A Farewell to Myself

Rev. Jones has spun a personal tale of life and death, of faith and unbelief and of forgiveness through the cross of Christ. He finds the gap between man and God and closes it with raw humor and honesty as he describes what it is to look oneself in the heart and say, "Farewell."

"The Lord said, as I knelt in the stream above a waterfall, "I think you'll find many resemblances, Brother Stephen." He meant resemblances between me and the social lepers who were on the banks of the stream below. Here in the jail this morning I discover that one resemblance is wanting to avoid the painful, self-revealing truths of the Bible."

"I was born again-even in the midst of all the muddle. Already, however, as we stood before the falls, they seemed to prophesy a change that would one day become the newer conversion of my mind and my life. Such are the ways, in God's way of doing things, that the future returns to the past and then goes on to clear up, and even change, the present. In memory, now, straight lines and order and syllogisms create only confusion. Faith-no more rational than it is visible or chronological-increasingly, tells the tale."