WASN’T INTERESTED

Our youngest grandson, Carter, is in pre-school. He loves it and especially loves his teacher. He came home the other day and told his mom that he wanted to make banana bread to take to her. So mom and Carter made banana bread for Miss Whitney. Carter did all the work. When he took the bread to school and gave it to her, she asked why he made it for her. His replied, “Because I love you.” Okay, so I’m bragging. Isn’t that what grandparents do?

Anyway, one of the great benefits of Carter’s preschool is that lunch is provided. (Okay, okay: for what his parents have to pay, lunch and snacks should be provided.) One of the other great benefits for Arlena and me as grandparents is that the school sends a daily report home on Carter’s activities as well as what he was served for lunch and snacks. His mom forwards the report to us which is always accompanied by a photo or two. It makes the 250+ miles distance between us seem closer.

One of Carter’s latest reports said that he was served peas and carrots for lunch. It was noted that he “wasn’t interested”. When I read that comment, all I could do was smile. Been there, done that. I mean, who hasn’t been served a meal, or at least part of one, and just was not interested in eating what was served? And sometimes we are interested only to discover that what looked so good tasted so bad.

Years ago I was served cooked cranberries which I love. I put a heaping spoonful onto my plate. They were awful. But I had to eat them because the hostess was proud of them and her husband loved them. I later learned that she made them with artificial sugar because of his diabetes. I took one for the team, as they say, because I couldn’t tell her how badly they tasted and, unlike Carter, I had to clean my plate.

There are times in life when we have to do what we have to do even, and often especially, when we are not interested in doing what needs to be done, done by us and not by someone else. We just happen to be in a place where we are called to lend a hand and cannot and must not walk away even if that is exactly what we want to do. We can walk away, of course. We have that freedom. But unlike Carter we cannot simply say “I’m not interested in helping. Ask someone else.” Our faith just won’t let us.

It’s called our “Christian Conscience”. It sits on our shoulder and keeps us alert. It nags at us especially when those opportunities arise that call out for us to lend a hand to help someone in need. It reminds us that we have somehow been put into that situation precisely because we have the time and talent to respond whether we are interested in doing so or not.

I hope that the next time a situation arises when I am called to give of myself, interested in doing so or not, I do the right thing and give my best.

A SOUND THEOLOGICAL BUMPER STICKER

Most of the time when I see bumper stickers or license plates that are meant to send a certain message, I smile, cringe or ignore. Some of those license plates are really hard to decipher. I hate the ones that cite a bible passage, as if everyone is so biblically literate that the reader knows exactly what the message is that is trying to be conveyed and is as if any one passage or verse tells the whole story.

It’s like the “Honk if You Love Jesus” sticker. If all I have to do is honk my horn to profess my love for Jesus, being a follower of Jesus is a piece of cake. But we all know better, don’t we. The only honkers whose honks are meaningful are geese who honk to encourage the leader of the formation to keep on trucking. The honks our car horns make are usually made in anger anyway.

But I really digress. The other day I saw a bumper sticker that read: “The world is my country. To do good is my religion.” That’s profoundly theological and totally Christian even it is non-denominational. The truth is that there are as many religions as there are people. The word religion comes from the Latin word that means “to bind”. We, if you think about it, are bound by our personal religion: we do what that religion says we can do and don’t do what it says we cannot. And when we go against that binding, we feel remorse. When we adhere to it, we rejoice.

To do good and avoid evil is what our Christian faith is all about no matter what denomination we subscribe to. “Love God above all else and your neighbor as yourself” say the prophets, says Jesus, says Mohammed, say you and I. The truth, further, is that no one need tell us what good is. We know it innately because our Good God created us good. So when we do not do that which we know deep in our heart and mind that is not good, we know it.

And where do we do that good and avoid that evil? Everywhere, that’s where. The whole world is or country, our homeland. The Old Testament prophets always reminded the people that they must welcome the aliens among them because their land was their land as well. The world is our land and we are responsible for the whole world. That is not to get political although it is, in a sense, a Greek sense, again. The word political comes from the Greek word meaning “city”.

The point of that bumper sticker, at least to my understanding, is that the whole world is where we are to live out our religion of doing good wherever we are at any moment in time in that/this world. It means that we truly care about those who are suffering anywhere in this world and do what good we can to alleviate their suffering. It may not be much, maybe only a simple prayer, but it at least recognizes that those who are suffering are our neighbors no matter where they live. There is sound theology in that bumper sticker and a great reminder for me and, I trust, all of us.

IS HELL IN HEAVEN?

There is heaven and there is hell, at least to believers, to those who believe there is eternal life, at least in another form, after death in this life. But are heaven and hell two very separate and very distinct realities? Personally, I don’t believe in an eternal hell, a life without God, fire and brimstone notwithstanding. I believe God loves each and every one of us and always forgives each and every one of us.

Furthermore, if we believe Jesus died for our sins, our sins are forgiven whether or not we may even want them to be forgiven. Yes, in this life we do need to ask forgiveness for our sins, not so much ask God to forgive our sins because, as I said, God already does. That does not mean that God does not care. God does. It simply means that God as Love always forgives. We need to ask forgiveness in this life from those whom we have deliberately hurt in this life by our selfishness. That is not always possible and it is always painful, but we must try.

The real problem that we believers all have if we believe in God’s total forgiveness and God’s gift of eternal life to each one of us is what do we do with the real sinners like Hitler and Stalin to name just two? How can they be in heaven? It just not seem right or fair. And, yes, I have always said that with sin, difference in degree really makes no difference. Stealing a dime and stealing a million is still stealing.

So here’s my guess at Hitler and Stalin being “up there” with Francis of Assisi and how that can be. I have reflected on how my past sins and failings, things done and left undone, haunt me at times today, even those I committed years ago. Yet, at the same time, I love my life and am happy and content. It is only when those memories suddenly pop up that my happiness is tempered for the time being.

Those haunting moments are, if you will, momentary hell moments in my life. They are painful moments in the midst of my happiness and joy. That is how I am beginning to think about hell being in heaven. I can’t believe that when we die our past is completely erased and we start all over again. Maybe we do. But does that mean that I have to be introduced to my parents as if I never knew them? I don’t think so.

In heaven, amid my eternal joy and happiness, there will be times when that happiness will be tempered by the memories of my past sinfulness. I will know that I have been forgiven and will rejoice and be thankful for that. Yet, at the same time there will be the pain that those memories bring with them. Hell in heaven.

Again, that thought, belief, doesn’t give me any freedom to do what is wrong in this life. What it does do, at least for me, is allow me to believe that we are all forgiven and know that the memories of our selfishness in this life, hellish to be sure, will be with us forever even as we revel in God’s love in eternity in heaven.

IT STILL HAUNTS ME

Several years ago Arlena and I were returning from a visit in southern Florida and stopped somewhere in, I think, Georgia or maybe South Carolina, to get a motel room for the night. We got our room and headed across the parking lot to a nearby restaurant to get something to eat. Halfway across the lot a gentleman approached us and asked if we could give him some money for a motel room. He was a Navy vet and was returning home from the local VA hospital where he was undergoing chemotherapy for cancer treatments. The shunt was still in his arm into which the chemicals were inserted.

We gave him ten dollars and headed to dinner. Both of us, almost as soon as we sat down said, “Why didn’t we just pay for his motel room?” We knew, even if he had enough money to pay for a room for him and his wife, he would still need money for something to eat and probably for gas to make it back home. We were blessed. Still are and abundantly so, else we could not have afforded the Florida excursion.

But it was too late. And it still haunts me. What was I thinking? What were we thinking (if I can speak for Arlena and I can)? We are blessed enough to be able to help those less blessed and we know it and yet, when the time comes to share those blessings, sometimes we – I, to speak for myself – go braindead.

I shared that story at a bible study a few weeks ago. The participants told be that I should get over it. It was really no big deal and we did help in the way the gentleman asked. Maybe so. But we could have done so much more. That’s why I can’t and I do not think I ever will get over it, getting over leaving undone something I should and could have done. It still haunts me years later.

Personally, I am thankful that I cannot get over it. It has helped me become more aware of my blessings and that I can be even more generous with those blessings. After all, I can’t take them with me. Is it not what blessing are for: to be shared and to be shared especially with those who are less blessed and even more especially with those who in the moment are in real need?

That is where I was at that moment in time and I blew it. Unfortunately, it probably won’t be the last time. Humanly speaking, I am not always aware of the moment because it passes all too quickly. It is only when I have time to reflect back on those moments and realize the missed opportunity God had set before me to respond the way I could and should that I want to kick myself.

I suspect I am not alone in all this. Most of us take our blessing sometimes almost for granted. Even more, we tend to forget that we really don’t deserve to be so blessed. The gentleman I helped, but not in the way I could have and should have, was younger than me, was a veteran and was dying. That’s why I am still haunted and deserve to be.

WHO CREATED GOD?

The other say I called our youngest daughter to see if she could help me with a problem I was having with my computer. Since she works on a computer as part of her job, I figured she would know how to solve my problem. She was on her way taking Carter, her four-year-old, to pre-school. She solved my problem in about ten seconds. That was the easy part for me.

Then came Carter. He had two questions for me (Pap). He wanted to know if Pap could fix one of his light-up shoes because it wasn’t working any more. I couldn’t. They don’t make it so that you can. They make it so that you will buy another pair of shoes even though the ones Carter was wearing are still perfectly good as shoes but not in the light-up category. I told him we would buy him another pair when we saw him again. I mean, what are grandparents for anyway?

Then came question Number Two: “If God created everything, who created God?” THE question of the ages from a four-year-old. Why me? I’d rather try to repair his shoes than try to answer that question. His mother allowed me to think about the answer as they were just arriving to school, thank God, the God who would have to help me answer that question so that Crater would understand.

The problem is that I can’t answer it. No one can. It is the mystery of mysteries. Every once in a while I do go down that road. I start to imagine the time when there was nothing, nothing but God and I ask myself “How did God get there?” Within seconds I always walk away. I just do not want to go there and not because I think I will lose my faith. It is simply because it is a waste of time.

Thomas Aquinas thought he had an answer when he stated that God was the Uncaused First Cause. Well, of course! But I have to say, Old Tom, that does not make the question any clearer any more that my saying “I haven’t a clue.” The truth is, neither did Thomas Aquinas. He only tried to answer the question because he felt he had to, being the great phosphor-theologian that everyone said he was – and he was.

But smarts doesn’t answer that particular question for a believer. Unbelievers don’t have that problem because they see no need to ask the question in the first place. But they still have to deal with the results of what the First Cause caused: creation. Trying to explain creation out of nothing is just as difficult as trying to explain how God came to be. The Big Bang Theory explains nothing. How do you create something out of nothing?

I was lucky this morning. My hope is that Carter forgets to ask me that question the next time we talk. If he doesn’t, I’ll just tell him that it’s a mystery and that he is really too young to understand the answer anyway, but he will be able to when he gets older. I know that’s a lie. You have any better answer? I thought as much.

WE'RE IMPORTANT TO ONE ANOTHER

There are times in the lives of each and every one of us when we begin to feel that we are not all that important in the grand scheme of things. Why we feel that way we sometimes have no idea, but we feel that way anyone. It’s a little discouraging and certainly disconcerting especially when we believe that every person is important and no one is unimportant in God’s eyes and, of course, the only eyes that really count.

The truth is that we fill important places in each other’s lives. Even more, we don’t realize that are doing so when we are doing so. In the same way others fill important places in our lives. Sometimes we are quite aware that that is what we are doing as when we are present through their suffering or filling some needs that the other cannot do so without outside help.

Again, there are times we are simply unaware of how much our presence is important to another even if that presence is only in passing, especially if it is only in passing. A kind word, a friendly smile, a nod of simple recognition can make another person’s day just as a word or a smile or a nod sometimes makes our day. It doesn’t take much to uplift another or be uplifted by another.

Perhaps that is why we take these little gestures of recognition of the other for granted if we take them for anything at all. It seems that it is only when we have been uplifted by a kindly word or nod or smile that we realize just how important the person who uplifted us at that moment filled an important place in our life. It had been an empty space as we had been feeling a real emptiness. And now the void was filled.

Our lives are full of filling those empty spaces in the lives of others and having our emptiness filled by others, mostly in passing, but filling nevertheless. It’s not as if we walk around consciously looking for people whose lives we can fill by our very presence. Rather it is the recognition that we fill important places in the lives of others just by our very presence – and they do the same for us.

Nor is it important that we know that we have done so for another. The other may tell us that our smile or nod or word really meant something without having to explain what that something was. We understand because we have been on the receiving end of another’s kind smile that did so much to brighten our day even as we are at a loss to explain how that smile brightened our day.

What was important and what is always important is that we never forget just how we fill important places in the lives of others just by being who we are called to be: kind and caring people, people who have known emptiness but who have had that emptiness filled by the kindly actions of another. Little loving actions mean a lot, always have and always will. They are never unimportant and never will be.

SEEING THE WORLD THROUGH YOUR EYES

There is an old Indian saying that in order to understand another person we have to walk in that person’s moccasins. We have to walk the walk before we talk the talk: talk as if we understand that person. We know that to be true and we know that to be impossible. We can only walk in our own moccasins/shoes. We also know that a lot of living has gone into those moccasins, living that determines so much about who that person is at the moment we might want to walk in those shoes.

Walking in another’s shoes would only be the beginning of our trying to understand that person. We would need to go deeper. We would need to see the world through that person’s eyes. Again, like those shoes, those eyes have seen so very, very much, so much that what those eyes now see is colored by all that they have seen in the past. That is why a person born blind almost always has a better picture of the world he or she has never seen than of the world we have seen.

That is why when we begin to wonder why other people act the way they do, the reason is found in the miles they have walked and the sights they have seen and experienced. Their life, like everyone’s lives, has been colored by everything they have seen and experienced up to this very day.

And so has ours. Sometimes we forget that about others and sometimes we forget that about ourselves. We have become who we are because of our past. It would be good if we could actually walk in another’s shoes and see though that person’s eyes and thus understand that person. But would it not be even better if we would pause for a while and remember all those places our shoes have taken us, all those sights our eyes have seen?

It would be impossible to make a total recall, of course. But the really memorable moments would stand out and they would give us a clue to why we have become the person we have become. The past good and the past bad are all part of our making and becoming and they are important. They won’t change who we are, but they will help us understand both the good and the bad about us – for all have both and bad about us.

So what does all this mean? To me it means that even as much as I might want to walk in another’s shoes and see through that person’s eyes in order to try to understand that person’s actions, it means that it is even more important that I understand what in the past has brought me to today. It will help me understand the good that I do and, hopefully, to change a behavior that is rooted in the past but can and must be changed for the better.

Not being able to walk in another’s shoes or see through that person’s eyes does not allow us give that person a pass on present wrong behavior no does it give others a pass on our wrong behavior because they can’t walk in our shoes or see with our eyes. Understanding bad behavior is only a start. The hard part is the changing it for the good.