<TITLE>07. Par 19-21</TITLE>L-19 Did you ever lay a sidewalk? Some of you man, no doubt, have done it. And just scoop up all the dirt, and lay the sidewalk out, pour it with concrete. But then in the summertime when you go to cut the grass, do you know where the grass is the thickest at? Right by the side of that walk. It's twice as thick there as it is anywhere else. Why is it? Down beneath that concrete, you covered over some seeds. But just as sure as that sunshine begins to bathe the earth, and the season's right, that seed's got life in it. And you can't hide life? It'll work its way right over those grains of concrete till it comes out, so it can lift up its little head and praise God. You just can't hide life.
That's the reason if you've got Eternal Life, they may bury you in the sea, or--or cremate your body, but you'll live again when Jesus comes. There's no way to keep you down. You can't hide real life.

L-20 I had a chaplain friend from the First World War. He was telling me, he said, "Billy, one day they'd thrown that there mustard and chlorine gas in the first World War over in France." And he said, "We was out near Alsace Lorraine." And said, "It was been a--an awful day for me. It was Easter, and oh, the gas had just burnt down the trees, and the grass, and there was nothing alive." And he said, "It was a rainy morning, and a nurse came through the room. And she had a--a big bunch of calla lilies in her hand. And she was passing by the beds of these wounded soldiers, and giving each one a lily." Said, "Those crippled boys, with some of them burnt, some of them blind would grab that lily and scream and cry, because it was a token from home." Said, "I couldn't stand it. I walked outside, and the Major said, 'Chaplain, I'm going out to the front to check some tanks that was--or some vehicles that was toring up, and to see if there's any of them that can be brought in,' up into the no-man land where they moved the Germans back from that."

L-21 Said, "I went out there and he went--took me out in the side-car of a little motorcycle." And said, "When we stopped out there on the--the field," he said, "I looked around, and I thought, 'Oh, if this isn't a desolate place.'" Said, "There's not a leaf on a tree. There's not a sprig of grass to be found anywhere. And yet, it's Easter." And said, "I walked along and I kinda attracted to a little rock." And said, "I turned it over with my foot." And said, "What do you think that was under that rock?" Said, "There was a little Easter Lily that had been hid under the rock all the time during the gas and the war." Said, "I started to pull it, and I said, 'It's too sacred.'" Said, "I knelt there and said, 'Lord, hide me in the Rock of Ages. Preserve my life, O Lord, as You have preserved the lily.'" Life, it's a great thing. Life molds your character.


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