Buddy Walker’s Journey to the Big House

“Thy word is a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my path.” (Psalm 119:105)

Buddy Walker was a dear friend. He told me the following story and I wrote it as a devotional in Do You Know How God Loves You?

Still in the Family

When I was a boy growing up in Arkansas back during the depression, I lived in town. Like many people back then, my parents went broke. We lost everything we had; so we moved out to the country to a log house near my grandmother. She lived in a fine house with electricity.

At night sometimes, my mama would send me to my grandmother’s house. When I went, Mama always gave me a lantern to tote as I walked along the narrow path. As long as I stayed on the track of that narrow path and kept the lantern in my hand, I did just fine. I used to look forward to reaching the big house. I thought it musthave been something like heaven.

Buddy could have stepped off the path in boredom, desire for adventure, or carelessness. He could have tripped over a hollow log, which could have been the abode of unsavory beasts. Skunks, raccoons, opossums, and snakes may have been lurking in the dark shadows. He could have made a misstep into a bush and torn his pants or ripped the skin on his legs. If he had felt especially adventurous, he could have slipped off down the road to the Mississippi River or to a friend’s house.

With his loving, but strict family, he could be sure that someone would come looking for him, if he wandered off too far and took too long to reach his destination. If he arrived at his grandmother’s house bedraggled, ripped, and smudged, he would have been a boy required to give an account of himself. His grandmother would have taken him in and made him comfortable though. Can’t you just see her giving him a little hug?

He walked along that path with the lamp in his hand from the little house to the big house the way all of us are walking from this place to the big magnificent house of light, glory, grace, love, joy, and peace known as heaven! He walked along with angels guarding his footsteps.

“For He shall give His angels charge over thee, to keep thee in all thy ways. They shall bear thee up in their hands, lest thou dash thy foot against a stone.” (Psalm 91:11-12)

Had he strayed, no matter what condition Buddy was in when he arrived at his grandmother’s house, he would still have been Buddy Walker. That is who he was as a part of the family. All his life he was still a Walker. These simple statements are obvious, but sometimes we need to be reminded that as brothers and sisters adopted into the heavenly Father’s family, we are always his beloved children.

And if he had gone off and fallen into the Mississippi River or been eaten by black bears or bobcats, he would have gone to the “big house” where his heavenly Father would have welcomed him. There’s no way for family members to lose!

April 11, 2011, three days before he would have had his ninety-first birthday, God sent an angel to take him home. I feel sure when he arrived at the pearly gates, a huge welcoming committee embraced him. On the front line must have been my husband, Bobby Cheatham. During the five years my husband was paralyzed Buddy visited him frequently. When Bobby was in HealthSouth Rehab Hospital in Ruston, Buddy visited us every week day. He made sure the therapists and Bobby were giving their best efforts. Some of the therapists thought Buddy was my husband’s father. Also he made sure I had time to go home so I could feed the dogs and cats, launder the clothes, and pick up the mail.

Even though I know Buddy is having a wonderful time praising God with his resonant bass voice, I can’t help feeling sad for his friends still here, his three sons, and especially for his sweet wife Irene. I can’t help weeping for the loss.

Thanks be to God for taking Buddy away from his suffering, for the sparkling example of Christ’s love evidenced in this man, for his witness, and for his homecoming.

“But I would not have you to be ignorant, brethren, concerning them which are asleep, that ye sorrow not, even as others which have no hope. For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so them also which sleep in Jesus will God bring with Him.” 1 Thessalonians 4:13-14


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