`I Thank My God Upon Every Remembrance Of You`
(Philippians 1:3)
By Darold H. Morgan
By now it is obvious to all of us here today that in reflecting on the life and ministry of Foy Valentine that we have so much to be grateful for.
Foy’s sudden departure to heaven reminds us how grateful we are he was never an invalid. He would have handled a wheelchair or a sick bed more ineptly that anyone in history. And we are grateful for that.
We are grateful, every one of us in this church today, that each of us has fresh, enduring, dynamic memories of this man. Each of us has our own supply of these encounters, which remind us of his genius of friendship and understanding. Particularly, each member of his family will have this treasury of memories as part of his heritage for the balance of their days.
We are grateful for Foy’s skill with words . . . how he could write. Of all the many books he wrote, this last one Whatsoever Things Are Lovely seems to bring so much of his personal values to a focal point. Most of his years of active ministry came through tumultuous times when conflicts and controversies raged. But this last book portrays a man in his retirement years emerging as confident and serene, without any bitterness despite how he was treated.
In his personal Bible, the one he prized the most, now an old dog-eared Scofield Reference version, given to him at his ordination at the FBC of Edgewood, Texas, in 1940 when Foy was about 17 years old (the Bible he always took with him during his many years of preaching all over the world), I found this quote he had written in it from Martin Luther: “My soul is too big to harbor hatred against any man.”
We are grateful for this concept alive and well in Foy.
We are grateful in that final book of his that we see graphically his devotion to his wife and children and grandchildren. I love his dedication “to Laura, John, Trey, Will and Catherine—grandchildren who impress their grandparents as being well above average.”
We are grateful that his final full week of life was a time of family fellowship and togetherness that both Foy and Mary Louise indicated as the best time together—ever! We are grateful that this remarkable family has a heritage of love and Christian excellence that will bear rich fruit in God’s timing.
We are grateful that Foy did not have nor did he want a halo for his 82 years of living to the brim. He might have one now, but we are hesitant to bestow it today. He, his words, and our multiple personal encounters remind us of a delightfully quirky character almost unlike anyone else we have ever known. For example, he collected rocks and then used many, many of them in that fireplace in that mountain cabin in Red River, New Mexico. Not many could combine this hobby with his love of mountains. But he did.
Take him to a movie and he went to sleep automatically. He refused to get cable TV believing strongly that nothing on the screen was ever worth seeing. He actually got a cell phone, but he never learned how to operate it. Computers to him deserved the biblical epithet of an anathema.
He loved to play Scrabble, and he was good at it. For nearly 20 years my wife and Foy took on Mary Louise and me in a weekly game. He loved nothing more than playing all of his tiles at once, usually winning the game because of the extra points accrued to his score. But this led to a marked slowness of playing which often prompted his opponents to utter testy remarks to “speed it up!” Nearly always there would be his countering: “You’ll miss me one of these days when I am gone.” Truer words were never spoken.
We are grateful for Foy’s strong, unquenchable faith in God that gave him the deepest convictions imaginable about eternal life. In the final analysis he was an old-time Baptist who believed to the hilt the truths uttered by Jesus and Paul, about everlasting life and fellowship with God. The older he grew, the more he meditated on these concepts. His choice today of the hymns we have and will sing is a lovely reminder of his faith. His role in the Texas Baptist Youth Revival movement back in the 1940s and 1950s speak to his devotion. Bruce McIver’s powerful book, Riding the Winds of God documents Foy’s part in one of the finest evangelistic movements in the last century anywhere in the world.
All of this grew out of a faith that began as a little boy on an East Texas farm, guided by a deacon father and dedicated school teacher mother. It was a faith that continued to grow all through his long life. His omnivorous reading nourished it. A curious student until his final hours, his was a faith in God through Jesus Christ that embraced eternal verities. And we are profoundly grateful that his choices, his commitment, yet, indeed, his life, leads us to an unshakeable awareness that when he so suddenly left us the other morning, he moved into the presence of Almighty God, a resident now of the Father’s House where Fellowship and Reunion and Joy and Security and Ultimate Satisfaction are the norm. And he is waiting for us to join him there because of our own faith in this divine truth.
On about the last page of that old Bible of his, written in that trademark turquoise ink of his (literally to the end refusing to use a ball-point pen), he had copied a prayer penned by the famed churchman, John Henry Newman:
“May God support us all the day long till the shadows lengthen and the evening comes and the busy world is hushed and the fever of life is over and the work is done. Then in His Mercy, may He give us a safe lodging and a holy rest and peace at last.”
Indeed, “I thank my God upon every remembrance of you.”
Dr. Darold H. Morgan is President Emeritus of the Annuity Board of the SBC.
