anybody listening?

But if I say, "I will not mention him or speak any more in his name," his word is in my heart like a fire, a fire shut up in my bones. I am weary of holding it in; indeed, I cannot. Jer. 20:9 NIV

Have you ever wondered if anyone is listening? Teachers suffer this trauma on a regular basis but manage to put it out of their minds or else they will all become used car salesmen. Parents have to wonder, as well, when simple tasks that should be automatic go undone by their children. Wives know for a fact that husbands cannot recall a thing said over breakfast but that they can recall Roberto Clemente’s life-time batting average. Men would not notice if their male counterparts wore the same shirt 5 days in a row, which is comforting if you are a man. But it is maddening if you are a woman who labors over her choice of a daily outfit only to be totally ignored.

The truth is that someone is always listening, always observing. We have so little clue as to who that is and what gems are being stored away in another’s hard drive of memory. I post a Scripture verse out front most every morning and have wondered if anyone ever reads them. The other day, Mary C------ walked in the front door and made reference to the daily Scripture verse and knocked me off balance by saying, “I read those every day.” I felt as if I had been thoroughly and soundly rebuked!

A wedding invitation came in the mail the other day from a student I had ten years ago in a Bible class during a year of teaching that was permeated from start to finish with spiritual struggle that left me utterly drained. I have put much of that time out of my memory because of the daily fight to keep the plow in the ground and my eyes straight ahead. Doubts flooded over me regarding my ability, my calling, and my message. There were some good times, but the bad times are always more livid in our memories. Anyhow, I felt somewhat awed that I was even remembered with an invitation from a student way back then, but also, there was the scrawled note in the corner: “I can’t believe it’s been 10 years. I still have fond memories of playing guitar with you in Bible class (we sang Scripture songs). Thank you for teaching us God’s truth and striving to prepare us for the real world of ‘not-so-Christian world views.’ I will never forget you. It would be great to see you in May.” A ghost out of Christmas past would not have had any less effect upon me as those few lines. My Scrooge-like memories lost their hard-bitten edge as I was transformed by the thought, “Yes, somebody was listening.” But from there, it is one small step to reflect upon the notion that if my “widow’s mite” worth of witness touched another soul, then how much more could I have done or should have I done with the time and opportunity that were granted?

Once when I was working for TVA, a fellow employee relayed to me how someone else thought I was a bit crazy. I wonder that about myself quite often so I was quite ready to hear additional evidence. Instead, the explanation left me both pleased and scared. It appeared that one of my fellow workers was standing in line behind me in a hardware store as I made a few small purchases. Among those items were some small flashlight bulbs. His conclusion was simple. I must be ‘nuts,’ for anybody could simply walk away from TVA with all the flashlight bulbs they would ever need or want. Why would anyone go out and buy them? That episode haunts me to this day. Someone was watching. They caught me in a good deed for which I was thankful. How many have watched me when I was less than at my Christian best?

Yes, Virginia, there is someone listening, watching, observing. The reminders may be few and far between, but they are there. Our duty is to be faithful regardless of the crowd, the recognition, the response, or those spells of dull and defeating silence. Even a little light defeats darkness. Nay, pierces it.

comparisons

“See, I have engraved you on the palms of my hands; your walls are ever before me.”- Isaiah 49:16 NIV

We are in the midst of interviewing new families enrolling students for next year. It is one of the joys of my job to sit and get to know so many interesting people, each with their own unique story to tell. I glance over their applications and can form a mini-judgment before I even see them. Then we meet, and I usually have to discard those expectations as I see someone totally different walk through the door. Even my first impressions upon meeting are often thoroughly shaken by listening to their life stories unfold.

I am learning again and again not to judge a book by its cover. How often it is that I see someone I think worthy to admire, yea, even envy, in terms of their personal polish, achievement, position, marriage, and wealth. And then I learn of great personal burdens they bear or great pain they have experienced. There goes that picture perfect family. I have come to wonder if there is such a thing. Just when I think I have met the Ozzie and Harriet ideal,* someone loses a job or a close loved one, is struck with a debilitating illness, or faces other untold catastrophes. I have seen just about everything so far here at CFC.

Apart from learning caution in making judgments, what do I take from this? For one thing, I surely do not ever dare envy anyone ever again. I have lived a relatively simple and obscure life up to this point. Very few have ever been able to pronounce my name let alone be impressed by it. Financial security was never a “given.” Our first couch came after 4 years of marriage, cost $10, and had a good sized cigarette burn hole in the middle. We never had to worry about our children’s eligibility for “gifted” classes, but all made us proud, eventually. Both of us contend that the other got the worst of the bargain in marrying into families of class and status. I have never been voted “most popular,” “mister personality,” “most handsome,” or “most valuable player” of any group, class, or team. I was always picked last in sports and had a lock on right field when I could get it. I felt trapped in dead-end jobs most of my life where recognition was a finite and rare commodity. Yet, I now know that I have been blessed beyond all measure and would not trade this hum-drum life with anyone.

When tempted to compare lives, I look around and see that none of the precious fences of status, accomplishment, privilege, or wealth have ever been able to keep out random agony or tragedy. The first high school classmate of mine to die was a relatively ordinary girl who had metamorphasized into a college homecoming queen. Stalked by a madman, she was shot five times at close range as she sat with friends in the student union. My boyhood friend parlayed a piece of fairly worthless property into a million dollar windfall, surely the envy of many who did not know him. Stricken with cancer, he took his own life within weeks of the sale. And if ever I really get to feeling sorry for myself, I think of my cousin, Eugene Nordmoe, whose young life was ended by a Japanese bullet before he ever got off the landing craft at Iwo Jima.

These are the extreme cases, but nevertheless, they are potent reminders of how precious and blessed is my mundane and average existence. Discussing the highs and lows of the life of Chistopher Reeves this last week with one of our 7th graders, I posed the question: “Which would you rather be: someone who was stage-beautiful, a celebrated film star, rich, well married, but paralyzed at 43 and dead by 52? Or to be a completely unknown, relatively poor person living an ordinary life well into old age?” She chose the latter. I could have saved myself a lot of morose introspection had I come to that conclusion at her age.

Work

“So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him;” Genesis 1:27

Occasionally I will entertain myself by imagining odd uses for everyday implements. What would it be like to use an axe as a fly swatter, a tooth brush as a weed wacker, or a golf club for a windshield wiper? You get the idea: the more ridiculous, the greater the entertainment value. All these tools and implements that surround us and infest our closets and garages have specific tasks for which they are designed. And when we misapply them to inappropriate tasks, such as using a lawnmower as a hedge trimmer, we get in serious trouble or look awfully ridiculous at the very least.

Is it fair to think for a minute as to what we were designed for? Christians everywhere ascribe to the simple statement of faith that we are made in the image of God. That should give us some major clues as to what end we are intended. The first thing we learn about God is that in the beginning He created. No doubt about it. Our God is a creative God. A fresh look about us should be sufficient proof for anyone. From the ant to the elephant, we are surrounded by creatures that defy the imaginations of generations of the most gifted of artists or engineers to ever contemplate designing or building, even if they could do such a thing. Bees that turn pollen into honey, creatures (fish) who thrive only under water, and giraffes who seem almost made for the fun of it; all fill us with a sense of wonder, each in their own right. If that is not enough, just look at humankind. Each of us are so alike that modern medicine works consistently well around the world and yet each of us are so different as to make individual identification a fairly simple process. Identical twins are all the more marvelous because of their rarity yet their own mothers quickly become quite adept in telling them apart.

If we are made in the image of God, we are meant to be creative beings as well. God’s handiwork is a hard act to follow, but each of us, in our own unique way, I believe, is wired with an inbuilt need to be a creative being. Look at children. We dare not even think of locking them in a bare room with nothing to do, like cattle in a stall. Even they, as soon as they can crawl and walk, desperately need something to do with their hands and minds, and so we give them toys, books, and balls. Punishment in our society is to confine children to corners or to their rooms while adults are sent to jail cells. Each of these prohibit freedom of choice, movement, and action which we find horrendous. Animals are often treated this way every day and yet very few suffer any ill effects. But fiction and history are rich in stories of men and women who find themselves locked in cells and dungeons who manage to find creative things to do with their minds in a desperate effort to keep their sanity.

Creativity comes in many forms. We tend to think of creativity only in terms of the arts. I insist that it is much broader than that. To be creative is to be productive. Even the assembly line worker can take pride in a pile of any number of widgets created at days end. Plumbers, auto mechanics, coaches, tailors, housewives, all have one thing in common with the artist: they bring, or create, order out of chaos. God moved upon the face of an earth that was without form and void replacing chaos with order and beauty.

We, too, are meant for that end: to bring order out of chaos, to be productive. To seek a life of lottery-winning ease, to become enthralled by our culture of entertainment, to shun work at any opportunity is to thwart the very nature of our created being. It is to use the axe as a fly swatter, etc. Something will come out damaged in the process for sure. Work is our friend; idleness our enemy.

Manchester

“When I was my father’s son,…he also taught me, and said to me…” –Pro. 4:3-4

One of my 25 cent books from the Friends of the Library sale grabbed my attention and imagination last week and ended up to be an engrossing read. Goodbye, Darkness is a memoir of the Pacific campaign during WWII by William Manchester, an author I had grown to admire for his biography of Douglas MacArthur. In the 1970’s, Manchester revisited the places he had gone ashore in battle against the Japanese as a young Marine. It was on Tarawa, known to many as “Terrible Tarawa,” that he pondered as to where the courage, dedication, and steely discipline came from as he recounted how wave after wave of U.S.Marines suffered terrible casualties in taking that small but well fortified island. His conclusions staggered me especially as they came from a man who was not naturally inclined to patriotic flag waving or righteous grandstanding.

He had to admit that the America of WWII was different from that of today, and there was no way of understanding the way its sons threw down their lives so willingly and almost carelessly without understanding the culture of that time. He describes the United States of pre-WWII as a tightly disciplined society with rigid standards and where “counterculture” did not exist as either a word or a concept. And here is the lengthy quote which came so unexpectedly:

“The bastion of social stability was the family. Children were guided, not by radar beams picking up trends and directions from other children, but by gyroscopes built into their superegos at home. Parents had a tremendous influence on them. If adolescents wanted to read pulp magazines, or smoke, or listen to Ben Bernie or the Lucky Strike Hit Parade on the radio, they needed parental permission; if they wanted to see ‘The Philadelphia Story,’ their fathers decided whether or not it would be bad for their morals; if they made money shoveling snow or cutting lawns, their fathers, again, told them whether they should save it for college, or, if it was to be spent, what they could buy. There was no teenage ethos; indeed ‘teenage’ meant ‘brushwood used for fences and hedges.’ Young people were called ‘youngsters,’ and since the brooding omnipotence of the peer group had not yet arrived, children rarely felt any conflict between their friends and their families. No youngster would dream of discussing familial conflicts with other youngsters. An insult to either parent had to be avenged. …Fathers had always ruled like sultans, but the Depression had increased all family activities over which patresfamilias reigned; a study of over a hundred families in Pittsburgh discovered that a majority had increased family recreation – Ping Pong, jigsaw puzzles, checkers, bridge, and parlor games, notably Monopoly. There was also plenty of time for the householders, the doughboys of 1918, to explain to their sons the indissoluble relationship between virility and valor.” (p. 247, copyright 1979; Little, Brown & Co.)

There; a long quote but one which so many of you should find encouraging. I see you doing these very things today; instilling those “gyroscopes,” attempting to shield your children from the “brooding omnipotence” of modern teen culture, instilling “absolute” notions of truth and morality, and keeping your families together at all costs. Some of you may have thought you were alone and bordering on the bizarre. Take heart. You stand in the grand tradition of those who raised what Tom Brokaw has labeled “The Greatest Generation.” I grow increasingly impressed with what those young men did who pushed back the forces of evil in WWII at such great expense. I have high hopes for our young people, as well, in standing against the Evil One who comes to kill, to steal, and to destroy. Keep up your good work.