DRAZEN’S LAW OF RESTITUTION

“The time it takes to rectify a situation is inversely proportional to the time it took to do the damage.” (Murphy’s Law, Book Two) For example: it takes longer to glue a vase together than to break one. It takes longer to lose ten pounds than to gain ten pounds.

It always takes more time to correct the mess than to make the mess. We all know that from experience. We also know from experience that we never seem to learn how to stop getting ourselves into even bigger messes. We know better, no doubt about it. But we don’t do better. Oh, we're more careful next time when we rush through the house. And we really watch what we eat for the next few months.

But then we seem to forget until we're all-of-a-sudden another ten pounds over­weight, or we've knocked over the lamp because we were, once again, too much in a hurry. We seem to have a knack of reminding ourselves of our frailties and failures and usually at the most inopportune moments. I mean, the reason we knocked over that vase is that we really were in a hurry to get to that really important meeting. And we really didn't notice the ten pounds until we were getting dressed for our best friend's wedding and the suit was too tight.

And then it's too late. What we do, then, is berate ourself all through that meeting we were hurrying to because of our clumsiness and thus get little out of the meeting. And we're so uncomfortable throughout the whole wedding event because, not only is the suit too tight, but we're sure everyone else notices just how tight it is on us. It's no wonder we can get inferiority complexes. Would that we could be perfect. Would that we would not just learn from our mistakes but, even better, not make any in the first place. We’re just clumsy, error-prone, mere mortals.

Because of that we’re continually putting Drazen’s Law into practice. We pay for our mistakes and we pay almost immediately, if not immediately, for them. That certainly takes the fun out of life sometimes. The wedding was going to be a ball; but how can you have a great time when you can hardly breath? We were going to strut our stuff at that meeting, but all we did was waddle through because all we could think about was that broken vase, that expensive, antique broken vase.

Well, now, if you’re waiting for an astute solution to avoiding Drazen’s Law, you’ve come to the wrong place. Let’s face it, I, for one, am always making restitution. I can’t recall a vase I broke while hurrying although I’m sure others can. But I can recall putting on and taking off pounds—for almost all my life. I should have learned the first time back in 1958 or 1959.

It’s all part of the penalty we pay for being human, for sin. It’s always easier to commit a sin than to try to undo the damage done. The remission is always more difficult than the commission. All we can do is try to learn from our mistakes and pray for the strength not to make them again. Aside from that, I don’t have any other words of wisdom: just a wish. May 2023 be less of learning and more of loving.

THE “WHY” OF CHRISTMAS

Uncle Remus tells us something to the effect that we don't have to stand directly behind a mule to discover just how powerful its hind legs are. But sometimes we do. Some­times we do have to touch that hot pan not only to discover that we should listen to our elders when they say we shouldn't, but also just to discover exactly what "hot" feels like and means.

Sometimes we have to walk a mile in another's shoes otherwise we will have little or no idea what he is going through. All the books on hunger, all the tales of misery and woe, will never do nearly as much as our being really hungry ourself and not knowing from where our next meal will come. Sometimes experience, deep, personally involved experience, is the only teacher. Sometimes we just have to get kicked by that mule, no matter how painful the experience.

And sometimes I think that that's one of the reasons why there is a Christmas, why Jesus, the Son of God, became man and, as one of the Bible translations has it, "pitched his tent" among us. God really had to see how the rest of us live. There is no way in the world, God being God, that God would know what it is like to be human – someone who is not God, unless God actually became one of us.

To say that God had to become one of us to know what we're going through here on earth, to say that may not be sound theology. But it sure makes sense to me. God as God is not tempted. God doesn't get sick. God doesn't catch cold or have headaches. God’s God. And so it's rather difficult, if not impossible, for God to know what it's like to come home from a hard day at work, head pounding, feet aching, the kids wanting your total attention, husband oblivious to it all, all the while trying to get supper ready—God doesn't know how difficult it is to smile and be living in that situation.

Or at least God didn't until God sent God’s Son to become one of us and find out. Jesus' birth, in a barn no less, immediately gave God a new perspective on life in this world. God's education didn't stop in Bethlehem either. It stopped at Calvary. Now God knows what you and I are talking about when we cry out to him in pain and hurt and sorrow. Jesus went through it all.

There are other reasons why God became human, other sound, theological reasons. But sometimes I don't want theology. I want practicality. And so sometimes it helps me to know, to realize, that God really does know what I am going through in this life – both the joys and the sorrows, the good days and the bad. For God did walk a mile in my – in our – shoes, much more than a mile.

And God was kicked by that mule. God knows. That's why Christmas is so meaningful to me. I know why God became human: to get to know you and me a lot better, to be, if that were possible, an even better God. Christmas is much more than the celebration of the birth of a very special person. It's the celebration of God's saying to us "I know what you're talking about, what you're going through."

THE GARDEN OF EDEN

Some say the Garden of Eden the figment of the fertile imaginations of a biblical writer who was trying to convey a religious truth. Others say that it was an actual place inhabited for a time by the first man and first woman. But does it really matter?

Most biblical scholars look upon the first eleven chapters of Genesis more as parables than actual fact. Most fundamentalists look upon Adam and Eve, the Garden, Cain and Abel, Noah and the Ark, the Tower of Babel as real live people and events. It doesn’t really matter. Want to believe they’re parables? Fine. Just live out what they mean to teach. Want to believe the literal fact? Fine. Just don’t believe. Live out that belief.

That’s what is essential to all biblical truth and teaching: that we live it out. Take the Garden of Eden as an example. What does it teach and what does it mean? Parable or fact aside, the story says something very important to you and me. This is what I think it says, at least in part:

The Garden of Eden, as it is portrayed in Genesis, was paradise, heaven on earth. The inhabitants, call them Adam and Eve, had absolutely everything they could possibly want that would make them happy. Everything. It was all there. We don’t know what was all there; but whatever everything was, it was all there.

In the biblical Garden Adam and Eve had absolutely everything they could ever want to make them happy. But guess what? That “everything” didn't make them happy. They wanted something more. And when the biblical writer says that in their search for happiness they ate of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, he is telling us that that act of disobedience was the beginning of mankind’s discovery of what brings true happiness.

No, disobedience doesn’t bring happiness. What it brought for Adam and Eve was getting booted out of the Garden, woman bearing children in pain and man having to sweat in order to survive. And, believe it or not, that was the best thing that ever happened to mankind. When God closed the gate to the Garden, man and woman finally found happiness, finally discovered paradise.

For they found each other. They found out that happiness/paradise does not consist in having everything one’s heart desires but in having someone to love and care for. That’s what makes work, even with all the sweat and pain that is sometimes involves, worthwhile. We are doing it for someone we love and who loves us and not because it can or will bring them or us things to possess. That’s what makes the pain of childbirth bearable. It is shared by husband and wife. The physical pain is hers. He shares in it because of his love for her.

Yes. the best thing that ever happened to mankind was that our ancestors lost the Garden. For what they found, and what we must find, is that paradise, heaven on earth, consists in loving another and being loved in return. Things, possessions, just won’t do it. They can't. To cry because a loved one is in pain is understandable. To cry over possessions lost or cry because we can’t have something we want is tragic.

The Story of the Garden of Eden – real or parable, your choice – is a good reminder that real happiness is found in people not possessions. God help us if our possessions ever become more important than another person, any person.

THE GREAT CANDLE-SNUFFER

 A friend of mine of the Senior-citizen variety, one who, when he opens his daily paper, turns first to the obituaries to see if any more of his friends have gone on to their eternal reward—this friend of mine likens life and death to a candle; each of us is one. And we go on glowing until the Great Candle-Snuffer in the Sky goes "WHHH."

Well, I've never heard it, death, explained quite that way before. It's a good analogy at any rate. God is in charge. When it comes time to be our time, that's it. And God's the one who puts out the fire, blows out the flame. God's in charge of death just as God is in charge of life.

So if we look at life and death that way, we have two choices, a negative and a positive, about how we can live our life. The negative, as the term implies, is the bad, the wrong choice. Life lived negatively as regards the GCS is one in which we're constantly looking around awaiting our turn. The fear of the dark, the fear of the lights going out syndrome. Growing older means growing towards death. And it means not living. It means we're busy about dying.

On the other hand, the positive side of the candle analogy means that we're busy about living. Sure, our candle will get snuffed someday, maybe someday soon, maybe before we're ready. But that is not our concern. Our concern is to make sure our candle burns brightly up there on the lampstand and not under the bushel basket. It'll burn slower under the basket, of course. No ill winds will get to it there causing it to burn almost out of hand.

But it can't be seen under the basket. And candles are to be seen so that they can lead the way. Besides candles under a basket can go out just as easily and just as quickly from lack of air. They suffocate to death.

So it can be with us. We need air to live. Our flames of life need air to breathe. Sure, sometimes it may be that our life is burning out of control – all manner of winds, good and ill, are blowing at us, around us, wearing us down so much so that we're tempted to hide for a moment under some basket to get some rest.

But that's not what candles are for—remember? Yes, it's risky to stand out there in the wind, to get blown hither and thither, to say by our light: "Follow me; I’ll show the way." But – need I say it again? – that's what candles are for.

A good baptismal custom is to present the newly baptized with a small candle symbolic of the Easter Candle. It is a reminder that as a Christian we are to be the light of the world. We are, by our very life, to show others what it means to live a life of faith in Jesus Christ, to be the light in this sometimes dark and windy world.

And that light of ours is to glow brightly until it is blown out by God. Yes, it can go out if we don't give it enough fresh air. This fresh air comes from making sure we don't hide our light, our faith, but live it. And it also comes from renewing that air around us through learning more about our faith.

Okay: I'm beating around the bushel basket: Life, our life, is to be lived fully at all times. It is to be lived in faith, not fear. And it is to be lived knowing that when we’ve done all that God has asked us to do, when we've lit the way by our life, God will blow out that flame and give us a new life with God forever.