“How many times have I heard this song?” I mumbled to myself as Patsy Kline’s ‘Crazy’ fired up on the too loud jukebox AGAIN. I surveyed the bar to see if Crazy Harry was in the room. Normally when that song was repeated time and again the man all knew as ‘Crazy’ would play his theme song until one of the bartenders would chase him out or take away his jukebox privileges.
Sure enough, there he was hanging on a stool only feet from the ‘box’, swaying to the sultry tones of Patsy. I wondered in my bored state how many times he had played this song. Does he play it at home? Like when he gets up in the morning does, he play it and sway in the bathroom while brushing his teeth? Eating supper does his mom play it so he can digest his food? Does he own a car and have a cassette tape that only has this song looped over and over again? Idle thoughts but I decided that ‘inquiring mines want to know’ so I picked up my drink and moved down the bar to where Crazy was still swaying as if Patsy was standing right in front of him singing her heart out.
He did not notice as I sat down. The music was so loud here I thought that I would have to apply the sponge earplugs I used on the job when working next to a jackhammer. But the song was in its final throws and I waited it out:
“I’m Crazy for trying
And crazy for crying
And I am crazy for loving….
You
It ends with that unmistakable piano lick and then there was blessed silence.
Harry sat there as if mesmerized, was that actual tears in this guys eyes? Jeez, he really is crazy, I thought. Then, as if coming out of a trance. He swung round on his stool legs flailing hitting the stool I was on and almost catapulting me. Only then did he notice me sitting next to him and with great surprise and almost horror he said, “Oh John, I am so sorry, man! I did not see you sitting there! I didn’t hurt you, did I?” His eyes were full of real compassion and his voice with real concern and I was shocked because Harry and I had never talked and yet he knew my name.
He continued to sit there hands almost shaking now. I felt like this had been a really bad idea. This guy is in no shape for me to be asking all kinds of stupid questions. I was about to wave him off and go back to my end of the bar when he spoke in a calm voice that I had a hard time believing came from this wreck of a man, “Stay, John, it is ok, I will be good.” Then leaning over in confidence, “I really am not Crazy, you know. I am Harold J Tompkins Junior.” He leaned back beaming as if he had accomplished a feat of magic. Then he startled me even more saying, “And you are John Weston, the boss. Your crew guys are Bob Miller, Jim Watkins, Tommy Linders and Pete Unsel. They all work for you but don’t like you at all.” And with a look of disapproval and a wag of his finger he continued. “You could be nicer, John. You are a child of the Father! Because God loves us all!” With that it was as if something clicked off in his brain. His eyes went blank and he turned back toward the jukebox. It was as if, for a moment, someone, or something else spoke through Crazy Harold J Tompkins Junior. A message and I knew no matter how many drinks I had that night, I could not shake it.
Have you had one of these kinds of moments? A moment when you feel you have been touched by an angel. Back when this happened to me, I certainly did not think about it in those terms. In fact, I really was at a loss to explain it, so I buried it in the vast recesses of my booze-soaked brain. The strange thing was every time I heard the song ‘Crazy’ after that, it would come back to me. I would see the clarity in Harry’s eyes, the knowing that I was a man who needed something more than I had in my life. And if I could not admit it then, I have admitted it in the years since I was saved by grace, I needed to know that Father and feel his love.
Why do I bother you with this story, you might be asking yourself? Simply because I want you to know today that even if you have not been the best person that you could be, “You are a child of the Father. Because God loves us all!” Here is how the Apostle John put it,
“See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are! The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him.” (1 John 3:1)
I did not know the message I was given back in that smoky bar sitting next to a man I thought of as ‘crazy’, I missed it all together. The reason I did was that I did not know who God and his son Jesus was. I did not see the love HE had lavished on me until I saw this:
“But because of His great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ, even when we were dead in our trespasses. It is by grace you have been saved” (Ephesians 2: 4-5)
God does love me and you this much. And I believe that he will go to unbelievable and supernatural ways to get that message to us.
For me it took way more years than it should to hear the message delivered by an angel of God sitting in a bar. I am praying that it does not take that amount of time for anyone reading this today. Hear what my dear friend Cheri Peters says and today know it is true, “God is ‘crazy’ about you and so am I”! It is comforting for me to know in our politically correct world crazy can be a wonderful word!
Blessings,
John
6/15/20
