Just Jones by Andy Andrews

Author:Andy Andrews
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Thomas Nelson
Published: 2020-07-02T00:00:00+00:00

Fifteen

It was a Saturday morning. Oliver was due to arrive any moment, and Jones had stepped out the back door of the Five & Dime to empty the trash. Pausing as he did so, Jones caught movement from the corner of his eye. The trash emptied, he turned to stretch, giving himself a moment to survey the situation.

Thirty feet to his right, there was a man slumped behind the steering wheel of a modest blue car in the first double row of the parking deck. Jones saw that he was middle-aged with thinning hair and his car was still running.

Pastor Burke Ruark sat alone in the car as he had for the last forty-five minutes. The well-worn Gaither Vocal Band CD was in the player and their song “Chain Breaker” poured through the vehicle’s heat-cracked stereo speakers. He could leave now, he told himself. He had done what he came to do.

He had seen the old man everyone called Jones. He’d heard countless stories about how the old man had helped people turn their lives around. It was said that he would often do so in a single conversation. One part of him desperately wanted to follow the old man inside. Lately, however, it was the other part of him that had begun to call the shots.

For as long as he could remember, Burke Ruark had fought down the portion of himself that wanted to quit everything he had started, to run away from every situation he faced. Nowadays, however, as sad as it was, he was beginning to accept the judgment of the voice in his head—the one that told him he was a follower, not a leader. Burke had tried to swim against the current, but he was obviously a “watcher,” not a “doer”; a “sometimes,” not an “always.” He was an “I’ll try,” not an “I will.”

Burke knew he had lost confidence, but his sense of adventure had deserted him too. He woke up with no energy. Where was the nerve he’d had as a younger man? Several years ago, a local news reporter had written that Pastor Burke Ruark had “audacity.” When his family had read that, the description made him proud. Burke didn’t feel audacious anymore. Had he lost his courage? Or was it all just a bluff to begin with?

He was an “if I am able,” not a “without a doubt.” He was a “perhaps in the future,” and had not been a “today’s the day!” in a very long time. Burke Ruark had turned into a cautious person in charge who often said, “We need to stop and pray about it.” Somehow, he had backed away from the leader he used to be, the man who would step up and say, “Let’s get started now. We will pray while we work.”

What happened to me? he wondered. I accepted a calling. A tear escaped his eye. Rolling down his cheek, along his nose, and into the corner of his mouth, the tear tasted salty—almost bitter—but he was not surprised.

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