Into My Heart

One Christmas, a long time ago, when our granddaughter Melanie was very small, she was wandering and wondering her way around our living room, gazing intently at Carolyn’s “set–arounds.”

Carolyn has a wonderful array of ornaments and objects she has collected over the years. One of her most cherished items is an olivewood crèche she bought in Bethlehem. Every Christmas it finds its place on our living room coffee table.

Melanie came to the crèche that day and stood over it transfixed for a moment. Then she picked up the carving of the baby Jesus in her tiny hands and drew it up to her heart. She closed her eyes and said, “Baby Jesus, sleep…” and rocked the little olivewood figure of Jesus in her arms. 

Tears sprang to my eyes and I felt the strangest, strongest emotion. I could not have told you then what I was feeling, or why I was so deeply moved, but I knew that something profoundly stirring had occurred.

Later I realized why my heart was so deeply touched by that simple event: it was symbolic of that other childlike act in which we daily take up the wonderful gift of God’s love, our Lord Jesus, and draw him close to our hearts. This is what he longs for—to love and to be loved in return.

There is a song that children sing (and adults too, once we get over our fear of being childlike):

Into my heart, into my heart;

Come into my heart, Lord Jesus.

Come in today; come in to stay;

Come into my heart, Lord Jesus.

May He dwell deep down in your heart this day.

DHR

Naked in the Palaestra

Bodily exercise profits a little, but godliness is profitable for all things, having promise of the life that now is and of that which is to come.

—the Apostle Paul

Plato was discussing the impropriety of training female guardians for the state with his friend, Glaucon: “Yes, and the most ridiculous thing of all will be the sight of women naked in the palaestra,[1] exercising with the men, especially when they are no longer young; they certainly will not be a vision of loveliness, any more than the enthusiastic old men who, in spite of wrinkles and ugliness, continue to frequent the gymnasia.”[2]

I think of the little gymnasium I frequent each week, where I work out with a group of “enthusiastic old men” (and women), and I ponder our efforts to stay alive, or at least look alive, as long as possible. A vision of loveliness we are not, but at least we’re not naked in the palaestra. Believe me that would not be a pretty sight!

Exercise does profit a little, Paul says, and I struggle to be as fit as I can be. I try to eat right (more or less, though I do love fried chicken). I lift and walk and do other stuff, but I know that my body is a wasting asset, not long for this world. Its powers are vanishing, or have vanished out of sight. “High notions of myself are annihilated by a glance in the mirror...”[3]

Better it is, then, to concentrate on godliness because it holds promise for this life and the life to come. Contrary to the old adage, we can take something with us after all.

Godliness sounds dull, foreboding and far from us, but the essence of godliness is simply self–giving love, caring more for others then we care for ourselves—a love that is hard to come by, but one that grows in the presence of love. We grow loving and more lovely by sitting at Jesus’ feet, listening to Him, talking things over, learning God–likeness from one whose name is Love.

Youth is all about doing, while aging is a journey into love, it seems to me, and (if you will believe me again) there’s nothing half so beautiful as a loving old soul, “wrinkles and ugliness” notwithstanding. Physical exercise is good, no doubt, but there is something far, far better: It is to love and to love and to love.

DHR

[1] A gymnasium for wrestlers
[2] Plato, Republic 5.452.b
[3] Nobel laureate, Czeslaw Milosz

Shmoos and their Kin

"No good deed goes unpunished."

—folk saying

Some of you may be old enough to remember the lowly Shmoo, Al Capp's pint–sized, pear-shaped, lovable, little creature that laid packaged eggs, gave grade–A milk and rendered sweet cream butter (no churning required).

A Shmoo swooned with ecstasy if someone wanted to eat it. If you looked at one hungrily, it would happily jump into a frying pan. Fried, it tasted like chicken; broiled it tasted like steak; roasted it tasted like pork; baked it tasted like catfish. Eaten raw, it tasted like oysters on the half-shell. If a Shmoo really loved you, it would lay a cheesecake, though Capp confessed, "This was quite a strain on its li'l innards…"

Shmoo's eyes made ideal suspender buttons; their whiskers made first-rate toothpicks; their pelts, cut thin, made fine leather; cut thick they made the very best lumber. Shmoos were supremely useful, happy, harmless creatures that loved people (especially children) and existed for no other reason than to do good to others.

Yet, according to Capp's sage, Ol' Man Mose, "Shmoos is the greatest menace to hoomanity th' world has evah known."

"Thass becuz they is so bad, huh?" asked Li'l Abner.

"No, stupid," answered Mose, uttering one of life's profoundest ironies. "It's because they're so good!"

In the end Schmoos were hunted down to extinction (except for a small remnant in Dogpatch), but a great enigma was resolved: Why do some folks hate good people? Simply because they're good[1], that's why. No other reason. Darkness cannot tolerate the light!

So, don't be surprised if some folks hate you when you're trying to do the right thing. You can never be good enough to appease them. In fact, the better you are the more they will despise you. Remember: they hated the only really good person that ever lived; they hated Him, as they will hate you, "without cause."[2]

But, no matter. No one can harm a truly good person.[3]  Oh, they can slay the body, but they cannot harm the soul. So don't be surprised if people despise you. Keep a good conscience and return every act of hatred with a blessing. Bless and do not curse. "Be tenderhearted, courteous; not returning evil for evil or reviling for reviling, but on the contrary blessing, knowing that you were called to this that you may inherit a blessing.[4]  

The blessing is happiness in this world and the next. No matter what people say or do, they can't take that away from you.

DHR

[1]John 3:19
[2] John 15:25
[3] 1 Peter 3:13
[4] 1 Peter 3:8,9 Peter is not insisting that we submit to physical abuse. The Bible makes a strong case for the necessity of force to restrain evil when it endangers human life. The state "carries the sword." Even individuals may defend themselves when physically assaulted. Augustine was perhaps the first to note that Jesus' instruction about turning the other cheek refers to an insult and not an assault. His argument is that, given the fact that most assailants are right-handed, an attacker would normally strike us on the left cheek. To turn when someone strikes the right cheek assumes a back-hand slap—an insult.

Old Men Can’t Jump

“Well, we must be getting home,” said Kanga. “Good-bye, Pooh.” And in three large jumps she was gone. Pooh looked after her as she went. “I wish I could jump like that,” he thought. “Some can and some can’t. That’s how it is.”

—Winnie the Pooh

I see young men and women doing extraordinary things that I cannot do. They can; I can’t. That’s how it is. It’s easy to feel useless when you’re old.

 It comforts me to know that our Lord understands these moods; He was of this world. I don’t know how one who lived only thirty-two years can feel the dismay and disgrace of the elderly, but I take it as truth that He does. He lived all possible lives in the life that he lived and thus He knows it all: “how moons and hearts and seasons rise and fall.”


And then I gave myself another idea: We old folks may not be able to “jump,” but we can love and we can pray. These are the traditional works of the aged.

Love is the very best gift we can give to God and others. It is no small matter for love is the means by which we fulfill our whole duty to God and our neighbor. Love for one person may seem to be a very small action, but it is, in fact, “The Greatest Thing In The World.”[1]


And we can pray. John sees the prayers of the saints ascending before God and an angel hurling them back to the earth: “And there were noises, thunderings, lightnings, and an earthquake.”[2] We raise our reedy, time–worn voices in prayer and God shakes everything that can be shaken—a return that George Herbert termed, “reversed thunder.” Our prayers may be immature and incoherent, but there is no greater force in the universe!

Love and prayer—the mighty works of the aged, indeed, the mightiest works at any age! It seems then, that old folks may not be so useless after all!

DHR



[1] Henry Drummond’s phrase. Cf., 1 Corinthians 13:13
[2] Revelation 8:4,5

“Baccay”

When I was a young boy, growing up in the church, I was introduced to the Filthy Five:

Thou shalt not drink
Thou shalt not smoke
Thou shalt not play cards
Thou shalt not dance
Thou shalt not go to movies

There was a sixth, making a Dirty Half-Dozen:  Thou shalt not engage in mixed bathing. At first I was unsure with what I was not to be mixed. Then I learned it was girls: At a summer camp I attended, girls and boys swam at different times. (Of course, we boys stood around the perimeter of the pool outside the fence and ogled the girls.)

There was security in these easy certainties; you knew exactly where you stood. Yet, even as a young boy, I saw the irony in these prohibitions. I could refrain from all of them and miss the point of authentic goodness. Goodness, like God, is very subtle.

George MacDonald, in his novel Annals of a Quiet Neighborhood makes the case far better than I. He writes of a young cleric who went out to acquaint himself with a parishioner, an elderly Scot named Rogers. He had seen the old man walking through the village, clouds of smoke billowing from his briar pipe, and so purchased a tin of tobacco for him and offered it to him as a gambit:

“You smoke, don’t you, Rogers?” I said
“Well, sir, I can’t deny it. It’s not much I spend on baccay, anyhow. Is it, dame?”
“No, that it bean’t,” answered his wife.
“You don’t think there’s any harm in smoking a pipe, sir?”
“Not the least,” I answered, with emphasis.
“You see, sir,” he went on, not giving me time to prove how far I was from thinking there was any harm in it, “you see, sir, sailors learns many ways they might be better without. I used to take my pan o’grog with the rest of them; but I give that up quite, ‘cause as how I don’t want it now.”
“Cause as how,” interrupted his wife, “you spend the money on tea for me, instead. You wicked old man to tell stories!”
“Well, I takes my share of the tea, old woman, and I’m sure it’s a deal better for me. But, to tell the truth, sir, I was a little troubled in my mind about the baccay, not knowing whether I ought to have it or not. For you see, the parson that’s gone didn’t like it, as I could tell when he came in at the door and me a-smokin.’ Not as he said anything; for, ye see, I was an old man, and I daresay that kep him quiet. But I did hear him blow up a young chap i’ the village he came upon with a pipe in his mouth. He did give him a thunderin’ broadside, to be sure! So I was in two minds whether I ought to be on with my pipe or not.”
“And how did you settle the question, Rogers?”
“Why, I followed my own old chart, sir.”
“Quite right. One mustn’t mind too much what other people think.”
“That’s not exactly what I mean, sir.”
“What do you mean then? I should like to know.”
“Well, sir, I mean that I said to myself, ‘Now, Old Rogers, what do you think the Lord would say about this here baccay business?’“
“And what did you think He would say?”
“Why, sir, I thought He would say, ‘Old Rogers, have yer baccay; only mind ye don’t grumble when you ‘ain’t got none.’”

“And this is the man I thought I would be able to teach!” The young minister mused. 

DHR

A Willingness to Yield

“The wisdom that is from above is…willing to yield.” —James 3:17

 

A number of years ago, two friends and I meandered and fished our way across Magruder Corridor, a primitive, single–track jeep road that follows an old Nez–Perce trail that cuts through the Selway–Bitterroot Wilderness in Northern Idaho.

One afternoon we were eating lunch beside the road when the only vehicle we had seen all day pulled up beside us. It was an ancient, battered, dust–covered pickup containing a couple of bearded, hard–looking, backcountry characters. One of them motioned me to approach.

In my naiveté, I hopped off the tailgate of my jeep where I was sitting and ambled over, hoping to be friendly and helpful. One of my friends shadowed me, aware that these men were looking for trouble.

“Do you know what we call flatlanders up here,” the man in the passenger seat growled. “No,” I replied. So he told me, using a word I’d rather not repeat. Before I could utter another word, my friend, who is a former SWAT commander and one of the toughest men I know, elbowed me aside, leaned on the door and peered into the cab. “Do you know what we call folks who live up here?” he asked quietly.

“No,” the driver snarled and reached for the door handle.

“We call them…Sir,” my friend replied.

Both men laughed, waved and drove on.

Israel’s wise man was right: “A soft answer turns away wrath” (Proverbs 15:1). This is meekness, not weakness. Meekness has prodigious strength!

DHR

http://pastor.resourcesforyourministry.org/author/droper/

Holy Luck

“All luck is holy” —Charles Williams

Carolyn and I were on the first leg of a flight from Frankfurt, Germany to our home in Boise, Idaho. Our first stop was Boston. It had been an exhausting week and I dropped off to sleep as soon as I found my seat, but was soon awakened by a disturbance in the aisle.

The steward and a passenger who had been seated on Carolyn’s left were arguing about the man’s seat assignment. Somehow, he had been separated from his fiancée who was seated several rows behind us. The man grew increasingly angry and argumentative until another passenger, seated by the man’s fiancée, offered to trade places. The swap was made and Carolyn’s new seat–mate settled into his place, drew out a legal pad and began to work on a project.

Unfortunately (for the man), there was a garrulous little French boy seated on his left—a charming child—who wanted to talk. The man, who seemed to be the soul of patience, gave up his work after a few minutes and began to chat amiably with the boy. Carolyn was soon drawn into the conversation.

I heard the man say he was from Los Gatos, California, a town near Los Altos, California where Carolyn and I had lived for eighteen years. He was on the Frankfort to Boston leg of a flight to San Francisco. I heard Carolyn remark on the fact that we had many friends in the Bay Area and went back to sleep.

When I awakened an hour or so later Carolyn was sharing her faith with her new–found friend, scribbling on his pad of paper, drawing diagrams and animating her story. He was listening intently and asking questions. I sat there quietly and prayed for the man and for her.

At one point he said, “My wife believes that stuff.”

Oh?” Carolyn replied. “And how did she become a follower of Christ?”         

“Through Bible Study Fellowship,” he replied.

“How did she find out about Bible Study Fellowship?” Carolyn asked.

“A friend of hers, Nell King, invited her to attend.”

“How interesting!” Carolyn exclaimed. “Nell King was one of my best friends when we lived in the area!”

And then the coin dropped: Some months before we moved to Boise, Nell had asked Carolyn to pray for a woman who had just become a Christian through Bible Study Fellowship and for her husband who was not yet a believer—the man now seated on Carolyn’s left —there “by that power which erring men call chance.”[1]

Serendipity is God’s trademark. Once again, you never know…

DHR

[1] Charles Williams