A Chance Encounter.
I had started to write this blog before lunch, but I hadn’t left myself enough time to finish it. Since I didn’t want to keep my lunch date waiting, I stopped midway through the third paragraph and headed out.
While I was out, I decided I might as well make the hospital visits, too. It’s a beautiful, sunny spring day in Peoria and the drive downtown was a pleasure.
After my last visit at the Order of Saint Francis medical complex I was walking down that very long hallway to the parking garage. About to overtake a group of three in conversation in front of me and to the right, a young man was overtaking me on my left. He appeared to be the age of our son, Chase. As he came up beside me, he said, quite simply, “My yoke is easy, and my burden is light.” (Matthew 11:30).
I wasn’t wearing my clerical collar, but I did have my Pastors Companionbook in my left hand, which has a very small cross outlined in gold on the cover. The perceptive young man noticed that, deduced I was a fellow believer in Christ Jesus, and took a moment and a chance to encourage me in my day.
My response? I said, “Amen!” We talked a little bit as we made our way out of the hospital, he to the top floor of the garage and me to first ramp. And we blessed one another as we parted.
I doubt that I’ll run across that young man anytime soon. But it’s refreshing to remember that he and his like are out there. That little comment/connection made my day.
"The Kingdom of God is like..."
“The Kingdom of God is like a mustard seed…” When I read those words my mind often pictures the large shrub of a mustard plant that has grown from such a humble beginning as a mustard seed. Perhaps yours does, too.
Among the many excellent points that Anthony Esolen makes in a Touchstone magazine essay from years ago is that we are apt to think that the parable has to do with the lowly beginnings of the Kingdom, beginnings that are then swallowed up in greatness and are never seen again.
If that were His point, Jesus could have said, “The Kingdom of God may be compared to the cedar of Lebanon, the mightiest and most beautiful of all the trees, even though it came from a small seed.” But, He didn’t.
The emphasis here certainly doesn’t exclude the great and wonderful things God has brought about in the world. Not at all.
But the emphasis is that the greatness of God can be found in the seemingly smallest of things. In the Christian faith the small is not transcended and dismissed.
And one example would be the thief on the cross next to Jesus; the thief who comes to faith. The greatness of God is found in a movement of the heart.
Whatever brought them there, these two beside Jesus were not good men. They were wicked men deserving of this worst of punishments. But something turned in the one man’s heart. It was an impulse, the smallest and most secret of responses to the call of God. The thief who has been so bad says to Jesus, “Lord, remember me when you come into your kingdom.” This is the mustard seed, the speck of yeast in the dough. “Truly I say to you,” says Jesus, “this day you will be with me in Paradise.”
All the wonder, power, and grace of God is in this almost imperceptible turn. Thanks be to Him for this gift and for its continued growth in us.
As we speak to one another...
Why I thought there would be a return to civility I do not know. The Mueller report, ostensibly a search to determine if there had been collusion between President Trump’s campaign and Russia, had been so highly anticipated that whatever the results were going to be someone was going to be disappointed and someone was going to be crowing.
So, one side is basking in what it sees as vindication while the other side defiantly says more investigation is warranted. Sigh.
A trip to the Presidential museum in Springfield, IL, will remind one that snide comments and accusations, character assassination, crude cartoons, and incivility have been a part of our political life for years. A trip through history will reveal that this is the way of humankind; the pendulum of incivility in correspondence will swing from greater to lesser and back again.
St. Paul’s instructions to the Ephesians (4:1-15) is well worth keeping in mind. It speaks to the goal of being assertive, or perhaps even confrontational: when we are correcting someone or something, the aim is always both (1) to set things right, and (2) to be reconciled.
“I therefore, a prisoner for the Lord, urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called, 2 with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, 3 eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace…15 Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ,”
God bless your conversations. May they, spoken in love, ever be seasoned with salt and a benefit to relationships and to the world.