His life was simple, but it wasn’t easy. It began on the cusp of the Depression along French Creek, deep in the hollers of West Virginia, a land whose beauty belies the harsh realities of mountain living. Nine siblings made for lots of playmates but little extra for Coleman Joseph Ware.
As a married man with two young children of his own, they were burned out of their home and spent several years living in a two-room feed house intended for storing grain. Its gaping walls were whipped by winter winds that scoffed at quilts hand-stitched from sugar sacks. He would learn how to build houses, solid homes that still stand today. He constructed homes for at least 11 neighbors, from the timbering of the green trees to the plumbing and wiring. No charge.
He built a church but was asked to leave when he disrupted the services with talking and giggling. This was the extent of his association with the God who supposedly lived between the church walls he had built himself with his own two hands.
As a child, I helped my Uncle Joe (great-uncle, actually) roll cigarettes on the back porch swing from pungent tobacco pinched from a foil bag. The crow trained to sit on his shoulder stole Aunt Bitty’s false teeth from their jar by the sink. We mixed buckets of slop to feed the pigs that lived in a wooden shed (their unique stink assaults me as I write this), pigs that would be strung up by their ankles and butchered in the yard. Wearing hats he stitched out of hickory leaves and twigs, we dodged cow patties as well as bulls to climb Trexel’s Hill. We shot pistols at pop cans and learned how to whittle a stick. We chased a white cat named Clifford under the porch, and I cried and cried when my daddy wouldn’t let me keep a blue tick hound pup.
Joe loved children, but adults… not so much. They fussed at him to get saved. Bitty nagged him to come to church. His son became a preacher and his daughter married one. His nephew and niece, my father and aunt, visited a couple times a year but just wouldn’t shut up about Jesus.
Joe Ware didn’t ignore them. He didn’t debate them. No—he cursed them, and their God. Hurling profanities that would curl your hair, he screamed, “Go away and don’t ever come back! I don’t want to hear it no more.” But they did. For over forty years, my dad made the dusty, dirt-road trek up the mountain to be blasphemed, belittled and berated. He idolized Unk as a child, and still loved him as a grown man.
On his last visit, Joe showed my dad dozens of scraps of cloth pinned under his pillowcase. “They don’t think I know they’ve pinned these rags under my pillow – little prayer cloths that are supposed to save my soul,” he sneered. He would have snickered had he known his great-great-niece, Emma, and her fifth grade class prayed over his picture for an entire year, asking God for his salvation.
Throat and lung cancer shouldn’t have come as much of a surprise, but they did come quickly. Soon after his diagnosis, old Joe Ware was in the hospital. Pastor Wease Day had comforted an entire community when twelve miners were killed in the Sago Mine a few years back, so he was well accustomed to grief, despair and even anger. He picked up the same conversation he’d been having with Joe Ware for many years:
“Do you know God loves you, Joe? Do you know His Son died for you? Do you know you can be forgiven for your sins? Joe, do you want to go to heaven?”
This time, Joe said yes. He was three weeks shy of his 86th birthday, only two weeks from the date that would be carved on his tombstone. This wasn’t the 11th hour… it was the 11:59:59th hour!
Joe confirmed his salvation in the days he had left. The Holy Spirit must have been dealing with his soul right up to the end when he murmured, “I shouldn’t have cussed at them boys. That was wrong.” (Trouble was, he’d cussed out so many boys we never knew who he was talking about.) His last coherent words were to his neighbor and good friend, Jan (who giggled with him in church): “I’ll meet you in heaven by the big tree.”
Lord, thank You for Your patience, mercy and grace. Thank you for the countless prayers for salvation You have answered, and we once again lift up our loved ones who do not yet know You. Thank you for fixing hope in our hearts, so that we can live and die knowing we will spend eternity with You.
Joe died peacefully at home, the preacher by his side, surrounded by family singing hymns, reading Scriptures and praying together. As they gathered on the back porch afterward in the darkness, a mournful train whistle filled the valley. Joe’s old friend, Tom, was driving the train that night, and he had promised to blow the whistle in honor of his old coon-hunting buddy. Lightening flashed across the sky as if God answered, “We’ll be right here, waiting for you. Just look for us beside the big tree.”
Read 1 Peter 3:15
- What is the reason for the hope that you have? Are you prepared to explain this to someone?
- How would you explain the gospel using the key words 1) faith, 2) hope and 3) love?
- Practice sharing your testimony. Repeat it aloud in the car, or write it out.
- Have you ever seen the gospel shared without gentleness and respect? What happened?
Read Colossians1:3-8
- In Whom is our faith (verse 4)? Who receives our love? Does your hope make you love God and others more?
- Where is our hope stored (verse 5)? What is the source of that hope? Do you hope in the gospel, or do you hope in earthly things?
- Is your hope bearing fruit (verse 6)? How does your understanding of God’s grace change your words, your works, or your walk?
- How did the gospel come to you – was it through your parents, a friend, a neighbor, a pastor, or someone else?
- Who is your Epaphras – a fellow servant who ministers to you? To whom are you an Epaphras?
Read Titus 3:3-7 and Revelation 22:14
- Do you remember your time of foolishness? Are you praying for someone who is still enslaved?
- Thank God for His mercy (Titus 3:5)! He knows the exact moment we will respond.
- How are we saved (Titus 3:5)? As a result, what will happen in heaven (Rev 22:14)?
- Will you be waiting by the big tree? Why or why not?