Two Shook the Rafters

As we write, it is Monday, January 26, 2026.  Ice and snow are on the ground, and a good part of the country has come to a standstill for a few days due to a two-thousand-mile expanse of icy terrain.

Yesterday was one of the few days when church had to be dismissed in most places across the country. It was the twenty-fifth of January.  January 25 passed quietly, with quiet time and some family Bible study, and while my mind reflected on the impact of that day, I did not speak of what the date January 25 means. But I will now.

On that date in 1909, my grandfather, E.H. Miller, was born in Randolph County, Alabama. Twenty-one years later, 1931, my father, C.T. Bowen, was born in their house out on the Bowen place off of the Whitesville Road in our hometown of LaGrange, Georgia, less than an hour south of Randolph County.

It seems appropriate that two of the men who had the greatest influence on my life were born on the same day, though their impacts were different.

My grandfather—Preacher Miller—had the greatest spiritual influence on me, probably as much as any grandfather could. Being what I would call a “preacher’s preacher,” he demonstrated that rare faith that folks from coast to coast admired, much as those in Bible days admired the apostle Paul. The twentieth-century preacher, like the first-century one, lived the gospel with all of his being. He seemed to know little else. He didn’t know sports, politics, or fashion, at least as far as I could ever tell. Like Abraham, he seemed simply to look for a city whose builder and maker is God.

His motto was more like that of the apostle Paul’s, “For me to live is Christ.” He knew Christ, and he preached Christ with a rare vigor and a notable, loud, raspy voice that raised the rafters on church buildings all over the country.

Preacher Miller and my grandma Zona Belle lived just half a mile from where we lived almost all of my growing-up years; and if drew a line from their house to ours and then to the red-brick church of Christ building a mile from our house, you’d have almost a perfect triangle. I suppose that triangle, in a picture, is an ample diagram of our life, the preacher’s second youngest grandson.

The trail to and from those three spots on this earth was beaten down so that a blind man could follow it. Much of our writing, as you well know, zeros in on the events and teachings that emerged from the momentous events represented in that triangle. About the only line missing would be the line to the Y where I learned a great deal about life, playing basketball, and developing a knowledge and skill for something that became almost sacred in and of itself. Basketball wasn’t the Bible, but it embodied a rulebook of its own that taught the young man of that day almost as much as any, besides the preacher who always wore a tie.

I suppose once you get past 1973, a fourth line from that old Georgia hometown all the way out to Texas would have to be added to the sketch. But the influence of these two men would continue throughout that odyssey.

My daddy’s influence was different from Preacher Miller’s, as different as snow is from the desert, I guess. While the preacher was a self-made, pioneer gospel preacher, my daddy was, in a sense, an Everyman. He represented that generation of depression and post-depression men who were raised rough, acquired only a moderate education, if any at all, and lived lives defined more by the challenges they would face than by any form of notoriety. That generation did not have the advantage of wealth and education, and few were born with a silver spoon, if you consider a silver spoon an advantage at all. Truth is, to paraphrase the Lord, it is hard for a silver spoon to inherit the kingdom of heaven. You understand.

But my father’s influence wasn’t giving me the Bible map to follow. It was more about giving me the tenacity it takes to survive the hardships of a stormy life. An early injury led to his addiction to prescription drugs, leading to spending regular periods of his 30s in a mental hospital in Milledgeville, Georgia. He would be away in the hospital for a few months, but when he came home, I always noticed he was as good-spirited a man as you’d ever find. He was a self-taught nurse and a natural cook, making the best Brunswick stew of any. He was a good man, too.

C.T. Bowen gave my family, growing-up friends, and me a look at life from two vantage points: He showed us life down in the ditch on one hand, and, on the other, the life of a good Samaritan who would risk it all to save that man in the ditch. In the end, sadly, my father could not pull himself out of that ditch. But I learned something from his struggles that may have been as valuable as what my grandfather trumpeted from the pulpit of that red-brick building that stood at one point of the triangle: He taught the ability to fight the fight, to endure as much as life throws at you, and to do so with all that you have.

And then his greatest lesson: When you look at those who have struggles—and we don’t have to look far—we learned to look up on the top shelf. Oh, it’s easy to set people down on that bottom shelf and shake our heads at their failures.

But to put them on the top shelf and see the good that is deep down inside them, and to see how they used all that good—that’s as biblical as any sermon you’ll ever hear.

That’s the sermon my daddy preached.

Both born in January, my daddy and grandfather died the same month, too. My dad went first, dying tragically on December 12, 1967, and the preacher left us on December 29, 1989.

Now, decades later, the sermons they preached, though different, can be heard clearly, still influencing lives, still shaking rafters. 

(coachbowen1984@gmail.com)