San Francisco and The Jesus People – III

Ralph and Shirley Manners were in their 60’s. Shirley was a large woman with a smile that would brighten just about anyone’s day and a laugh that could light up the city. She radiated exuberance. Ralph was shorter than Shirley, easy going, always dressed neatly, and, as is often the case with couples, was much quieter than his outgoing spouse.

I took to Ralph and Shirley as soon as I met them, spending time in their home and being treated like a family member. 

One weekend they asked if I wanted to visit Ralph’s mother, who lived in Oakland. Of course I did, so off we went.

“Momma" was in her advanced 80’s and lived in a two-bedroom apartment with a living room and eat-in kitchen. During the day we discovered that Momma had clothes that needed washing, so we put her laundry in a two-wheeled shopping cart, the kind folks used to use to wheel groceries home, and we headed off to the laundry mat, Ralph, Shirley, Mamma, and me.

I guess we must have been a sight in that Oakland neighborhood. Racial tensions were high in those days with the Black Panthers marching in front of the Oakland Courthouse (I saw them on another visit to Oakland) and here were three elderly black folks with a young white guy hauling laundry down the street.

Before we knew it the day had turned to night and we decided to stay with Momma and head home the next day. When the question of night clothes was raised Momma had the answer – old fashioned white sleeping robes, the kind with a hole for you to slip your head through and two slits for your arms. So Ralph, Shirley, and Bob each got a white sleeping robe for the night. We would have fit right in with a baptismal service.

The next morning we got up, had breakfast in our robes around the kitchen table, and then we got our Bibles out and read the book of Esther. Yep, we were still in our robes. Read the entire book we did, enjoyed the drama, enjoyed God’s goodness to Esther and Mordecai and all the Jewish folk, and enjoyed God’s goodness to us around the table.

I felt like an honored guest wearing Momma’s robe, no, actually I didn’t, I felt like family, I felt like loved and accepted family. Do you remember what I said in my last post about Pastor Radford singing The Love of God and It Is Well With My Soul, how I said no one could sing those songs like he could? Well, that’s the way I feel about the book of Esther and Momma, and Shirley, and Ralph; I’ll never read the book of Esther the way I read it with those fine people – I experienced the book of Esther that morning, I experienced the book because I experienced the love of God flowing through three elderly black folks to a young white man.

You might recall a few posts ago that I wrote about the gift of a can of fruit cocktail, and how that was one of the greatest gifts I ever received. Well, that robe of Momma’s was the finest piece of clothes I ever put on – I’ve never worn anything finer…and I doubt that anyone else has either.

The Scriptures tell us that a day will come when we’ll have white robes; when that day comes I’ll be looking for Ralph and Shirley, and of course for Momma.