The Signed Blank Check
By Foy Valentine
A request from a good friend has been pressed on me to reprint this brief piece. I wrote it long ago; and it has been picked up and circulated in various ways since then.
It was more than 53 years ago. I had just turned 21. A never-to-be-forgotten summer had come to an end. Clarence Jordan had invited me to spend the time between Baptist Student Week at Ridgecrest and the beginning of graduate school at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary with him and his family at Koinonia Farm out from Americus, Georgia. I had jumped at the chance. The then brand new enterprise was just in its earliest stages. Clarence`s idealism was contagious. His courage was awesome. His Christian scholarship was impeccable. His impact for Christ was emphatically growing.
We had a glorious summer. Clarence and I built a room for me to sleep in, in a corner of the downstairs part of his family`s garage apartment. He and I poured concrete for the floor. (It has since been broken up I am told by some young whippersnappers from the Baptist Student Union at Wake Forest University.) We went all over that part of the country preaching and teaching and making melody. You could hardly be expected to understand the meaning of the Psalmist`s "joyful noise" unless you could have heard Clarence and me with our musical instruments, him with his trumpet and me with my saxophone, rendering all the verses of "When I Shall Read My Title Clear to Mansions in the Sky" to the startled ears of those hapless Georgia Baptists who came in from their farms to those summer meetings.
We worked in the peanut patches. We cut some wood. We gathered wild grapes. We visited with the neighbors. We made ice cream. We studied the Greek New Testament. We took an occasional sashay into town. We worked at improving race relations. We had some kind of a wonderful, rip-roaring, rousing, delightful time.
The summer`s end came all too quickly; and I got ready to head out for seminary. There was no money, of course. I figured on finding a church to be pastor of when school started back in Texas. Travel was no problem then for hitchhiking was a quite acceptable way to get from one place to another. As I started to go, Clarence pressed into my hand a piece of paper. It was a blank check, good for every penny Koinonia Farm had in the bank, made out to me and signed, "C.L. Jordan."
I never cashed the check, of course. I`ve still got it. It is a tangible reminder of Clarence Jordan`s trust, of his encouragement, of his indomitable vision, of his fathomless faith, of his contagious Christian experience, and of his profound commitment to be a doer of the word.
I think Clarence Jordan was the finest Christian I have ever known. Many factors contribute to my feelings about that: his spell-binding teaching of the Sermon on the Mount, his riding of a motorcycle from Americus to Houston to speak at our Baptist Student Unions` fall retreat for the colleges of Houston, his fantastic Cotton Patch translations of New Testament writings, his prophetic zeal, his compassionate spirit, his Jesus-like generosity, his gentleness, and, of course, his signed blank check.
The lessons of a lifetime are wrapped up in this signed blank check which I`m holding in my left hand as I write this with my right hand. At the risk of being maudlin, I mention a few.
Faith is victorious even if it is dynamited.
Courage is contagious even if cowardice is endemic.
Compassion is communicable even if it gets turned out of the church or crucified.
Friendship is forever even after the grass grows over the red clay mound.
Giving is better than getting even if the check had been cashed.
