"How Great Things"

Chapter 1 The Unseen Things Just looking at my life from the outside, you would not see anything striking or unusual about it. I got married at nineteen, worked at an oil refinery for 38 years, began preaching during that time - well, that might be a little unusual - later retired and moved to West Virginia. Like I said, there is nothing there you could say is a real attention grabber. But it is what you don't see that is so wonderful and so beautiful. It is the miraculous and marvelous workings of God behind the scenes as He guided me, protected me, provided for me, opened doors for me, and led me down paths to blessings greater than anything I could have ever imagined that are so truly amazing. To this day, those memories are still capable of bringing tears to my eyes when I think about them. Join me as we attempt to take a closer look at them. My Grandmother's Birth, A Miraculous Preservation of Life To begin way back at the beginning. On a cold March day in 1909, my grandmother on my mother's side of the family was born. Hers was not a normal birth, however. She was what we would call today a "preemie," and not one born just a couple of weeks early either, but one weighing less than two pounds. It has been said that she was so small that her parents had to dress her in doll clothes and, with no suitable mattresses around for an infant of her size, they made a shoe box into a bed and placed her in that. Like many newborns at that time, she wasn't born in a hospital, but at home, and in a home without central heat at that. To keep her tiny body warm, her parents placed her up near the fireplace. Remember also that in 1909 there were no hospitals with modern ICU facilities for premature babies nor the medical technology and expertise to keep them alive, especially one as small as this. By all medical and scientific accounts, my grandmother shouldn't have lived, and I shouldn't even be here. But through the grace of God she did, and I am. How I Met My Wife Let us now fast forward to the year 1967 where I am now 17 years old, the first of five children born to my parents Mary Lee and Andrew Burris. My mother, being brought up in the Methodist denomination, was not a member of the Primitive Baptist Church at the time of their wedding, and my father, though his mother and father both were, was not yet a member either. In later years both my parents would join the Primitive Baptists, and I can still remember, though it was on separate occasions, when they were both baptized into membership of Bethel Primitive Baptist Church in Baton Rouge, Louisiana by Elder C.C. Tarver. Mama and Daddy were always faithful to attend services at their home church, but like many other Old Baptists, they never went much of anywhere else. Though Bethel was a member of the Amite Association which was made up of eight other churches, there were several of those churches which they had never visited or gone to at all. Once a year on the third weekend in October the Amite Association would meet together at a different church, but my parents had just never gotten around to attending most of those associational meetings. One of the main reasons was that the State Fair always came to Jackson, Mississippi, where my mother was born and raised, that same weekend. Because that was where my grandparents and my mother's two younger sisters still lived, "going to the fair" had not only become a family tradition, it had become one of the high points of the whole year ranking right up there with Thanksgiving and Christmas. Going to the Jackson Fair was just something you did, and you didn't even think of doing anything else that weekend. For as long as I can remember, on the third weekend in October we had always gone to the State Fair. Until 1967. I can still vaguely remember Mama and Daddy discussing the subject that year, the year the Amite Association would be held at New Bethel Church in Tylertown, Mississippi. "You know, we've never been to that church before," they said. "We ought to go this year," or something to that effect. No, we'd never gone there before, nor to some of the rest of them. We didn't even know how to get there. We didn't even know anybody once we got there. For the last fifteen years or so we'd never gone anywhere on that weekend but to the Jackson State Fair. But in due time the decision was made that this year our family would attend the Amite Association at Tylertown, Mississippi instead of going to the fair, and the phone call was made to my grandmother and two aunts. It is difficult to imagine the uproar this caused. Perhaps "uproar" is too strong a word for it, but it did leave everyone north of us in a state of bewilderment and perplexity as to what in the world was going on at this sudden breaking of a long-standing family tradition. "But we've always gone to the fair that weekend," my grandmother and aunts pleaded with my mother. I suppose though at the time we were all familiar with the expression, "The Lord works in mysterious ways," none of us really had a clue as to all that was comprehended in it. It was only in later years that we would come to realize that, in this particular matter, He was indeed mightily at work. For it was at New Bethel Church that year in Tylertown, Mississippi where I met the young lady, Shirey Holmes, who was later to become my wife.