The Most Interesting Man in the World

“After three days they found (Jesus) in the temple courts, sitting among the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions.” (Luke 2:46)

On occasion, a commercial pops up on our television screen featuring a bearded, debonair gentleman sitting in an elegant bar, hoisting a bottle of his favorite beverage (the point of the commercial) and regaling a bevy of beautiful women with tales of derring-do, while “Barcelona Nights” plays softly in the background. He is “The World’s Most Interesting Man.”

Not at my table. He’d be a crashing bore.

The most interesting people in the world are not raconteurs who can gain and hold the floor, but rather those who ask questions of others, listen intently and make other people the center of attention. To put the thought another way: The most interesting people in the world are interested in other people. That’s the mark of divine love: being more interested in others than we are in ourselves (Philippians 2:3,4).

So, next time you find yourself in a social situation, looking for something worthwhile to do, find a wallflower and ask a question or two, listen well, ask thoughtful follow-up questions and try not to launch into your own stories ("Yeah, that happened to me once..."). You will leave behind a blessing and the memory of your presence may linger on—we remember best the people that loved us well—and, who knows? You might become the most interesting person in the world.

DHR

Amaryllis

The bruiséd reed He will not break,

         But strengthen and sustain.

—John Greenleaf Whittier

A friend sent us a set of Amaryllis bulbs for Christmas with the promise that they would blossom, in due time, if we would put them in a sunny spot and water them.

We’ve grown Amaryllis before and know that the flower is not like the bulb. The bulbs are unsightly things: Dirty and stained. The flowers are stunningly beautiful: brilliant red blossoms that seem to shimmer in the light. (The name Amaryllis comes from a Greek verb, amarysso, that means, "to sparkle.”)

The odd thing about our Amaryllis, however, is the differential: One stalk grew rapidly, almost ½ an inch a day; the second grew more slowly. The third stalk grew hardly at all.

Christians are like that, you know. Some grow rapidly in faith, hope and love; some grow more slowly; others grow hardly at all.

I was disappointed in the little bulb; I thought it would do better. God, on the other hand, understands poor stunted things.

He knows those that have been trampled underfoot as children, bent and broken by abuse. He understands those who are bending under a load of rejection and shame. He knows the betrayals that make it hard to trust him and respond to his love. He understands the bewilderment of those whose hopes and dreams have been shattered.

C. S. Lewis writes, “If you are a poor creature—poisoned by a wretched up-bringing in some house full of vulgar jealousies and senseless quarrels—saddled, by no choice of your own, with some loathsome sexual perversion—nagged day in and day out by an inferiority complex that makes you snap at your best friends—do not despair.”[1] 

Do not despair? Indeed, for God has infinite pity for the tragedy and pathos of your life. “A bruised reed He will not break, and a smoking flax He will not quench.”[2] He knows your desire for goodness and despite false starts and frequent failure he is at work every day conforming some small part of you to his likeness, with the guarantee that one day you will be an object of staggering beauty.[3]

So... Never give up. Never give up. Never, never give up! Keep struggling upward toward the light: sit at Jesus’ feet and take in his words, pour out your heart in surrender and supplication, keep yourself in the warmth of his love, “being confident of this very thing, that he who began a good work in you will carry it to completion on the Day of Jesus Christ” (Philippians 1:6).

God is never in a hurry, but he does mean business, and (as a friend of mine once said) “He will finish the work as soon as he can.”

DHR

P.S. The littlest Amaryllis grew a tiny bit today...

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[1] C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (New York: Macmillan Publishing Co., 1952), pp. 182.

[2] Isaiah 42:3

[3] Cf., 1 John 3:1,2

I’m Coming Down

G. K. Chesterton has written a two-act play entitled “The Surprise,” one of only two plays he composed. It’s virtually unknown and rarely enacted.

The play is cast in the Middle Ages and opens with a friar wandering through a forest. He sees a large rolling caravan (a trailer with a stage) with handsome life-size puppets lying about on the stage. The puppeteer stands above the structure.

The friar asks where the puppeteer is giving his show for he would like to see it. The puppeteer tells him to sit down and he will give him a private performance.

The man picks up the puppets’ strings and begins to spin out a romantic tale in which a swashbuckling hero and his friend determine to rescue a fair damsel in distress. They carry it off with a certain amount of panache, and the play ends.

The friar applauds, but the puppeteer confesses that he is very unhappy because he loves his puppets and they cannot reciprocate his love. He can only manipulate them from above. “If only they were alive,” he muses. The friar falls to his knees and prays that the puppeteer’s wish will be granted. The curtain falls on the first act.

The second act begins with the puppets lying on the stage amid their loose strings, but then the characters begin to stir on their own. They rise and start reenacting the play.

But this time everything goes wrong. The hero and his friend get drunk and quarrel; they show jealousy over the heroine; they arrive too late to rescue her—at which point, the puppet master stands up on the roof of the caravan and shouts, “Stop! I’m coming down.” And he drops down onto the stage to save his puppets from themselves.

The play ends at this point, and Chesterton offers no explanation.[1] 

I leave that to you...

DHR

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[1] Good metaphors need no explanation. George MacDonald said, “If I draw a picture of a horse and must explain, “This is a horse,” I have not drawn a very good picture of a horse.”

Myrrh

“When (the Magi) had opened their treasures, they presented gifts to Him: gold, frankincense, and myrrh” (Matthew 2:11).

I read the story of the Magi this morning and recalled a Christmas episode of “The Simpsons,” in which Professor Frink, playing a would-be wise man, admits to regifting the myrrh he brought for the baby Jesus. "Because,” he explained. "Who needs myrrh?” 

Exactly. Myrrh is a gooey, gummy resin used for the most part to embalm the dead, an unlikely gift to give or receive. Who needs it?

Wise Men know: myrrh was something this child one day would need.

DHR

An Exceptionally Good Christmas

"I think we're going to have an exceptionally good Christmas."

If I had written these words I would probably have been thinking that our family would all be together for a white Christmas. I would probably imagine that well ahead of time all the cards had been mailed, all the preparations made and everything would be "just so." We would have a brightly lit tree and lovely red and green decorations, filling my heart with good memories. There would be the just-right presents to bring delight and joy to each one. There would be singing and laughing, playing games and a festive meal, with everyone decked out in their Christmas finery and caring for one another.  And I would find a fresh way to present the Christmas story at just the right time, which would be meaningful to all. There would be no worries, no loneliness, no health issues, no one missing from our family circle, either spacially or emotionally. At our house Evie would be singing "Come On Ring Those Bells" to welcome everyone in!

"I think we're going to have an exceptionally good Christmas."

Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote those words to his fiancée while he was isolated in a dark, cruel Germany prison as World War 2 was raging. He went on to explain:

"The very fact that every outward circumstance precludes our making provision for it will show whether we can be content with what is truly essential. I used to be very fond of thinking up and buying presents, but now that we have nothing to give, the gift God gave us in the birth of Christ will seem all the more glorious, the emptier our hands, the better we understand what Luther meant by his dying words: "We're beggars: it's true." The poorer our quarters, the more clearly we perceive that our hearts should be Christ's home on earth."

Letter to fiancée Maria von Wedemeyer, December 1, 1943

Because of God's priceless gift of His Son, may each of us have an exceptionally good Christmas, content with what is truly essential. Content whatever our Christmas looks like this year.

Blessings,

Carolyn Roper

The selection from Bonhoeffer comes from the work, God Is in the Manger: Reflections on Advent and Christmas; compiled by Jana Riess.

Bad Days

 “Some days you tame the tiger; and some days the tiger has you for lunch.”

 —Tug McGraw

My father was a stoic man who had little patience with complaint, thus I learned to play down the intensity of my feelings and hide behind a facade of dead calm. I became a strong proponent of the stiff upper lip.

But as I’ve grown older I’ve become a complainer.  I’m learning to grumble and pour out my grievances to God. Complaint, I’ve come to see, is better than stoicism, for at least it draws me toward my Lord.

But grumbling is not the last resort. My agitation sometimes leads me to look deeper inside to see the realm from which my frustration and anger come. Feelings lay bare my inmost desires, like the lights on our automobile dashboards that indicate what’s going on under the hood. The way I respond emotionally when God and circumstances don’t match my expectations reveals the condition of my heart.

The reason for so much of my anguish, it seems to me, is that I’ve set my heart on the here and now and have completely lost sight of the realm that is timeless. Deprived in the present I decide there’s nothing left for which to live. But that’s a serious error. There’s more to life than this.

The purpose of life is not to be happy, I’ve finally discovered, though there are plenty of serendipities and blissful occasions along the way. No, everything in life works together to move us toward intimacy with God and to make us more like him. That’s what this life is for.

But that lesson can only learned by those who are “trained” by affliction and difficulty.[1]  We must let adversity do its work. We must know that we’re greatly loved by God even when circumstances suggest otherwise. We must know we’re in these straits, not by accident but by God’s appointment, and humble ourselves under his mighty hand. We must seek to manifest the specific grace for which this trial calls. And we must accept our sorrow as the means by which we are drawn into the heart of God.

We may not have the good life —struggle, pain, disappointment, vexation, opposition, loss may be our lot —but we have God forever and he is our good. As the psalmist concluded: “The nearness of God is my good” (73:28). God himself is our joy. “Happiness is neither outside nor inside us,” Pascal said, “it is in God, both outside and inside us…. Our only true bliss is to be in him, and our sole ill to be cut off from him.”

Life’s disappointments—and they seem to come in waves—strip us of our earnestness with everything but God. When we begin to see how empty life is, when it ceases to have it’s attraction on us, then we begin to move toward God as our good. As we come to him again and again—listening to his word, meditating on his thoughts, following him in the path of obedience, tasting of his goodness—he makes himself increasingly known. We enter into intimacy with him and come to love him for himself.

“The most fundamental need, duty, honor, and happiness of men is…. adoration,” Fredrich von Hügel said. In adoration we enjoy God for himself. We long for the Giver rather than his gifts. We ask nothing more than to be near him and to be like him. We want nothing but the hunger to give ourselves to him. In adoration we learn why every other chase has left us breathless and restless, worn out and wanting for more.

And so, though it’s hard to accept, we need nothing more than God. Our “toys and lesser joys” can never satisfy; they are a small delight. God alone is the answer to our deepest longings.

So, the only thing left for us to do is to turn our energies toward him, giving him our full attention and our heart’s devotion, asking him every day to bring us to the place that we find him more interesting than anyone we know, anything we do, any place we go, or anything we possess.

Then we will have all we can ever expect to have in this world, but it's enough. As a beleaguered friend of mine once said, “You never know how much you have until all you have left is God.”

DHR

[1] Hebrews 12:11

DANGEROUS CROSSINGS

"Life is mighty chancy at any kind of trade..."

Rudyard Kipling

I don't wade swift streams any more, if I can help it, even when the best fishing is on the other side. The rocks are too slippery, the currents are too strong, my balance is too uncertain, and my old legs aren't what they used to be.

I see it as a parable: so many challenges I once took on readily are now too challenging for me. Like the psalmist, I lose sleep at night wondering how I can negotiate them (77:1-4).

But then I remember the "deeds of the LORD." I read that his "path led through the sea, his way through the mighty waters." He surged through the Red Sea as I would wade a tiny brook.

Furthermore, he "lead his people like a flock." Like a good shepherd he brought all Israel safely through the Red Sea to the other side. No one was left behind, no one was abandoned, no one was swept away.

All of us face difficult and dangerous crossings in our life-time-a transition to a new place or position, a decision to abandon a sinful practice and make a new beginning, a choice to walk a way we would rather not go, a call to venture ourselves in untried service, a retirement that takes us from prominence to a lower profile, or our final crossing through the river "bitter and cold." Yet we need not fear the dark currents for God does not fear them. His strength and courage are infinite. He will see us through.

Yet, the psalmist observes with some wonderment, he "leaves no footprints" as he accompanies us. Just as the sand in the bottom of a stream hides our footprints as soon as they are imprinted, so God's presence, as real as our own, is hidden from us. He is with us, "walking incognito," as C. S. Lewis said, and thus we may not realize he is present. But, Lewis continues, "the incognito is not hard to penetrate. The real labor is to remember, to attend," to make ourselves think about his presence; to acknowledge that he is at our side.

Furthermore, though we cannot see God's footprints in our crossings, he is incarnate in human agents that we can see. At the Red Sea he led Israel "through the hand of Moses and Aaron." Now, he leads us in the wise counsel of a mother, in the strong grip of a father, in the urgings of godly brother or sister, in the quiet encouragement of a caring spouse, in the gentle touch of a child.

How many hands have reached out to us-guiding us, encouraging us, strengthening us. In them we perceive the hand of our Lord leading us through deep and dangerous waters to the other side.

Hard crossings are inevitable, but our Lord has promised: "When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and when you pass through the rivers, they will not sweep over you" (Isaiah 43:2).

I came to the swift, raging river,

And the roar held the echo of fear; 

"Oh, Lord, give me wings to fly over,

If You are, as You promised, quite near."

But He said, "Trust the grace I am giving,

All-pervasive, sufficient for you.

Take My hand-we'll face this together;

But My plan is not over, but through."

-Lee Webber

DR

11/18/12