By the second week in September, more than half a million dollars had poured into the mission. A couple of days before the groundbreaking ceremony for Deborah’s chapel, Mary Ellen called me. She wanted to share with me something that Jesus had told His disciples, a metaphor for His own death recorded in the Gospel of John: “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the earth and dies, it remains by itself, alone. But if it dies, it bears much fruit.”
In prayer that morning, Mary Ellen said, she’d felt God whispering to her heart, Deborah was like that kernel of wheat.
The next day, Denver dropped by for a visit. Sitting across from me at my kitchen table as he had so many times, he said nearly the same thing but in the language of a country preacher. “Mr. Ron, all good things must end,” he said. “And nothin ever really ends that somethin new don’t begin. Like Miss Debbie. She’s gone, but somethin new is beginnin.”
Three days later, on September 13, we gathered to break ground on “New Beginnings,” the new mission. Only two days before terrorists had crashed a pair of passenger jets into the World Trade Center, changing America forever. Carson lived in New York City. It had taken me hours to reach him by phone, as I sat before the live TV news coverage, stunned at the news, knowing it was now not only my own world that tragedy had changed forever.
The nation ground to a halt, but in honor of Deborah, the mission board decided to go ahead with the groundbreaking. I followed the familiar route she and I had driven so often to the mission, past train tracks and derelict buildings and underpasses that doubled as outhouses for the homeless. The first time Deborah and I traveled East Lancaster, she’d dreamed of bringing beauty there. And she had, but not in the way she’d first imagined. Instead of lining the sidewalks with picket fences, she’d fenced out fear, prejudice, and judgment, creating with her smile and open heart a sanctuary for hundreds. Instead of planting yellow flowers, she’d sown seeds of compassion that changed hearts, mine and Denver’s only two among them.
So I stood with Regan, Denver, my mother, Tommye, and nearly a hun-dred friends that day, under God’s blue canopy, using a ceremony program to shield myself from the sun. We listened as Mayor Kenneth Barr and State Senator Mike Moncrief spoke of the hope this new mission would bring to the homeless of Fort Worth. Behind them, a ten-foot patch of red dirt lay exposed and four shovels festooned with blue ribbons stood like soldiers, ready to turn over the soil. Ready to receive the kernel.
Now on East Lancaster Street stands a new mission that includes new services for the needy: residential rooms for women and children and the Deborah L. Hall Memorial Chapel. Both are a memorial to a woman who served the city, a woman God took home so that in His strange providence, the sick and the lost might find greater refuge and hope. Bitterly, I wondered if He could have managed to build them without taking my wife. It could have been called God’s Chapel and Deborah Hall could have served Him there.
I remembered what C. S. Lewis said of the clash between grief and faith: “The tortures occur,” he wrote. “If they are unnecessary, then there is no God, or a bad one. If there is a good God, then these tortures are necessary for no even moderately good Being could possibly inflict or permit them if they weren’t.”
The pain of losing Deborah still brings tears. And I cannot mask my profound disappointment that God did not answer yes to our prayers for healing. I think He’s okay with that. One of the phrases we evangelicals like to throw around is that Christianity is “not a religion; it’s a relationship.” I believe that, which is why I know that when my faith was shattered and I raged against Him, He still accepted me. And even though I have penciled a black mark in His column, I can be honest about it. That’s what a relation-ship is all about.
Still, I can’t deny the fruit of Deborah’s death—Denver, the new man, and the hundreds of men, women, and children who will be helped because of the new mission. And so, I release her back to God.
The Sunday after the groundbreaking, Denver and I pulled into the parking lot of the New Mount Calvary Baptist Church, a church in a depressed neighborhood in southeast Fort Worth. Pastor Tom Franklin had heard Denver speak at Deborah’s memorial service and for months had kept after me to try to convince him to come and preach at his church. Finally, Denver agreed. I had prayed for a standing-room-only crowd, but by the looks of the parking lot, folks were standing somewhere else that morning.
If Abraham Lincoln had been black, Pastor Tom would have been his twin. Gray-haired and bearded, he greeted us at the church door, pulling us each into a lanky hug. Peeking into the sanctuary, I could see only a few people scattered through the pews.
Pastor Tom read my thoughts. “Don’t worry, Ron. Everyone the Lord wants to be here will be here.”
As the service began and the tiny congregation filled the air with old spirituals, Denver and I huddled on the back row. Pastor Tom had wanted me to introduce Denver from the pulpit but spend a few minutes telling his life story first. As I suspected, Denver wasn’t having any of that. During the singing, he and I huddled on the back row to negotiate.
“It ain’t nobody’s business how I got here!” he whispered. “’Sides, I don’t want to tell em ’bout me. I want to tell em ’bout the Lord.”
“So what do you want me to say?”
He paused and stared down at the Bible laying on the bench next to me. “Just tell em I’m a nobody that’s tryin to tell everbody ’bout Somebody that can save anybody. That’s all you need to tell em.”
And so, when the singing stopped, I walked down front and said just that. Then Denver took the pulpit. At first, his voice quavered a bit, but it was loud. And the longer he preached, the louder and stronger it became. And like a magnet, his voice pulled people in off the street. By the time he wiped the sweat off his face and sat down, the pews were nearly full.
Like a cannonball, Pastor Tom shot out of his seat into the pulpit, raising his arms toward the people. “I believe God wants Denver to come back and preach a revival!” he said. The congregation, most of whom had been drawn into the sanctuary by Denver’s voice, exploded into applause.
My mind flashed to Deborah’s dream, her seeing Denver’s face, and recalling the words of Solomon: There was found in the city a certain poor man who was wise and by his wisdom he saved the city.
Again, something new had begun. Something I was certain had my wife dancing for joy on streets of gold.