My mother was the greatest teacher I have ever known. She had an eleventh grade education from a small country school in Saline, Louisiana and married my father when she was 16, just a month away from her 17th birthday. She grew up on a share cropping farm with four sisters and a brother. My father and my mother lived on a farm until 1941 when my mother convinced my father they had to move to Shreveport, Louisiana and he had to find a “real” job or they would starve on the farm.

My mother drove a school bus most of my young life. Because of that, she preferred to wear pants. And she made those pants herself to save money. This is important to understand because a woman wearing pants in the church in the 1960s was forbidden. Why was this important? My father was a bi-vocational “choir director” and the entire family was at church every time the doors were open. (the photo is from our visit to Disney World in 1994 — A story for another day!)

Now my mother loved the Lord. She taught me to love God and to love others. She always told me, “Bruce, you may be better off than someone else, but you are no better than someone else. We are all the same in the eyes of God.” Maybe that kind of unconditional love is what her college kids saw when they drove a couple of hours from nearby colleges on Sunday morning to sit in her Sunday School class at Blanchard Baptist Church.

Check out my interview with Dr. Tim Blake.

Tim and I talked about being uniquely created by Christ with our spiritual gifts, our inborn talents, and our acquired skills. We talked about how God has a unique place of service for every person!