"We Will Watch!"

"Though the fires of hell be hot and shot and shells are falling, we will not be asleep like the three disciples in the one hour of all time. We will be watching.  We will watch therefore.

Oh, can I forget it?  When that old paralyzed preacher, couldn't walk a step, eighty-six years of age - many years ago a preacher took me out to see him.  I thought, "What shall I say?  He hasn't walked a step in twenty years."  And I thought, "How pitiful!"

But I soon forgot that I was going to say a word to him, for as the old white haired preacher, waiting there in his arm chair, looked at me he said, "Brother Norris, you know every morning at four o'clock the year around, I crawl out of bed and put a blanket around me and get in this chair and roll out on the east veranda."  Then he stopped, and then with a little quiver in his voice, but with confidence, he said, "You know why I go to the east veranda instead of the west?"  I said "No."

He said, "One of these mornings I am going to see the Day Star, and I want to be awake when He comes."

I forgot that he was a paralyzed man, and before I knew it this preacher who took me out there - his name was Hinson, a Methodist preacher - we both knelt; one on one side and one on the other.  We felt the tender touch of the emaciated hand of the old soldier as he laid his hand on our heads and prayed like Jacob on Ephraim of Manasseh.  I felt the strength of God in his hands.

Oh, he was watching.  He expected to see something.  He expected to see the Morning Star.

Oh, God, forgive us.  Sometimes we don't even look at the stars.  We don't even think of them."

~ J. Frank Norris

(Taken from one of Dr. Norris' sermons in 1941)