The Emancipation of Robert Sadler

by Robert Sadler

  She learned how to walk with a walker, and one day she said to me, “Honey, would you take me with you on your next mission trip?” I could have jumped with joy. “Would I!”

  We had several months of traveling and ministering together. Everywhere we went the people showered Jackie with love and affection.

  “Why didn’t I do this earlier?” she cried one night in my arms.

  Driving through Anderson with Jackie at my side, we were silent looking at the land where cotton once was king. Now the cotton fields were used for cattle pastures. Giant, modern synthetic factories took the place of the old mills, and electronic and chemical firms stood where once there was wilderness. Prefabricated housing developments took the place of the unpainted shacks which were once strewn across the land. Anderson was now one of South Carolina’s five largest cities, called the “Electric City,” and known as the fiberglass center of the world. There were no more mules, no more overseers, no more slave quarters, and no more slave masters.

  My mission on Church Street expanded. I rented another building next door, so there was a place for men to sleep, as well as a kitchen. By now the number of men who had come through our doors numbered in the hundreds, and we lost count of those who had gotten saved and straightened out their lives.

  We often visited Buck and Corrie Moore. Buck was in his eighties and still walked every day to the rest home to see Corrie. In December of 1973, Corrie passed on to be with the Lord. She had suffered for many years after her legs were amputated, and even Buck said, “Thank God. She’s on the other side now. She’s free.”

  Back home in Bucyrus, Jackie’s health began to slip, and she had to go back into the hospital. She was almost ready to be fitted for an artificial limb, but her kidneys gave out. I remembered the word the Lord had spoken to me about preaching at her funeral. I wept and prayed, begging Him to restore her. She grew worse, however, and when the doctor allowed her to come home, I knew it was to spend her last days.

  Jackie went back into the hospital in March 1974. She lay in her bed praising the Lord and worshiping Him in the spirit. I sat with her night and day, and the last words I heard her say were, “Thank you, Jesus.”

  On March 11, 1974, my Jackie died.

  People came from all over the country for the funeral. I couldn’t shed one tear. Jackie was with Jesus. How could I dare shed a tear? Even though I ached for my wife to be near me, I couldn’t cry. A young girl from Cincinnati asked me, “Brother Bob, how can you be happy at a time like this?”

  I answered her, “Child, it’s not happy I feel. It’s peace.”

  I thanked the Lord for giving me Jackie for thirty-five years.

  The funeral director was concerned about my having a plot next to hers. It didn’t matter to me. “I’ll never visit her grave—never,” I said. “I’m not visiting no grave, because my wife isn’t in the grave. She is in heaven. And I won’t be sleeping in a grave, either, so it don’t matter where we buried.”

  Eventually my friends had to leave to get back to their families and I was alone. There was a hollowness in me without my wife, but I knew the Lord would carry me through and not allow me to sink into self-pity. I sat one early Sunday morning in the mission, unable to sleep as the years of my life flew around in my mind like sand shaking in a cup. I heard my little sister, Ella, laughing again. I saw Master Beal standing high above me with his shiny belt buckle and big boots, I heard Pearl’s voice singing, I saw the school in Seneca, and I saw Jackie smiling at me from across a steam-filled kitchen. All the songs and hymns I knew became one melody, and all the cries became one cry: Jesus.

  I was watching the sun come up when a young man staggered in, drunk and mean. “Well, good morning, Evans,” I said. He grunted. “I see you’re out of the hospital.”

  “Preacher, if yoll let me flop here, I’ll never tech another drink as long as I live. I promise.”

  When the people began to file in the door, I went to the organ. I heard Evans stumbling around behind the curtain and I went in to help him. “Preacher,” he snarled, “how come you don’t give up on me? You been knowin’ me a long time and I ain’t got saved yet. How comes you still bothern with me?”

  “Didn’t you know, Evans? Jesus loves you and I love you.”

  It was time to begin the service. I opened the curtain, walked over to the organ, and began to play.

  Robert Sadler went to be with the Lord at the age of seventy-five following a trip to Africa when he was struck with a virus. “Yes, Lord, amen, Jesus!” he exclaimed before he died.

  Robert Sadler was born in 1911, near Anderson, South Carolina. His father sold him as a slave when he was only five years old to a plantation owner in the South. He remained on the plantation until 1925. After his escape from slavery he entered the ministry. He lived in Bucyrus, Ohio, but traveled extensively. He also ran a small mission called Compassion House in Anderson. The latter part of his life was as marked by buoyant liberty as his early years were by abject bondage. His life touched millions.

  Marie Chapian has published over thirty books with translations in seventeen languages. She has an MFA in writing from Vermont College, has been a college adjunct professor of creative writing, and won the CBA Gold Medallion award and many other awards in both poetry and fiction, including nominations for a Pushcart Prize and the Pulitzer Prize. She is a popular speaker and radio and TV personality. The Emancipation of Robert Sadler was her first biography and full-length book. You can find her at www.mariechapian.com.