Marbles From Heaven

Marbles From Heaven

By

L. C. Walker

SMASHWORDS EDITION

* * * * *

PUBLISHED BY:

L. C. Walker on Smashwords

Smashwords ISBN:

Marbles From Heaven

Copyright © 2017 by L. C. Walker

All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

This is a work of fiction. All characters, dates, events, and places in this book are fictional unless otherwise stated. Any resemblance to real people is purely coincidental and should not be used to characterize any person living or dead.

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DEDICATION

This book is written to those people that wonder about God and why He does

what He does. I tried to put myself in the thoughts of God and give an

explanation why He does things differently than we would do them.

Maybe I am right or maybe I am wrong, but at least I am

trying to know Him more personally than what I

thought I knew.

FOREWORD

All through a person’s life, they have to make a decision about one thing after another. The main decision a person has to make is the idea of where they will spend eternity. Will they decide on Heaven or will they decide on Hell? If a person decides to spend eternity in Heaven, there is a prerequisite they have to fulfill. The one thing they must do is to accept Christ as their personal Savior. If they accept, they go to Heaven at death or at the Rapture of the Church. In order to go to Hell, a person does not have to do anything. By not doing anything when they die, they go to a holding place called Torment. When time is over, those people in Torment will be summoned to appear at the Great White Throne Judgment. At that judgment, they will be tried and found guilty, and they will be cast into the bottomless pit. Those people will be there for eternity.

This book looks at the life of a small boy who came into life with problems. He put his trust in the Lord and he reaches thousands for Christ. Maybe you can relate to some of his stories and think about the different times you had a chance to tell someone about Christ and you did not. Remember, it is not too late to tell others about Christ; all you have to do is to wait for an opening and then start speaking.

PROLOGUE

At the hospital, the doctors started running one test after another and that is when they found the cancer. It was called a slow moving type of leukemia. However, back in the fifties, any type of cancer was supposed to be slow moving. One test after another proved, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that Uncle Tom had cancer. The doctor told his mom and dad that Tommy probably had a year at the most to live, but it could be only four or five months. If he lasted for a year and a half, it would be a miracle. Miracles do occur and God is in the business of miracles. Uncle Tom would be the first to admit to that.

That first stay was one he said he would never forget. He told me about the medicine they gave him every day. He said it tasted so bad and it made him so sick that sometimes he wanted to die. He told me the worst thing about the medicine occurred about a half hour after he took it. Without any warning, he would start throwing-up until it was all dry heaves. The dry heaves would last for an hour and then it was nap time.

After nap time, he would walk around, unless he was too tired, and then he would use a wheelchair and that is when he met a number of little boys and little girls that were as sick as he was. They told him stories of a place they had visited. They said that every person there was friendly and the thing they liked most was when Jesus would play marbles with them.

Before I go any further, I need to share that they all said the angels would show up at night and take them on the adventure. The adventure they went on was to Heaven. My Uncle Tom said that most of those kids did not recover from their illnesses. When they were close to death, all they could talk about was playing marbles with Jesus; going to that place where everything is peaceful. The people were always happy and friendly and people never died there and they never grew old. They also told about the adventures that the angels would take them on. When they told Uncle Tom about those stories, he wondered why he had not played marbles with Jesus and why the angels never took him on an adventure.

Chapter 1

FOR TWO days, Uncle Tom lay in the hospital on the verge of death. My three boys, my wife and I were the only visitors he had that morning. Other visitors did show up after lunch, once they heard he was in the hospital. I did call my brother and sister and all the other relatives and told them how bad Uncle Tom was and, if they wanted to see him before he made that big trip, they needed to get to the hospital fast. Most arrived a little after lunch, which included his brothers and sisters. Uncle Tom was not old; he was only sixty five. I remember what he said last week, I have lived a long and fruitful life and, if the Lord decides to take me, I’m ready to go.

When I was a boy, Uncle Tom lived in a small house, two houses down from our house. When my mother and father were killed, when I was eleven years old, their will gave me our house. Since our house was bigger, Uncle Tom and my Aunt Lois moved in with my sister, brother and I. They sold their house and I lived there until I got married.

The things I did with Uncle Tom and my dad will linger in my thoughts for all of my life. Although my dad did things with me, it was Uncle Tom who took me on one adventure after another. The adventures we went on were not the type of adventures where you had to go places all of the time. These adventures that I am talking about are those that occur in books and in tall tales. These were things that he said he experienced as a small boy and, even though I said we did not go places, we really did. I will explain a little later what I mean.

Uncle Tom and Aunt Lois raised me, my little sister and little brother after the car wreck that killed my parents. Uncle Tom taught us things that no one else knew anything about. He taught us how to defend ourselves in case a bully tried picking a fight with us. He taught my brother and I how to respect a girl and, when we got older, how to respect a woman. He taught us about the Bible and about God. But a very important thing he taught us was how to play marbles. Those marbles weren’t just any marbles; those were Marbles from Heaven.

Standing at the edge of the hospital bed, I held three marbles in my hand. I would roll them around and click them together so they would make a noise. Uncle Tom said the sound of marbles clicking together always brought back memories of his childhood and how he received marbles while he was in Heaven. I was hoping and praying that the sound would bring him out of the coma he had been in since he came to the hospital.

I knew Uncle Tom was on his final leg of life. Being almost sixty six years old and going through all the things that he had been through, it was a wonder he lived this long. I rolled those marbles around again and let them click so they were louder than before. I reached down and put his hand in mine and squeezed it so he would know someone was here with him. Maybe I just imagined that he squeezed my hand or I was praying that he would squeeze it, but I thought about all of the good times we had had together.

I remembered one of the very first things he ever told me. He sat me down and said, Jimmy boy, if you care about someone, you tell them that you love them. Don’t pussyfoot around, come right out and say it; I love you! He then put his hand on my head and rubbed it and said, I love you.

I looked right at Uncle Tom and I said the same thing, I love you.

My oldest boy looked at me and he saw the tears running down my cheeks and he said, in a manly type of voice for a ten year old, Daddy, is Uncle Tom about to go on the trip that he has told us about many times?

Yes, I stated. He has told us many times about this trip and now he will get to take it once again, but this time he will not be coming back.

It was then that the door opened and in walked the doctor. I wiped the tears off of my face and I watched the doctor as he looked at the chart and then he looked at the monitors. His look told the whole story; Uncle Tom was going downhill very quickly. He turned to me and stated that his time was very short. He did not think that he would make it through the night. I looked up at the machine that showed his heart beats and I knew the beats were slowing down as each hour passed.

At seven the next night, I noticed the heart beats were almost coming to a halt. One of the nurses came into the room and said it would only be minutes before the end. The nurse was correct; death occurred in four minutes. About one minute before the end, the doctor came into the room and was there when Uncle Tom’s heart stopped beating. The doctor looked at his watch and wrote down the exact minute his heart stopped beating. All of the family members were in the room and we were praying that he would not be in any pain when he breathed his last.

There had been so many stories told about Uncle Tom in the past two days that the news media was looking for anything they could write about. I told them once things settled down, I would give them a story they would not believe. Not only that, but all of the stories and the adventures he told about are still as exciting today as they were when he went on them, and that includes his trip to Heaven when he received his marbles.

I remember what he said to me one day when he finished telling me one of his stories. I had heard that story about the marbles six or seven times before. I told him that was my favorite story because it showed me how loving our God can be. Uncle Tom looked at me and then he started to giggle and then he picked the marbles up and laughed louder than anytime I had ever heard him laugh before. He took those marbles and clicked them all together in his hand. He looked at the marbles and said, Yes, Jimmy boy, these marbles are from Heaven.

Uncle Tom was born on March 1, 1946, in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. He lived on the north side of the city until he was out of school. He went to college and during his last year of college he married my Aunt Lois, my dad’s sister. They moved to the south side of the city, only two houses down from where we lived. He stated that he didn’t want to be that close to relatives, but he bought the house because it was sold for half of what it was worth.

Uncle Tom stated that his mother started teaching him how to read at the age of three. By the age of four, he could read some and by the time he reached six he could read at a third or fourth grade level. He said the first thing his mother tried to do was to write things down in a diary of all the things he did each day. She did this for each of his three brothers and two sisters. Sometimes it would be one or two sentences and other times it would be a paragraph or two. When each child reached the age of ten, they had to write down the things they did that day by themselves.

The diary his mother kept told about his sickness and what happened when he went into the hospital when he was four years old. When he started keeping his diary at the age of ten, he would write the events of each day, if it was important, and then he would think back and write about the things he remembered when he received the marbles from Jesus, when he was in Heaven.

My uncle was the second oldest of the six children. His name was Thomas Matthew Morgan. His life started out shaky and it only kept getting worse and worse. When he was first born, he had a breathing problem. He was in the hospital for two weeks and then he had to go to the doctor’s office every other day for the next three weeks until his lungs healed up. His lungs did heal and then it was one problem after another. He was in the hospital more than he was out of the hospital those first four years of his life.

I was told he was not expected to live twice, but because of the prayers and one miracle drug, he was able to pull through each time. After the second major illness, the doctors stated that he had been through more than most people go through all of their life. But Uncle Tom was not finished by a long shot. The next six years would prove to the family and to the doctors that miracles still occur and Uncle Tom would be the best example of one miracle after another.

The first story I want to share with you is not the time when he received his marbles, but what lead up to him winning the marbles. Like I said, Uncle Tom’s life started out shaky. He was in and out of the hospital all through his first four years of life. The story he told me was about his third visit in the hospital that year. He said that he went into the hospital because he was tired all of the time. When most boys were outside playing and having a fun time, he was inside the house resting, because he was so tired. He said just walking made him so tired he would have to sit down and rest for an hour or so. He stated that sometimes he was so tired he just wanted to curl up on a soft chair in the living room and die. Once he said he was so tired he could not reach up and scratch an itch.

At the hospital, the doctors started running one test after another and that is when they found the cancer. It was called a slow moving type of leukemia. However, back in the fifties, any type of cancer was supposed to be slow moving. One test after another proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that Uncle Tom had cancer. The doctor told his mom and dad that Uncle Tom probably had a year at the most to live, but it could even take him in four or five months. If he lasted for a year and one half, it would be a miracle. Miracles do occur and God is in the business of miracles and Uncle Tom will be the first to admit to that.

That stay was one he said he would never forget. He told me about the medicine they gave him every day. He said it tasted so bad and it made him so sick that sometimes he wanted to die. He told me the worst thing about the medicine occurred about a half hour after he took it. Without any warning, he would start throwing-up until it was all dry heaves. The dry heaves would last for an hour and then it was nap time.

After nap time, he would walk around unless he was too tired and then he would use a wheelchair and that is when he met a number of little boys and little girls that were as sick as he was and they told him stories of a place they had visited. They said that every person there was friendly and the thing they liked most was when Jesus would play marbles with them. Before I go any further, he said they told him that the angels would show up at night and take them on this adventure. The adventure they went on was to Heaven. My Uncle Tom said that most of those kids did not recover from their illnesses. When they were close to death, all they could talk about was getting to play marbles with Jesus, going to that place where everything was peaceful, people were always happy and friendly, and that people never die there, nor grow old. They also told about the adventures that the angels would take them on. When they told Uncle Tom about those stories, he wondered why he had not played marbles with Jesus and why the angels never took him on an adventure.

Things would change, but it would take a while for that to happen. The cancer continued to destroy the cells in his body and, during those months, he was so sick he said he told his mom and dad that he wanted to die and go to Heaven so he could play marbles with Jesus. For a boy only four years old and wanting to die was very unusual. But when a boy is as sick as Uncle Tom was during that period of time, it was not unusual. The other kids in the hospital told Uncle Tom about a place where there was no sickness and everything was bright and shiny. That was the place he was thinking about and wanted to go to. It would not be long before that place would become a reality to him and it would be a place that he would yearn for the rest of his life.

About a week before he died, Uncle Tom told my sister, brother and me that the Lord was finished with him here on earth. He said, Every person on earth has a ministry and when that ministry is over, they are taken by death. Some people go to Heaven and others go to a place called Hades. At night in his dreams, he said he was getting home sick for Heaven and there seemed to be a pull on him that he could not explain. He said the feeling was similar to the other times after his first visit to Heaven when he was four years old. On his second visit, there was a pull on him that made him yearn for Heaven and the friends he had met and became acquainted with. People on earth will say it is a peace of mind, but Uncle Tom said that each person that accepts Jesus into their heart has that peace of mind. This was something else; it was like being away from home and wanting to be at home. The feeling is the feeling of wanting to be with Jesus and all of my old friends who I have met when I was a little boy.

Uncle Tom first spoke about the end of his life exactly seven days before he died. He was talking with me and stated, When I die, I would like for you and your sister and brother to take your families to the lake house and sit and talk about some of the adventures we went on. Remember the time we went to Sawyer’s Lake for a fishing trip? he asked.

I smiled and said, Yes, I remember that time like it was yesterday. I spoke about the yarn, oh, I mean story he told us about the headless horseman. I remember how scared we were that night.

At Sawyer’s Lake, there was almost a cave carved back into the rock formation that kept the rain off of you, if it was raining and, if it got a little chilly at night, you could start a fire and keep warm. But the most important thing about Sawyer’s Lake was the idea of being out in the open with the stars and the moon and the mosquitoes, and the coyotes, and the barking dogs. Whoops, we can’t forget the bullfrogs the crickets, the birds that seemed to stay awake all night long with their love calls, and those two or three owls that never sleep at night. Uncle Tom looked at me and smiled and then he reached inside his pocket and pulled out those marbles and clicked them together once again. He then said something that I thought was strange. He said, Jimmy boy, I hope I will never have to use these marbles ever again. What made me think that it sounded strange was because he told me how he was going to use those marbles and what they meant to him.

The next day he spoke to my sister about his coming death and how his desire was to be in Heaven and all the adventures he wanted to go on with his friends like Andy and Timmy. He looked at my sister and said, Yes, those adventures that I could only dream about are going to become a reality. Andy and Timmy have been there for all of these years and I am on the verge of being with them and having what some people will call the time of my life.

My sister said he looked at her and stated that she is saddened with the thought of him passing from here to there. He explained it would only be a short time until the whole Body of Christ would be with Jesus in Heaven. Jesus can only take so much and then He says, ‘Enough is enough; it is time for the judgments to start.’ When that time begins, is a mystery, but we know it is close, very close. Remember one thing and that is to keep your children in the Word, because the Bible says to raise a child in the Word and when he is old, he will not depart from it. He kissed her on the forehead and then he did