I know.

Anything could happen.

I shouldn't get my hopes

up. I should pretend it will be just another day. No big

deal.

But I can't. If the Lord's

willing and the creek don't rise (and there seems to be

little danger of that this summer), I am FINALLY going to

hear T. Graham Brown in concert. He will be at The Gospel

Barn in LaGrange Saturday night, July 29 at 7 p.m.

I've mentioned The Gospel

Barn before in this column. It is one of my new favorite

places since we moved to the country two years ago. By

the way, if you are ever driving through Greenville on

Ga. Highway 27, be sure to stop at The Green Acres

Restaurant and try their chicken wings. And, yes, the

Mrs. is from New York and her husband is a Meriwether

County native. But their wings are out of this world.

Back to the T. Graham Brown

concert. Guideposts magazine recently did a cover story

on T. Graham and his wife, Sheila, which chronicled his

victory over an alcohol problem that dogged his career

until five years ago. He gives credit for the victory to

God's unconditional love for him, and the love and

support of his wife and son.

Brown is a Georgia native

and has a sound that is native to nowhere. His music has

many times been described as part rhythm & blues,

part country, part gospel and all heart. His latest

album, "Wine Into Water," features a bit of it

all. The title song is about his victory over alcoholism.

Brown himself calls the project "the most honest,

truest album I've ever done."

I thought I was going to

hear the singer perform in Nashville a few years ago. He

was slated to offer some late night entertainment at a

convention I was attending, but didn't show. They said he

was ill.

Now, I'm no concert junkie.

Don't really care for crowds at all, in fact. But T.

Graham gave a concert in Tallahassee, Fla. Saturday

night, Feb. 6, 1988 - a concert that I desperately

wanted to attend.

I was staying at a hotel a

few blocks from Tallahassee Memorial Hospital. As I drove

back and forth from the hotel to the hospital I kept

hearing the concert promotions on the radio. My sister

and I began to fantasize about escaping from the painful

death watch in which we were engulfed to go hear T.

Graham sing "Tell It Like It Used To Be."

Of course, we did not leave

our father's side. Instead we reminisced about how it

"used to be" when we were younger and Daddy was

healthy and all was well. In a strange way, T. Graham

helped us get through a painful time. And the desire to

hear him perform has remained with me.

SO! I have plans once more

to hear this gifted performer who spans so many styles

and categories with such ease. If you want to hear him

too, call 1-800-844-6737 for more information. By the

way, I understand that Jake Hess, a Columbus, Ga. native,

and The Happy Goodmans will be appearing at the same

place Aug. 28.

Now, on another note, I had

a call from my sister this morning and we found ourselves

in an interesting discussion about how easy it is to

misjudge people and how careful we should be about

judging folks at all. Then we talked for a minute about

how God opens and closes doors. He does that, you know.

And she said to me, "I

have a book that I keep readily accessible, near my bed

in fact, because the author has a way of driving home the

fact that failure may be God's way of saying you are on

the wrong road."

She frequently interviews

applicants for jobs with her company. She prides herself

on being a good judge of character. Nevertheless, there

are those individuals who do not always succeed in her

line of work, so they move on. Now, I don't know it for a

fact, but I suspect she's told more than one individual

who has left the company because they found they could

not keep up the pace and perform well, "Failure may

be God's way of saying you're on the wrong road."

You might want to chew on

that little piece of advice a while or share it with

someone else who needs to hear it. We are all in this

thing called life together, you know. Another's success

or failure could very easily be our own.