The Mustard Seed at the Brook Besor

September 4, 2026

The Mustard Seed at the Brook Besor

This morning at the prayer breakfast at The Brook Besor in Pell City, a man with Church of the Highlands disaster relief asked a question that stopped me cold: after the corporate years are over, what are we going to do? Do we retire, go home, and slowly fade away, or do we take whatever God has left in our hands and grow the mustard seed for the Kingdom? I have been thinking about that question ever since.

The Brook Besor takes its name from 1 Samuel 30. David and his men were pursuing the Amalekites, but two hundred of his men were so exhausted that they could not continue. They stayed behind at the brook with the supplies while the others went into battle. When the fighting men returned victorious, some wanted to keep the spoils from those who had stayed behind, but David would have none of it. He said, “The share of the one who goes down to the battle shall be the same as the share of the one who stays by the baggage” (1 Samuel 30:24).

That became the rule. The man who fought received a share, and the man who was exhausted received a share. The man who could still run into battle had value, and so did the man who could only stay beside the baggage. That is the meaning the brothers around that breakfast table try to live out. Nobody is measured only by what he can still do. The man who is tired, the man who is limited, the man whose body no longer works the way it once did, and the man who feels as though his best years are behind him still has a place at the table. Scripture says, “He giveth power to the faint; and to them that have no might he increaseth strength” (Isaiah 40:29). The Brook Besor is a place where the weary are not left behind.

What a group of men gathers around that table. They come from different backgrounds, different ages, different professions, and different economic circumstances, yet somehow the fellowship holds together. Tim Hendrix Senior and Junior, Rod McSweeney and Chris Seay, strong prayer brothers, Don, Steve, Ken Carr, Eddie King and Eddie Odom, Bobby, Don Jones, Craig Coufield, Steve Patrick, Daniel Hunt, Charles Williams, Evan Black, Chris C., Mark Griffin, Michael T., Ryan Ollard, Greg Murchison, Jim Ricks, Justin G., Ray, Paul Lett, Bart Owens, and Jason Mullinax, a veterans officer for St. Clair County and a chef who helps us provide turkeys for heroes. Those are the names I can remember off the top of my head. It is a hodgepodge of the world we live in, and somehow, at that table, it all works. Maybe that should not surprise us. “Behold, how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity” (Psalm 133:1).

I am thankful every day for my A Club brother Phil Murphy, who played for Coach Paul “Bear” Bryant in the 1970s. Phil brought me there many years ago to speak to these men one morning, and I enjoyed the fellowship so much that I kept coming back. I have been there ever since.

Like many who eventually find their way to Alabama, my road was more complicated than it might appear from the outside. I am dyslexic, and I spent two years at Curry College in Boston, a school with programs designed for students with learning differences, before transferring to the University of Alabama. I was a transfer, not a recruit. Dyslexia forced me to develop my memory because I had to carry things in my head when I could not always depend on the page. Over time, that memory became almost photographic, and maybe that is one reason names matter so much to me. Names represent people, people represent chapters, and chapters make up a life.

For a long time, I was not sure my corporate career was over. I wanted to believe it was not. Thirty-eight years of being a road warrior, traveling, making deals, building relationships, and living with the identity that came with that life is a hard thing to leave behind. Part of me kept believing I would get back to it, that I would recover enough, travel enough, work enough, and somehow be enough again.

But God knew before I did. He was already preparing me for another career, one I never would have chosen for myself. It was not the career of the boardroom, but the career of the seed: planting, watering, encouraging, serving, and watching something grow that I did not create and cannot control. Paul wrote, “I have planted, Apollos watered; but God gave the increase” (1 Corinthians 3:6). That verse means more to me now than it ever did before. My responsibility is not to make the seed grow. My responsibility is to plant what God puts in my hand and trust Him with the increase.

I did not understand that at first because all I could see were the limitations. I saw the distance I could no longer travel, the hands that did not work the way they once did, and the things I believed had been taken from me. I was so focused on what had been lost that I could not yet see what God was giving. Scripture warns us not to judge God’s work by its size at the beginning: “Who hath despised the day of small things?” (Zechariah 4:10).

A mustard seed is a small thing. Jesus said the Kingdom of Heaven is “like to a grain of mustard seed” that a man took and planted in his field. It was the smallest of seeds, yet when it grew, it became large enough that “the birds of the air come and lodge in the branches thereof” (Matthew 13:31-32). That was what the speaker talked about this morning, generational purpose and laying a foundation for the people coming behind us.

That is the part that hit me hardest. The mustard seed does not grow into a tree merely for the man who plants it. It grows so something else can find shelter in its branches. The shade is for somebody else, the shelter is for somebody else, and the fruit is for somebody else. “One generation shall praise thy works to another, and shall declare thy mighty acts” (Psalm 145:4). That is generational purpose.

For a while, I thought my usefulness was finished. I thought the seed had gone into the dirt and disappeared. But Jesus gave us a different way to understand what happens to a seed when He said, “Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone: but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit” (John 12:24). Sometimes what looks like an ending is actually planting. Sometimes God allows one season to be buried because He intends to bring fruit from it in another. The seed had not been wasted. It had simply changed soil.

I was a linebacker for the Crimson Tide under Coach Walter Ray Perkins from 1985 to 1987, coached by Joe Kines, our defensive coordinator and inside linebackers coach. Four decades later, the names still come: Cornelius Bennett, the late Derrick Thomas, Joe Godwin, Wayne Davis, Vantrese Davis, Willie Shepherd, Woody Wilson, Greg Gilbert, David Palmer, John Fruhmorgen, Ward Murphy, my roommate at 312 Bryant Hall, which meant we traveled together and roomed together on the road, David Iglehart, Wes Neighbors, Mike Shula, David Smith, George Salem and his cousin Jimbo Salem.

Jimbo was the son of Ed Salem, the All-American who stomped a mud hole in Auburn in 1948 and later played for the Washington Redskins, part of the family behind Salem’s Diner. George was the son of George Shahidi Salem, who ran Captain Hook’s in Birmingham for more than forty years. The Salem legacy continued, with George’s son Georgie playing center field for the Tide and his cousin Emeel becoming a two-time All-American outfielder. Three generations of Salems wore Crimson and White.

Then more names come back: Chris Moore, Rob Roberts, Kerry Goode, Bo Wright, Bobby Humphrey, Gene Jelks, the late Vince Sutton, Curt Jarvis, Tommy Cole, Andy Anderson, David Lenoir, Roger Shultz, the late Mike Zuga, John McIntosh, Larry Don Rose, Hoss Johnson, Thornton Chandler, Howard Cross, Joe Tipton, the late Joe King, the late Harvey Walker, Butch Worley, Steve Clonts, Troy Secrist, Bill Lutz, son of Red Lutz, the Tide legend and legendary high school coach who coached Bob Baumhower, Clay Whitehurst, John Davis, Jeff Bentley, Murry Hill, Lance Laskey, Chris Robinette, Rafe Taylor, Bill Condon, Norbert Dean, and Paul Davenport. Those three Murphy High Panthers from Mobile signed together with Alabama.

I remember Al Bell, Gary Otten, Lydell Mitchell, Randy Rockwell, Joe Demos, Gary Hollingsworth, Charlie Abrams, Marco Battle, Vic Molton, the late Steve Turner, Chris Goode, Lieutenant Colonel Darrell Martin, Mike Vice, Greg Kiker, Brian Stutson, Dr. Calvin Emmanuel Ayers, Darryl Whitfield, Mike Nichols, Venson Elder, Robert Dean, Chris White, Greg Epps, Dr. Cesar Lopez, Larry Abney, Doug Allen, Carlos Robinson, Coach T.J. Weist, Phillip Brown, Desmond Holoman, the late Kevin Turner, Craig Sanderson, the late Byron Holdbrooks, the late Ben Holt, Scott Blankenship, Bruce Foster, the late Larry Roberts, and Jon Hand.

I am 62 now, and my memory is not what it once was, but those are still the names I can pull from memory. Eighty-four out of 120, about seventy percent of the roster, forty years later. I remember the coaches too: Dr. Gary White, the late Coach Jimmy Fuller, our offensive line coach; Coach George Henshaw, our offensive coordinator; Coach Kent Johnston, our strength coordinator; Coach Rocky Felker; Coach Mike DuBose; Coach Sylvester Croom, our outside linebackers coach; Coach Dave Rader, our wide receivers coach; the late Steve Walters, our defensive backs coach; Coach Rodney Stokes, our special teams coach; and the late Steve Hale, our recruiting coordinator and the last coach Bear Bryant ever hired.

And, of course, I remember Coach Walter Ray Perkins. Once during calisthenics, Coach Perkins got in my grill and asked me what kind of man I was: a mover and a shaker, a watcher, or one who did not give a damn. I told him I was a mover and a shaker. At the time, I did not know what that answer would cost me or what it would eventually mean.

Derrick Thomas gave me the nickname “the Bull,” and I wore it like a badge. To me, the Bull represented force, stubbornness, toughness, and, more than I understood at the time, anger. Bill Lumpkin of the Birmingham News called it tenacity, and he was right. It was tenacity, but some of it was also wrath I had not learned to put down. Scripture says, “The wrath of man worketh not the righteousness of God” (James 1:20). It took me a long time to understand that strength and anger are not the same thing.

The Lord did not simply tame the Bull. He showed me that I was a sheep, and a lost one at that. Jesus told of the shepherd who leaves the ninety-nine and goes after the one that is lost “until he find it” (Luke 15:4). That became me. The Bull became the found sheep, and maybe being a mover and a shaker eventually came to mean something different too.

On April 27, 2011, I was coaching high school football in Atlanta when the storms tore through Alabama. I resigned that night and drove home to help. That summer, former Alabama and Auburn players walked onto a field at Spain Park High School for a flag football game, and together we raised about $150,000 for the Governor’s Emergency Relief Fund. Out of that game, Lettermen of the USA was born, not in a boardroom, but on a football field, with Tide and Tiger rivals putting the Iron Bowl aside long enough to help people who had lost almost everything.

It reminds me of the words of Jesus: “Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me” (Matthew 25:40). That became a different scoreboard.

Today, we are partnered with the Concussion and CTE Foundation because the damage does not always stop when the game ends or when a veteran comes home. Traumatic brain injury, concussion, and CTE can follow people for the rest of their lives. Kevin Turner, my senior classmate Kerry Goode, and I know what this disease can do to a man, and we refuse to let it take another person quietly.

Since then, Lettermen of the USA has helped about 1,700 veterans and their families. This past July and August alone, we fielded between one hundred and two hundred calls and provided $15,000 in assistance. If that pace continues, we could reach roughly $90,000 in veterans expenditures by the end of the year, with hundreds of calls coming from people who need somebody to answer. That did not happen because I was strong enough to make it happen. It happened because a seed was planted, then another, and then another. Paul said one plants and another waters, “but God gave the increase.” That is the story.

It took my prayer breakfast brother Chris Seay of Seay Construction to point that out to me again this morning. I had to leave the breakfast early for a doctor’s appointment, and afterward Chris sent me a text: “Yep. But like Dennis was saying this morning, it’s about helping others. And that’s exactly what you were doing so that means you are exactly where you need to be. And we all have doctors appointments at our age.”

Exactly where you need to be. Maybe there comes a time in a man’s life when that becomes a more important question than where he thought he would be. The world teaches us to measure life by titles, money, miles traveled, deals closed, tackles made, games won, and how much we can still accomplish. The Kingdom measures differently. Jesus noticed the widow’s two mites. David gave the exhausted men at Besor a full share. God chose Gideon when Gideon thought he was the least man from the weakest family. Moses thought his limitations disqualified him. Paul learned that God’s strength was made perfect in weakness. Jesus took a mustard seed and made it a picture of His Kingdom.

Maybe the question at 62 is not, “Can I still do what I did at 42?” Maybe the better question is, “Lord, what do You want to grow from what I have left?” Scripture says, “Those that be planted in the house of the Lord shall flourish in the courts of our God,” and then comes the promise that speaks directly to men entering the later seasons of life: “They shall still bring forth fruit in old age” (Psalm 92:13-14).

Those words matter to me: still bring forth fruit. Not used to. Not once did. Not back when we were younger. 

Still.

The foundation we lay now is not only for us. It is for the men and women coming behind us, for our children and grandchildren, for veterans we may never meet, and for families who may never know our names. It is for the person who someday sits beneath the branches of a tree that began with a seed we were willing to plant.

So maybe retirement is not the end of purpose, and maybe weakness is not the end of usefulness. Maybe Besor is not the place where a man gets left behind, but the place where he finally learns that his worth was never determined by whether he could still run into battle. Maybe the mustard seed is God’s reminder that we should never underestimate what He can do with something small surrendered to Him.

A cracked sternum, a broken hand, a body that cannot travel like it once did, a former linebacker, a former road warrior, a breakfast table full of brothers, a nonprofit born from a football game, a few dollars placed into the hands of a veteran who needs help, a phone call answered, a prayer prayed, and a seed planted can all become part of something much larger when God gives the increase.

“Let us not be weary in well doing,” Paul wrote, “for in due season we shall reap, if we faint not” (Galatians 6:9).

If the Lord can grow a mustard seed at the Brook Besor, He can grow one from whatever remains in any of us. We just have to be willing to plant it, one yard at a time.

That is all any of us gets.