Daddy always said . . .

Emmie Long was around 85 when I met her. Like everyone else who crossed her path, I loved her immediately. Not quite five feet tall, she was quick of mind and kind in word and deed with a genteel low-country drawl bred in her Georgia home.

Miss Emmie held the instructions of her long-deceased father in very high regard. The first time I heard her mention him was in her response to an invitation. I’d recently played a card game called Bunco at a church function, and told her I thought she would enjoy joining me the next time.

“Well, let me ask you this,” she began. (I wish you could hear her voice. But, if you’re not familiar with what I call a genteel low-country drawl, don’t try it in your head or my sweet Miss Emmie will probably sound like Gomer Pyle.) “Do they put money on the table?”

I sputtered a second at the thought. “No, Miss Emmie. We don’t gamble at church.”

“That’s good. Because Daddy always said I can play cards but, if they put money on the table, I am to leave.”

There was more. This piece of advice kept her from sure addiction to tobacco:  “Daddy always said I am not to let a cigarette touch my lips.”

Then, this nugget that would serve a lot of people well: “Daddy always said that I am not to have a Coke, or go to a movie, or buy anything for myself if I owe anyone so much as a nickel.”

Remembering Miss Emmie’s reverence made me wonder what admonition could be most important to take into 2021. Following the upheaval of 2020, we could all use some solid counsel, right? As far as my own daddy goes, I don’t remember any specific verbal instruction unless you count “measure twice, cut once.” It was through his actions that I learned the value of character, hard work, integrity, responsibility, and loyalty.

But, I do have another father who gave the ultimate pearls of wisdom that I have held onto through my life and will take into the new year. My Father God, the one who created the universe and made me in his image, was kind enough to have someone transcribe his eternal life lessons. While there are numerous laws, commands, advice, truisms, and parables in the Bible, God summed them all up in these two: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.” (Matthew 22:37-40 NIV)

Love God. Love others. May I carry those words in my heart and live them out as fervently as Miss Emmie clung to her daddy’s words of wisdom.

Happy New Year!