Witnessing
So the people, who were with Him when He called Lazarus out of the tomb and raised him from the dead, continued to testify about Him.
John 12:17
STORY
Tom T. Hall was born in 1936 in the small town of Olive Hill, Kentucky. He grew up in a log cabin that was built by his grandfather. As a child he was a prolific reader who was also captivated by music broadcasts on the radio. He started playing the guitar at the age of four, and when he was eight he began to compose music. In his six-decade career Hall wrote hundreds of songs. Of those songs twelve reached number one on Billboard’s country music chart. He wrote five to six songs each week in longhand on a yellow legal pad.
The country singer and songwriter created songs that had a social conscious. According to The New York Times, Hall was a “skilled narrator whose songs were straightforward and closely observed, forcing listeners to look at the world, and their preconceived notions about it, in a new light. Concerned with everyday lives and struggles, Mr. Hall’s concise, understated tales had the impact of well-wrought short stories.”
Hall confessed that he never made anything up; that all of his songs are biographical. This was true for his first song and later another life incident became the substructure for his greatest hit.
The first song that he wrote was based on an experience he had when he was nine-years-old. While visiting a friend he overheard a young married couple arguing next door. The line “Haven’t I been good to you?” was repeatedly heard in the exchange of words, stuck in his head and became the lyric that he would use to build his first song around. That song was tilted, “Love’s Been Good To Me.” The chorus reads:
I have been a rover I have walked alone
Hiked a hundred highways never found a home
Still in all I’m happy the reason is you see
Once in a while along the way love’s been good to me
His biggest hit as a songwriter, and the song which has become a cultural touchstone for everyone, is “Harper Valley P.T.A.” The song tells the story of a widowed woman, Mrs. Johnson, who receives a letter from the PTA criticizing her for wearing short dresses and for “drinking and a-running ’round with men and goin’ wild.” Mrs. Johnson shows up at the next PTA meeting wearing a miniskirt and highlights the hypocrisy of the other board members singing:
And then you have the nerve to tell me
You think as a mother I’m not fit
Well, this is just a little Peyton Place
You’re all Harper Valley hypocrites
The song is biographical. Hall had the idea for the song for twenty years before he decided to write it. He described the inspiration for the song, saying, “When I was a small boy, there was a lady in town who had taken on the entire PTA for their indiscretions. The idea stuck with me for years. It was on this balmy afternoon in 1966, sitting at my checkered tablecloth, that I came up with the actual song. It was not hard to write, and I don’t recall that it took more than an hour or so.”
Tom T. Hall is known as “The Storyteller.”
DEVOTION
As a Christian we should relish being called a storyteller. Our personal testimony is a story of what Jesus has done for me and what Jesus means to me. Individuals are hesitant to witness because they fear that they are not biblically knowledgeable enough or will be unable to answer those tough theological questions. What trumps this perceived inadequacy is the sincerity of our witness.
In our lesson Jesus is entering the city of Jerusalem on Palm Sunday. The crowds are so excited that they are lying palm branches at the feet of his donkey and singing “Hosanna!” For most of those gathered this is the first time they have seen Jesus, so their excitement came from having heard about Jesus. This is because those have been taught by of Jesus and witnessed his signs and wonders “continued to testify about Him.”
This verse specifically references those who came to Jerusalem from Bethany and who saw Jesus resuscitate Lazarus. And for those of us who are hesitant to witness because we feel inadequate, recall that Mary and Martha didn’t understand what was taking place at the tomb of their brother Lazarus, but they still believed. They still testified.
It is your personal story that will transform an unbeliever to being a believer.
Dr. Lawson Murray is the president of Scripture Union Canada, which is located in Pickering, Ontario, Canada. He specializes in biblical research. He reported that “80% of the Bible is narrative.” This means that only 20% of the 1,189 chapters in the Bible is written with a lecture format. This figure should cause us to pause for a moment and reflect on our personal testimony. Almost the entire Bible is written in story form.
We need stories. Stories take us to another time and another place, allowing us to experience a life that lies beyond our boundaries. Stories instruct us on living by allowing us to become a surrogate in the life of another individual. Stories invite us into an event that is not our own, yet the message learned is very much our own. Stories are timeless as they possess an unchanging truth from generation to generation.
Some stories are an excursion into fantasyland, though most catapult us into reality. A bedtime story is cute, though a personal testimony is provocative.
We remember stories.
Stories transform lives.
I recall a story that gave me a wonderful understanding of community. It was a ghost story that remains with me as vivid as when I first heard it over sixty years ago. Every July, when I was a child, the Love family had a family reunion in Dover, Ohio, that was attended by a multitude of relatives. In the evening uncle Bud would gather all of the youngsters together on a wide circular front porch and tell us a ghost story. The only one that I recall was a man walking through his house while constantly hearing an unrelenting and frightening wrapping sound. We sat motionless as uncle Bud took us from room to room in search of that sound. And then we were suddenly in the attic. The attic, a dark and scary place to be, a lonely place especially if you are a child. And then, in that foreboding attic, there was a box. My uncle slowly opened the box, creating some anticipation and a lot of innocent fear. The box was finally opened. The man looked in. His eyes became fixed. He was gazing at a piece of wrapping paper. Wrap… Wrap… Wrap… To the relief and joy of us all, it was a piece of wrapping paper that was now making that innocent wrapping sound. Why is this story important to me? The story is insignificant, but the environment in which it is told is most significant.
When we share the story of our Christian journey, the underlying purpose is not to be an entertaining ghost story told on the veranda in the small town of Dover; the purpose is to take our listener’s soul into the heart of the Gospel message.