Dr. Paul Dixon has had a pretty significant influence on my life. I was in his evangelism class as a freshman in college at Cedarville University (then college). His passion to see people come to follow Jesus is contagious. I stood in the window before one of our classes and watched the photographer shoot the now famous picture of him and Dr. Jeremiah walking down the sidewalk in locked step. None of us knew at the time what a metaphor that would be for the seamless transition to a new leader at Cedarville that God would bring about. His twenty five year run as president was pretty outstanding. He has always bled the mission of Cedarville and he would share that mission with others and ask them to be his partner in paying for the all the buildings they built during his tenure at Cedarville.

One of the several forums, included chapel and his indulgence in friendship, which galvanized his impact on me, was a discipleship group he invited me to be a part of at his house. It did not hurt his impact upon me that he and his wife were zealous fans of jacket basketball back in those days. I can still hear that which is unable to be mimicked in Mrs. D's cheers from those short stubby pull out bleachers near the Jacket bench. But let me get back to our discipleship group. Several of us would go to their house at some obscure hour in the morning and he would work at anchoring our roots into the disciplines that would take us deep in following Jesus Christ. He opened his Bible and taught us lessons in following Jesus. They were always simple and full of clarity and challenge. We were memorizing scripture together and seeking to follow hard after Christ. I do not know why I was sovereignly chosen. I was in the group with several others, including a trustee's son who seemed to me to be trying to figure out whether he was going forward with Jesus. I wonder what ever became of him. Dr. Dixon had his arm around him pointing to Jesus.

In that group I learned an important lesson that I have never forgotten. It is amazing what God uses to speak to your heart. Paul Dixon's socks! We usually took our shoes off so we were not messing with Mrs. D's carpet. There was always a time when we knelt to pray together. I remember one morning watching him kneel at his chair. I can still see it in my mind's eye and it was the impression on my heart at the time that had stuck with me.

Now the impression was not related to the quality of the socks he wore. They looked to be right off of the shelf of some great haberdashery. They had no worn marks on them. For years I have been of the mind that your socks go through several lives. The first life is the cotton stage. Then you move onto the polished nylon stage when the cotton is gone in the strategic places and you move toward the silk stage. Caleb's Emily invaded our space a few years ago and now has taken up the dishonor of my sock collection. Who cares unless they have to take your shoes off in ER and you show them your silk socks? Well, thanks to Emily and the last few Christmas gatherings, my sock drawer is working its way back to Dr. Dixon.

But we knelt one morning and in my mind's eye I could see that he was just a man. Sure, all of our spit dried up around him and we swallowed our tongue when spoken to by his immanency, but he was just a normal guy. He got cut from his basketball team in high school (probably the only thing in his life he has not been outrageously successful at), and went home and cried, he told me once. That's normal. When we all knelt at those chairs we were just in the stuff of following Jesus together. There was no hierarchy. He was not super man president; he was just a common guy with gifts from God who gave them liberally to the Lord's work. Now this is not your locker room speech about the other team putting their pants on one leg at a time, but I realized that God uses ordinary guys in ways that please him. Now I have certainly learned that he does not always use us in the same ways and to the same extent. Some thirtyfold, some sixty, some a hundred. You know the drill (Mark 4:20).

That sort of bothered me at first. He wears socks and all just like me (now granted his socks are better) and is a normal guy. I wanted him to be super-human, an angel of God. I would felt better about the leadership at Cedarville. But I have learned the genius of God in thinking otherwise. He just uses common ordinary people who love Jesus and his work in extraordinary ways. Then he collects all the glory.

He just turned 70. Happy Birthday Dr. Dixon! But I hate that. As I am about 120 days away from a half a hundred, I have realized more and more that the heroes upon which I have been standing are finishing out. Dr. Kempton died. Vernon Grounds is 94. Joe Stowell is 65. Bill Wheeler is 85 (his hair looks like that anyway). My buddy Marv is weak. They do not stay around forever. Oh the glory of Jesus, our eternal and unchanging Lord!

What is most bothersome is to consider that they are finishing and, with my peers, we are it. I feel so inadequate to be one of Ezekiel's gapsmen and step up into their wake. I am not like them. I do not have their gifts. I always wanted so much more out of the leadership I followed than what I find in my own heart. Where now are the giants?

It is then that his socks bring me back to my knees, where I ask God to make my ordinary extraordinary for him and for his glory. In our weakness, his strength is made perfect.

Happy Birthday Dr. D! I hope you got a couple pairs of new socks. Thank you for your faithfulness.