's Note:  "Champnany" is my best guess at my father's handwriting.] , whose grapes I stole and which left me with a discomforted conscience,
• An unknown man who rebuked me for arrogance and who must have thought of himself as failing in rebuke (But he was successful; I remember his words half a century later.),
• Numerous people who had to endure me but were a help simply because they were a long-term and collective soundboard, eventually magnifying my vibrations to my own conscience-in-retrospect, 
• My mother, who caught me in my deceit and chastened me sore, 
• Larry, who caught me stealing strawberries.  

How did I survive to being a man without getting beat up?  

Many a something-or-other I found languishing in the possession of someone else and decided to put it to better use.  Many a time I said what was true but so distorted it to my own advantage that, in essence, it was not true.  Mine was a discordant sound, a musty odor, an out-of-round part, slightly used and greatly reduced in price.  Why it was that God noticed me and designated me as the one to save next I will never know.