FRONT-PORCH GOSPEL: ‘Lick that calf again!’

Welcome this week to the “front porch.”

 A decade or so ago, I heard the great motivational speaker Zig Ziglar tell a memorable story that contained a powerful lesson. He was speaking at Dallas’ Reunion Arena in front of several thousand motivation enthusiasts, including a group of students whom I had taken to hear the iconic speaker. I’ll never forget how Mr. Ziglar owned the stage that day, bouncing around with the vigor of a teenager, telling story after story about his life experiences. This particular story was from when he was a boy after his family had just moved from Alabama to rural Mississippi.

One day when he was about 10, his mama told him to go outside and hoe the garden.

He grabbed the hoe and did as he was told, without complaint. After about half an hour – maybe she had been watching him from the window – she came out to inspect his work. He described the sad scene with the classic Zig Ziglar chuckle:

“I knew the inspection wasn’t going to go the way I wanted,” he laughed, “just by the way my mama was walking on the way out there. Whenever I did a shabby job of something, she’d always put her hands behind her back as she walked; and she’d shake her head the whole way.”

Sure enough, that day she threw her hands behind her and was shaking her head before she had taken ten steps toward the garden. Things did not look up for Zig once she got sight of his work, either. She took one look at the halfway-tilled garden, grimaced, and with a scowl, said,

“Son, you’ve got to lick this calf again.”

He knew what it meant, but he still protested.

“What do you mean, Mama?”

“I mean you’ve got to do this job again. You can do better than that.”

“But, Mama,” Zig protested again, “most mamas don’t make their sons do any better job than this!”

“That may be,” snapped his mama, “but you’re not ‘most mamas’ son.”

With that, she turned and walked away from the garden just the way she had walked out to it.

For the record, the son of this particular Mississippi mama sweated a good while longer in the garden that day, licking that calf again.

P.S.: By the way, regarding the Lord’s work, we might want to see about licking the calf again, too. You understand.

Coach Steven Bowen, a long-time Red Oak teacher and coach, now enjoys his time as a full-time writer and preacher of the gospel. In addition to his evangelistic travels, he works and writes for the Church of Christ of Red Oak at Uhl Road and Ovilla. Their worship times are 10 a.m. Sundays and 7:30 pm. Wednesdays. Email coachbowen1984@gmail.com or call or text 972-824-5197.