My Pop loved Jesus
My father, Wilson Norman McAllister was born in 1930 and died in 2006. I was the fifth of his five children and we grew up in a lower middle-class neighborhood as my dad worked a blue-collar job all of his life. He never went to college, in fact, he didn’t graduate high school. He operated heavy machinery, specifically an overhead crane inside of a plant on Choctaw Boulevard in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
He worked at that job for my entire life and I never remember him missing a single days work. We were not Christians by a longshot, but we would all come to know the Lord together.
I started following Jesus in 1978 and the first person that I told about my decision was him. My Pop.
I remember being scared to tell him what I had decided. I didn’t know how he would respond. The next morning when he got up for work at 4:30 AM, I was sitting on the couch, waiting for him and anxious to tell him about my newfound faith. He listened intently, and when I finished talking he took a deep breath and said, “that’s a fine decision son”.
When I look back now, that was an incredibly wise thing to say, for a man who was not a believer.
I would find out later that his mother, my grandmother, Mandy McAllister was a devout Baptist and worshiped every Sunday at Zion Hill Baptist Church in Independence, LA.
My maternal grandmother, Agnes Soley was Pentecostal and served the Lord at Little River Pentecostal Church in Tickfaw, LA.
Unfortunately, both of my grandmothers died before I was born, and I never knew either one of them, but apparently they said many prayers for their children and grandchildren, even the unborn ones for I still feel their influence in my life today.
So my parents, Ruby and Wilson McAllister came back to Jesus late in life. They were married 50 years and raised five kids. They lived the simple country life and loved each other and us and in the end Jesus too. I still think about them every day and I miss them.
I look forward to the day where we will see each other again in the kingdom of God that will never end.
I love you Pop & Momma.