I made my way to the student center every weekday morning to check my H-SU mailbox for a letter from home. There were other students who did the same. Fifty-three years later – I have a Facebook friend who periodically reminds me that we often visited while we waited for the mail to be put in our mail boxes.
In some respects, my life was on hold while I got my degree and waited to grow up. I had plans, big plans for the future. There was no doubt in my mind that I would one day be the pastor of a church. I had “surrendered to preach” when I was a kid. Isn’t that a strange use of terminology? I’m not sure where that came from, but it was the common terminology to express one’s intent.
I was invited to preach my first sermon at the age of thirteen. My pastor, whom I deeply loved, had said: “You need to start preaching now while you’re young.” Maybe I mistakenly thought I’d grow into it. After all, my intent and my hopes for the future were clear. It was my goal and “come what may”, it seemed like a good fit.
Did I mention that for as long as I can remember, I have been terrified by snakes? I am not talking about a minimal sense of discomfort. I’m talking about a horror of horrors kind of experience. Of course, I’d been to the zoo and had walked through the reptile house with snakes behind glass windows. What’s the expression? Oh, I remember. The term is “hibbie jibbies”. The reptile house at the zoo in San Antonio gave me the hibbie jibbies. Trust me, there were nightmares to follow.
What I didn’t know until I was age thirteen and provided an invitation to preach on a Wednesday night is that my fear of public speaking made potential work as a snake charmer seem almost inviting. Nothing, but nothing was more terrifying for me than public speaking.
I prepared for a week to share the things I wanted to share. When it was all said and done, the sermon lasted five-minutes. Some say it was the best sermon I’ve ever preached. Of course, they may be giving me bonus points for the brievity.
In 1966, our world didn’t seem as dark as the world in which we now find ourselves. Of course, at the age of nineteen, what did we really know about real life? Perhaps it was the shroud of childhood innocence that protectively altered our perception?
Do you remember the song? Oh why can’t everyday be like Christmas – Why can’t that feeling go on endlessly – For if everyday could be just like Christmas – What a wonderful world this would be…”
It may be my imagination, but aren’t most people a little nicer during the Christmas season? The General went to the grocery store on Christmas Eve and came home in the best of moods. I can go to the grocery store and emerged frazzled by the experience. It is the same kind of sensation I get when I’m stuck in traffic and nothing is moving.
In recent weeks, my Saturday morning excursions to the grocery store all seem the same. There are simply too many people, in too little space, trying not to trip over the boxes of canned goods and products stacked in the aisles, while they patiently wait to get past a gigantic cart or two of professional shoppers or past two friends carrying on a conversation oblivious to bottle neck they are creating. Thanks, but no thanks! I’d rather pass on the experience.
The General negotiated all of that on Christmas Eve and more and came home in the best of moods. She said, everyone in the store seemed to be thoughtful of other shoppers. They were friendly and conversant with one another. No one seemed in a rush. Everyone was at their best. Even with the delays and the hurdles, shoppers emerged enlightened by the experience.
Maybe, just maybe, life would be better if every day could be like Christmas. I guess for most, the focus is on the reason for the season and we overlook the inconvenience and the hurdles and the darkness around us.
Even in 1966, there was unbelievable darkness. It is that we were somehow shielded from that reality. Perhaps, once again it had to do with focus? Isaiah reportedly received his call to be a prophet in 742 B.C. Scripture says, “It was in the year that King Uzziah died”. Isaiah expressed it this way: “The people walking in darkness have seen a great light; on those living in the land of deep darkness a light has dawned”.
“Deep Darkness” – It was certainly descriptive to part of the Christmas story that we gloss over and almost ignore. King Herod, threatened by the reported birth of the king of Jews by the wise men who had seen a great star as it rose and had come to worship him, strategically sought to eradicate the new born king. He ordered all male children under the age of two to be put to death. Scripture tells us that an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream. “Get up! Flee to Egypt with the child and his mother,” the angel said. “Stay there until I tell you until Herod’s death.
I cannot begin to fathom the level of pain that families of sons under the age of two around Bethlehem were forced to endure. It sounds unbelievable.
“Deep Darkness” – What other explanation do you have to explain folks attacked at a Hunukkah celebration at a rabbi’s home north of New York City late Saturday? What other explanation do you have to explain the shooting deaths of two people while they met for worship at a church in White Settlement, Texas yesterday?
“Deep Darkness” – It is a sad reality of our fallen world.
All My Best!
Don