Life Matters - July 20, 2022
Where we see people, God sees potential.
A dear friend of mine, Brother Denny Kenaston, who passed on to his Lord on July 4, 2012 (his personal liberation day, i.e., liberation from his body) taught me more than any other mortal man about seeing potential in people. Brother Denny, as many called him, was a red head, with a red beard that was turning gray, when he succumbed to cancer at the age of 64. Lean and wiry, what Brother Denny lacked in stature, he made up for in vocal ability that could effortlessly, it seemed, and seamlessly hit every octave on the scale. A voice that would seem to get stuck on high passion when “preaching Jesus,” as he called the preaching of the Gospel. Brother Denny had some pastoral duties assisting others, but evangelism, “preaching Jesus” was his passion. To understand that passion, it helps to understand where he came from. Denny came from “being dead in trespasses and sins” as all of us do, which Brother Denny understood very well, and that understanding lent itself to passionate preaching of “the message of reconciliation” through Jesus Christ upon recognition of and repentance from sin. All of us need Jesus.
Before Denny became “Brother Denny,” he was one of a horde of young people in the 1960’s, cut loose from traditional moorings, disillusioned with “the Establishment,” otherwise known as “The Great Society,” with its suburbs, its plastic, paint and varnished veneer, its glamour, glitz and earthly glory to seek answers within themselves. It was a hopeless venture. They wore their hair long, wore sandals and flowered clothing (which earned them the moniker of “flower children”) talked of “free love,” formerly understood to be fornication, and smoked pot as if there was only today. No tomorrow, no future. The Great Depression and two World Wars were in the rear-view mirror, as were the values of their forebearers. Yet the shadows of mushroom clouds over Hiroshima and Nagasaki, together with a present “cold war,” cast darkness over the future, shaking young and old out of a deceptive, lethargic materialism. Many of the older generation turned to incorporating the “origin of species” and modernism into religion and church as they hadn’t done in the past. The insecure younger generation turned away from religion. They turned away from the “squares,” which was anyone or anything that didn’t fit the round, bottomless hole of their lusts. They turned away from materialism, or so they thought. In their haste, they turned into the very thing they turned away from. In their fixation, they became what they loathed. And then many of them turned to Christ. Denny Kenaston was one of those. Had I met this long-haired, long-bearded, red-headed, disillusioned, introverted (by his own admission) hippy, as they came to be called, on the streets of Omaha, NE, would I have seen what he became? I think not. But God did. God saw potential. Me? Knowing Brother Denny, and something of his life, developed in me a hope, an optimism, a seeing of potential in the Denny’s, the Saul’s, the Rahab’s, the Bathsheba’s, the shepherd boys, etc. of this world.
Brother Denny became a pastoring evangelist, a diligent father, a family man, a carpenter, an author, besides being a Powerball of a preacher. Brother Denny was a dreamer. A dreamer who dreamed of leading souls to Christ. He dreamed of Godly churches. He dreamed of Godly homes. He dreamed, he pressed on, he endured, and he won. Not everything turned out in this life as Brother Denny dreamed, but he continued faithful to the end. Did Denny have faults? Indeed, he did. So do I.
Denny and Jackie have several sons that are missionaries and preachers, they have daughters being diligent mothers to their children, faithful to their own husbands. His widow, Jackie, has remarried to a man that Brother Denny would have approved of. And life here goes on. Potential lives on. Until one day when it stops. Then, “as the tree falls, so shall it lie.” For now, we dream on, we press on, we endure, we struggle, we win. Or we lose. But we are not justified by victories won, nor destroyed by battles lost. We are justified freely by His (Jesus’) grace. (Romans 3:24, Titus 3:7) That grace that wins victories (James 2:24) and the grace by which we grow. (2 Peter 3:18) God sees potential. Life Matters!