Category Archives: General Musing - Page 11

Have Mercy

I’ve recently been elected and installed as a deacon at our church. We have about 15 deacons, and we’re charged with taking care of the physical needs of the people and property of the church so that the pastors and elders are free to deal with the spiritual needs. (Justification for deacons in Acts 6:1-4 and qualifications in 1 Timothy 3:8-10)

The deacons at our church work via committees, and I’m serving on the Mercy Committee. This committee handles requests from people in the church and community for help with any needs that they have. Today I did my first “investigation” of a request for help with a rent payment. I had to call the requestor and determine if I thought that he was credible or just scamming the church for some free money. (Apparently this happens not infrequently.) After talking with him and some other people, I think that his need is credible. I reported this to the committee and they have decided to help.

Good, but I have questions. What if I’m wrong? What if money that someone gave to the church to do God’s work ended up in the hands of a con artist because I’m naive? Or the other way around: what if I thought his story sounded fishy and turned him down, but then some honest guy at the end of his rope loses his apartment because some Christians refused to help him?

I currently have a mild case of, “Who am I to make this decision?” If we’d decided not to help him with his rent, I’d have a big case.

Far away

Of late, Cora has been falling asleep at night holding onto a fistful of my beard. This little 18 pound sweetheart grabs the whiskers of her irascible 215 pound dad to feel secure as she sleeps. As she lays there in my arms, I swear that she’ll experience no harm that I can prevent or absorb.

I can imagine fathers in Baghdad whose children fall asleep the same way. Those children look to their dads for protection, and those dads feel duty-bound to defend their children from harm. If bombs rain down there those fathers may lose their children, and I feel for them. If bombs rain down there those children may lose their fathers, and I feel for them.

In President Bush’s state of the union address the other night, he mentioned going to war with Iraq to stop a madman. He simplified the question to something along the lines of, “Do you want to stop a madman? Yes or no?” This simplification glosses over the losses of those defenseless children and their protective fathers.

I understand that, rhetorically, one achieves persuasive potency by making an issue black and white and excluding any middle grey areas. But I don’t trust an argument that glosses over the killing of one group of innocent people to protect the lives of another group of innocent people. The true face of “collateral damage” should not be left out of the argument in an attempt to reduce political wind drag with middle America. Call attention to the inevitable civilian losses. Let me see that the man setting them in motion understands the gravity of his decision. Give me the reassurance of knowing that it bothers him.

Rite of Passage

Indulge me for a minute with the lyrics to John Denver’s Rocky Mountain High.

He was born in the Summer of his 27th year
Coming home to a place he’d never been before.
He left yesterday behind him; you might say he was born again.
You might say he found a key for every door.

This song is about a guy who starts a new life. What was his old life like? Who knows. But that life was just a precursor because, at age 27, he was reborn. That probably means a lot of different things to different people: finding a new group of friends; starting a new career using latent talents; living in an entirely different culture.

But for me the attraction of the song was not that my circumstances might change, but that I might change. Something happens — a new person, place, or experience — that causes a break with the old, and a new me is born. The troubles that defined my life so far are the fault of the previous guy, not me. I’m starting from right here, and I’ve got a clean slate. Rocky Mountain High said I could look to the future — to hope for the future — because people can change. You can be someone new, even as late as age 27.

But I can no longer take comfort in this song’s promise of a brand new day dawning at age 27. I’m 28.

I know a few more age-related songs, but none that deal with my current stretch of life. The best I can do is start looking forward to a few years from now when David Wilcox’s song, Glory, will be able to offer some consolation:

In the big, boring middle of your long book of life
After you pass 32
If you don’t die in glory at the age of Christ
Then your story is still coming true.

After that, it’s The Beatles with When I’m 64

Grace

Driving to work on Tuesday I passed a beat up old moving van. Box truck. It was white with paint peeling and missing in places. It was dirty, dented, obviously old, and it looked the sort of exterior that must hide an equally run down and unattractive interior. I imagined all sorts of mechanical trouble from a truck that run down. Suspension problems, transmission, etc.

The company name painted on the side of the truck was “Grace.” That was it. It wasn’t “Grace Moving Co.,” or “Grace, Inc.,” but simply “Grace.” And the company logo looked fine. No peeling or dirt there. It was like the company had just bought this old truck and placed their logo on it, brand new.

The value of that truck was not in the truck itself, per se, but in that truck’s being owned by Grace. Grace listed that truck as an asset on their balance sheet. Whatever I thought of its usefulness, it did useful work for them. Whatever I thought of its reliability, they would repair it when it broke down. Whatever I thought of its appearance, they still put their logo on the side to identify it as theirs.

I saw that truck as a rolling metaphor for the Christian doctrine of grace. That doctrine explains why people who merit very little for themselves are nonetheless seen as inordinately valuable by God. From GraceSermons.com:

The Apostle Paul uses this word [grace] to refer to the unmerited and freely given favor and mercy which God bestows upon the sinner in salvation. Through this grace, the sinner is delivered from sin and judgment. This grace, though freely given, is precious and costly, for its basis is the saving work of Jesus Christ. A salvation that is received by grace is the very opposite of a salvation that is earned by working or by obeying the law of God. A person who is saved by grace has no basis for boasting in his salvation for he has done nothing to earn or merit it.

And from the Christain Apologetics and Research Ministry:

Grace is unmerited favor. It is God’s free action for the benefit of His people. It is different than Justice and Mercy. Justice is getting what we deserve. Mercy is not getting what we deserve. Grace is getting what we do not deserve.

What’s Your Story?

I heard this joke on the radio this morning.

Art Linkletter was visiting a nursing home for senior citizens with Alzheimer’s disease. He walked up to one old woman and asked, “Do you know who I am?”

“No I don’t,” she replied, “But if you go to the front desk, they’ll tell you.”

It’s a cute joke and it made me smile, but it also made me think.

First, I thought about living in a place where, every now and then, everyone has to walk to the front desk to be reminded of their name, or what they did for a living, or who comes to visit them and when. I imagine I’d feel pretty empty walking up there. Who am I? What did I do with my life? Is it a wasted life? Is that why I can’t remember it now?

But then I thought that, as sad as that trip to the front desk might be for someone, the trip back to one’s room would probably be a happy one. Walking to the front desk, you were just an old person, indistinguishable even to yourself from the dozens of other old people that surround you. But then you heard the nurse say, “Why, you’re Ms. Jenkins, and you were a school teacher!” I am? I was? That means I taught thousands of children to read! That’s something to be proud of. I didn’t know I had it in me!

Surprise!

rustyOnBed.jpg This picture is for my mom and dad. Tina and I watched their golden lab this weekend and were given strict instructions not to allow their dog onto our bed the way we allow our own; we might undo months of careful training and make him impossible to keep off of the beds at their house.

We set out with the best of intentions to honor their wishes, but then Rusty peed on our rug. I think this makes us even. Doesn’t he look so happy up there?

Peanut Butter in my Chocolate

catAndDog.jpg This picture was taken just a few minutes too late. My dog and cat were laying very close to each other, and their respective black and white markings made them look very much like a Yin-Yang symbol. That’s cool on it’s own, but it’s made even better by the fact that it was a cat and a dog laying beside each other that formed the symbol. Trouble is, the dog got up and followed me when I went to get the camera, so the shot was ruined.

That would have been a great picture to have, though. I thought about forcing them to lay down in the same position again, but that didn’t seem to jibe very well with the spirit of the whole yin-yang thing. Besides, it’s not easy to force a cat to do anything, let alone getting her to lie down nose-to-rear with a dog so that the guy who forgets to feed her all the time can get a picture. No, you’ll have to settle for this picture instead.

WOTD: Infra dig

The word of the day is: infra dig. This is an abbreviation of the Latin phrase “infra dignitatem,” meaning that something is beneath one’s dignity.

Now, I can imagine myself saying ?infra dignitatem,? but not the abbreviated form that Merriam Webster suggests. ?Infra dig? sounds like the result of some Ivy League law school?s student body being swept up in the disco culture of the 1970s, you dig? Groovy.

I?m trying to think of the last thing that I declined to do because I thought it was beneath my dignity. I was at a wedding two weeks ago where I didn?t do much dancing for fear of looking stupid: I guess that counts as an attempt to protect my dignity, huh? And specifically with regard to line dances like the Electric Slide, I?m not going anywhere near that dance floor. If you don?t know how to dance to a free dance, you can at least remain inconspicuous by moving left and right to the beat. If you don?t know how to dance a line dance, it?s going to become obvious to everybody pretty quickly.

But I don’t actually consider dancing to be beneath my dignity: I dance waltzes and swing dances because I’ve taken lessons and no longer fear making a fool of myself with them. I guess it’s looking silly in front of others that I want to avoid. A quick lesson on how to do the Electric Slide would relieve my fears, but I still don?t want to learn as I go; and in front of spectators, no less!

WOTD: Vanguard

The word of the day is: vanguard.

The vanguard is the leading edge of a movement: the persons or things leading the way. As such, I don’t have much first hand experience with it; I’m a committed “keep your head down and hope no one will notice” kind of guy.

Vanguard was also a video game for the Atari 2600. If I remember correctly, it involved flying a ship around the screen and shooting at things. The little ship was somewhat difficult to maneuver.

Introducing “Word of the Day”

I think that vocabulary is to language what flavor is to good nutrition. We could all get by on a high school vocabulary just like we could all get by eating dog food, but where’s the fun in that? The careful arrangement of just the right words adds spice and texture to language.

That’s why I’m a big fan of the Merriam-Webster website. They offer some terrific services, including a Word of the Day mailing list. Needless to say, I’m on the list.

So, since they send me a new word every day, I’m going to use some of those words as departure points for log entries. Expect the first installment soon.