HE QUIT

His name was Billy Jack Hoover, he was my wife’s younger brother’s best friend. They were inseparable. Billy Jack and Charlie went to the same school, from kindergarten through the twelfth grade. Both played sports, and both had a Cushman scooter on which they rode up and down highway * with abandon. Why they were able to remain good friends is anybody’s guess. They played some of the “dirtiest” tricks on one another that you can imagine. Charlie was a people person. He always had to have his friends around and he never met a stranger. You would see Charlie talking to someone you did not know, and you would swear they had been acquaintances for years. When they finished their conversation you could ask him, “Who was that” and he would reply, “I don’t know, we were just talking.”
Anyway, over the course of time Charlie made friends with a farmer who lived down the road a couple of miles from their house. He even worked for him some. One of the farmer’s cash crops each year was watermelons. He would give Charlie one or two to take home with him at the end of each day’s work. He even told him anytime he wanted a melon, just come by and get it. Here’s where the plot began to thicken. Charlie told him he would like to play a trick on his friend. It was okay by the farmer, so at an appointed time, (read after dark) he and Billy Jack arrive at the watermelon patch, to “steal” a couple of the farmer’s products. With perfect timing he shows up with shotgun in hand and Charlie conveniently flattens out in a furrow and behind some rather thick watermelon vines. Billy Jack froze in terror when he heard the booming voice asking, “Boy! What do you think you’re doing?” And then the deadly sound of a shotgun being cocked for serious business. The unwitting victim was close to tears when Charlie rose up off the ground and he and the farmer enjoyed a hearty laugh at his expense. A real tussle broke out between Charlie and Billy Jack.
That’s only one of may instances I could site, but the real point of this article happened a couple of years later when these two friends were in high school. It was track season. Charlie was a letterman in four different sports all four years of high school. In track he ran the open quarter and was the anchor leg on the four-by-four hundred relay, and the mile relay. They were competing in the regional finals. The meet was held in an ancient stadium in Kilgore, Texas. To show you how ancient, the track ran in front of the bleachers on one side of the field, and behind them on the other side so that during the race, the participants were hidden from view down the back stretch. It came time for the half-mile race. That was Billy Jack’s event. All went well on the first lap, then during the second lap, they disappeared behind the stands. We waited expectantly to see how he was doing. The other runners sprinted from behind the stands and as we identified each one, we realized there was no Billy Jack. We waited five or ten seconds more, but no Billy Jack. I begin to think it in my mind, but then a voice from behind us articulated it for everyone, “He quit.” Sure enough, when they went to look for him, he was sitting on the curb, arms folded over his knees and his head resting on his arms. He was fine, but he would not look at or speak to anyone. He was ashamed. In his shame, he wanted no companionship at that moment. He had quit.
My point is this; I’m sure that all of us have thought about it at some time in our ministries. “I think I will just quit!” It’s alright if you think about it, but not too much. Just don’t do it. Someone has said, “The only sure way to fail is to quit.” Don’t let it be said of you that, “He quit!” What and awful epithet to carry to our grave, to be engraved on our tombstone, “He quit.” You will reap in due season if you faint not, that is, if you don’t quit.
Don in Georgetown