Government Is Not The Answer - Good People Are

People always ask what it will take to cure this great country; I think it is far simpler than government programs and great tax increases, more prisons or more spending.
I believe when we as individuals and when we as families begin to live correctly then the country will heal. The country is nothing more than the cumulative sum total of all of us and our ills or health.

Yesterday, I had the chance to celebrate one of those lives. The Memorial service for John Elliott Johnson commemorated one of those lives that heal a family, community and nation.

He and his wife, Virginia, made their home in Hobbs, having come here from Kansas. His lovely wife was quoted by one family member as having said, "Elliott was pretty wild in high school." You would not know it to see him raising his family.

He was an accountant but he was also one of those people in the world who decide to be a step above the rest. He was an expert in his field. Fellow workers, a granddaughter and a son-in-law all spoke of the Elliott they knew. They effectively told of a gentle family man who raised 3 daughters and filled 3 generations with love. He chose to excel in his work and over the course of being an accountant in 7 decades, yes he worked almost 70 years, he built a quiet legacy.

He was simultaneously described as being kind, tenacious, focused and a leader with vision. He built an accounting firm with some of the strongest and most independent accountants in West Texas and Eastern New Mexico. And yet he was described as gentle and loving by his family. That is the mark of someone who has the balance in life right. The main descriptor was that he was a man of integrity, that he would never have understood the need to have an ethics class like they now teach in college. It was just one of his values. If he made a mistake, he owned up to it and corrected it right away. But no one could ever remember him making a mistake.

One of the most revealing statements was when James Francis described that as Elliott walked through the pearly gates God surely pulled him aside and got him to work poring over the book of life and put him in charge of getting the accounting of all the lives from the beginning of time balanced and corrected. Wow, what a tribute.

That is a life that does not need a government to pass laws to keep his family in line or provide for what he was responsible for. The country heals when such people live.

The biggest testament was that the church had to bring in more chairs because rich and poor alike came to honor the man who did things right. The world needs more Elliott Johnsons.

Those of us who are Christians are used to the idea of God, the father. The father who has it right when earthly fathers fall short. We are challenged to be more God-like. The most powerful visualization was when Gary Schubert, one of the 3 sons-in-law, spoke. Each of them, he said, had lost their own fathers during their childhood. As each of them married into the family, Elliott called them in and offered to be the father that they did not have, then he followed through on that. That is taking the teaching to heart; to be more God like, more father like.

When I hear these things about others, I find the barnacles that accumulate in my life being chipped away, if find a refreshing renewal that makes me dedicate myself anew to a purer life, a more noble existence, being more conscious of the needs of those around me and my own responsibilities to myself, my family and to my God. That is the way a nation is healed.

Rest well Mr. John Elliott Johnson, you have earned it and deserve it. You are a legacy of this great land.

May God bless your family.