Bound Of Glory
Florio Bessinger
If you are serious about that, you know the amazing power of the gospel that changes hearts and fills us with more beauty and glory than any life lived apart from God can ever promise. You have experienced the powerful grace of God that is able to take anything that sin has ruined and make it beautiful again. This leads me to my third and final point: What the linen belt can become again.
What God did for Adam and Eve when they sinned, God wants to do for you. He wants to dress you in clothing He graciously provides to cover your nakedness and shame. He wants to wrap the robe of His love around you. What sin has stained and torn, God wants to repair. He does this by weaving forgiveness into the fabric of our lives. God does this by stitching His grace and goodness into the frayed fabric our disobedience has made of His priestly garments. God wants to adorn us with His own glory and beauty, setting them like costly jewels in tattered rags.
Prayer of Confession (spoken in unison): Gracious Lord, when we remember the death of Jesus your Son, we can only wonder at the greatness of your love. We confess our reluctance to follow His example of obedience. Our love is too selective, our excuses too frequent, our blaming too quick, our forgiveness too slow, and our gratitude too rare. By your mercy, deepen our love for you. Help us to serve others as those who have been so graciously served by Jesus, our Master. Turn our pride into compassion, our fear into courage, and our prayers into actions, however small and simple. Do this, we pray, in the name of Jesus, who loved us and gave himself for us. Amen.
Prayer of Application: Gracious God, thank you for sharing your glory with us, your children. Thank you for giving us the gospel, which announces the forgiveness of sins through Jesus Christ, and for filling us with the transforming power of your Holy Spirit. Help us to live as those who have been set free from bondage to sin, and who joyfully wear the robes of righteousness you have provided through Christ Jesus, your Son. We pray in His name. Amen.
In Bound for Glory, Woody Guthrie describes his life in several oil boom towns located in Oklahoma and Texas. Oil prices rose dramatically as the automobile industry expanded. This price increase spawned new exploratory searches for oil in Oklahoma and nearby states, which quickened growth in the area. From 1925 to 1931, the counties that would make up the future Dust Bowl region were vigorously developed.
Pipelines were constructed to transport the oil from these towns to larger metropolitan areas such as Denver, Colorado. Streets were paved, highways expanded, and water and sewer systems developed. Some communities even held festivals in order to celebrate the oil deposits that surrounded them.
In 1933 the Great Depression reached its severest depths. A portion of the one million homeless had by this time become a transient group that moved from place to place in search of work. Guthrie spent years living among these transients, absorbing the particulars of the lifestyle. Some of these people viewed themselves as part of a long hobo tradition that had its roots in the previous century:
Transients most often rode on freight cars and placed themselves almost anywhere on board the railway vehicles. They rode inside cars, underneath them, on top, in the front, and on the sides. Of course, flipping trains was quite dangerous and people often died in the process. Boxcar doors opened without warning, sometimes hurling inhabitants out the door. Cargo shifted, crushing those beneath it. The most courageous transients rode the rods, propping themselves along the four-foot bar underneath the train, inches away from the tracks.
As the Okies migrated into California during the 1930s, their musical interests encouraged this turn in the entertainment industry. Music took a prominent place in the social activities of the migrants. Guitars, fiddles, harmonicas, and banjos were a common form of entertainment at their campsites.
The Guthries leave town for a while but cannot find work. They return to Okemah exactly one year later, moving into a dirty house in the shabby part of town. Okemah is no longer a boom community. Many people have left, stores are boarded up, and both work and money appear to be scarce.
Guthrie chooses to live in the ramshackle gang fort that he helped build with his friends. He earns money by scrounging through garbage heaps, finding bits and pieces of scraps to sell to the junk man. He also works at odd jobs such as washing spittoons and shining shoes.
Guthrie, now in his twenties, receives a letter from his aunt Laura in Sonora, California, encouraging him to leave dusty Texas and move to her state. Following her advice, he leaves for California, becoming adept at riding railroad trains without paying, evading the police, and begging for food.
During his train rides, Guthrie meets many homeless people. Most are seeking jobs, riding the train to a place that might offer them employment. They fight against one another but also share food, drink, and cigarettes. They swap stories and evade the police and train guards who try to keep the homeless from riding for free. Sometimes sneaking inside boxcars, sometimes on top, they endure choking dust, freezing rain, and unbearable wind or heat.
He travels and plays his guitar through forty-two states, living on the tips he made. Guthrie becomes famous during his travels; he performs on the radio and makes records. The autobiography documents how, despite his fame, he chooses to remain poor and to continue the way of life that inspires his songs. In one of the final chapters, he describes a fateful decision. Guthrie has been invited to audition for a job at the Rainbow Room in New York City. The bosses become excited when they hear him sing, and start telling him what he will have to wear and how he must sing in order to please their audience. Guthrie walks out. Instead of taking the job, he finds a friend, jumps on a barge, and leaves. A short while later the book ends where it began, on a train bound for glory.
Some day people are going to wake up to the fact that Woody Guthrie and the ten thousand songs that leap and tumble off the strings of his music box are a national possession, like Yellowstone or Yosemite, and part of the best stuff this country has to show the world.
The book, however, caused Guthrie some personal trouble. One chapter graphically describes his cousin, Warren Tanner, sadistically killing kittens. Upset by the portrayal, Tanner sued Guthrie for libel.
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The vivid illustrations and snappy text bring the Glory Train to life as it welcomes singing passengers. The excitement is palpable as the train clicks and clacks through scenic deserts, over lush mountains, and across sparkling bridges. Under the guidance of the watchful Conductor, the heaven-bound train bops and bounces from Earth to the stars until it reaches the pearly gates, where passengers dance with thrilling joy.
The Glory Train and its passengers represent the great variety of souls who shall inhabit heaven. God is no respecter of persons, as it says in the Bible (see Rom. 2:11). Believers in heaven will come from a variety of races and places.
The representation of the conductor is left up to the reader. For some, he might represent Jesus. For some, he might represent the angel, Gabriel. For others, the conductor might represent, Saint Peter. This is not for me to decide. Readers must bring their imagination to my Gospel party.
African American Music Awareness Month is celebrated each June. Tell us a little bit about the meaning and background of spirituals and their historical significance to African Americans.
Your book includes an activity guide with questions. Tell us about how parents, teachers, ministry leaders and other readers can use the questions and activity guide in the back of your book.
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