Like many small towns, my hometown of Hapeville Georgia was divided down the middle by rail road tracks. When we went to the Post Office, to church, to school or to Wilder’s Ice Cream Parlor, we had to cross the rail road tracks. In those days, many trains went through every day and waiting at the crossing for a train to pass was a common, everyday experience. Initially, this was scary for a little fellow because the trains were so big, fast and loud. But quickly it became nothing more than waiting at a traffic light for the cars to stop.
When I was 10 or 11 years old, some older friends taught me this neat trick of placing a penny on the track in front of the train. After the train passed, you found the penny and it would be smashed flat. The penny came out oval shaped, looking something like a little copper football. We would carry this smashed penny around as a lucky coin. For some reason, it seems we were not supposed to put the penny on the track until the train was in sight; I don’t know why this was, except it made the whole experience more exciting. It would take a second or two to get the penny balanced on the track, and then you ran as fast as you could to get out of the way of the train.
One day Anthony slipped in the gravel and fell by the tracks, escaping the train by only inches. We proudly told the story of how Anthony was almost killed by the train when explaining the game to new-comers. I guess it made us seem braver or gutsier or something, but it proved to be my undoing one day when Mama heard me telling the story to Charles. Mama did not find the game to be exciting, fun or intelligent and I was banned from the game for life.I tried to convince Mama that it was a safe game and explained how “everybody was doing it”, but she didn’t buy it.
I couldn’t guess how many times I tried to justify something I wanted to do by telling Mama “everybody else is doing it”, only to hear her say “if everybody else jumped off a bridge would you jump too” ? She never was one to go with the crowd. Mama believed like Ezra (10:11), “…..separate yourselves from the people of the land…..” “Wherefore come out from among them and be ye separate, saith the Lord…..” (II Cor. 6:17) “Thou shalt not follow a multitude to do evil….” (Exodus 23:2) "As ye have therefore received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk ye in him." (Col. 2:6).
We all want to be popular and have people to like us, and sometimes it seems the best way to achieve that is to follow the leader and blend in. But following Christ has never been about blending in.
