“But to each one of us grace has been given.”  – Ephesians 4:7 

The young man sat across from me, his face buried in his hands sobbing.  I had just fired him, on the grounds of poor performance, and he was understandably devastated, explaining between sobs how he had never before failed at anything in his life.  It caused me to have some second thoughts, which in turn stimulated an idea that might at least salvage his employment, if not in a lesser position at a much-reduced salary.  He jumped at that second chance.  Before long he became a rising star, his career eventually surpassing my own.  Some years later another young man applied for a position I had available, but the interview did not go well.  Realizing he had blown the interview, the next day he called begging for a second chance.  That second interview landed him the job, and he too eventually grew to become a successful professional.

Lest my arm break from patting myself on the back for my gracious deeds, let me hasten to confess that whatever benevolence I may have offered those two young men is minuscule compared to the grace I have received in my own life over and over again.  And I am pretty sure that realization went through my head in having second thoughts about the firing, and in offering a second chance at the interview.  Who was I, after all, to deny grace when I had received so much?

In his parable of the Prodigal Son, Jesus tells the story [also] about a young man who after asking for and receiving his inheritance from his father ran away and squandered it all on wild living.  Finally, broke and desperate, he decided to return home in the hope that his father might at the very least employ him as a lowly servant.  Instead, his father ran out and wrapped his arms around his son, welcoming him home, then threw a grand party to celebrate his return.  Oh, the gracious gift of a second chance!

By its very definition, grace is a gift that is undeserved and that no one can earn.  And to be brutally honest, neither of those young men deserved a second chance, any more than the Prodigal Son in Jesus’ parable, nor the countless second chances I have received in my own life.  “But to each one of us grace has been given as Christ apportioned it,” the Apostle Paul reminds us.  So, the best we can do in return, I suppose, is to try to apportion a bit of that grace to others every chance we get.

“They were unschooled, ordinary men.”  – Acts 4:13 

A young girl was walking along a beach one day upon which thousands of starfish had washed up during a terrible storm.  People noticed with amusement as the girl began picking up the starfish one at a time tossing them back into the ocean.  After some time a man approached her and said, “Little girl, why are you doing this?  Look at the size of this beach, you can’t possibly save all these starfish.  You can’t begin to make a difference.”  The girl simply bent down and picked up another starfish hurling it into the ocean, then looked up at the man and replied, “Well, it made a difference to that one!”

I know I am repeating an old story we have all heard a thousand times, except I recently discovered there is more to the story than I had previously known.  It seems the man was so startled by the young girl’s response that it caused him to pause and reflect. Then, reaching down, he too picked up a starfish and threw it back into the sea.  Soon others joined in, then a whole crowd.  Amazing the influence one ordinary little girl can have on a group of ordinary people meandering on a beach, and saving thousands of starfish!

“Not all of us can do great things,” Mother Teresa once said.  “But we can all do small things with great love.”  We underestimate ourselves, I’m afraid, when we depend on high level politicians, corporate CEO’s, sports and entertainment superstars, and other notables to change things for the better.  Sure, their influence can certainly be impactful, but so is yours and mine.  The moms and dads donating time to coach kids’ sport teams, serving as scout leaders, or simply showing up in support; those may not be considered great things, yet small things with great love.  Inevitably some child’s life will be influenced by that, who in turn will someday influence another life in a positive way.

Jesus too was walking along a beach one day when he encountered some fishermen.  “They were unschooled, ordinary men,” the scriptures tell us, yet they heeded his summons to follow along where they witnessed Jesus perform healings and other miracles, one person at a time – just like the little girl saving the starfish.  Soon the fishermen began to perform healings and miracle too.  Others began to join in, then a crowd – and the ordinary became extraordinary.  And that’s how it happens when ordinary people do small things with great love.

“Let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us.”  – Hebrews 12:1

“Well, we’ll live right on,” Nathan Coulter would often say, which sort of expressed his philosophy about working through problems and situations that arise in life, no matter what they are.  His wife Hannah must have heard him say it a thousand times over the course of their many years of marriage, and surely she must have found comfort in that phrase as they experienced the ups and downs of life, as we all do.

Nathan and Hannah Coulter were people of great wisdom; fictional characters though they were, from a wonderful little novel by Wendell Berry entitled Hannah Coulter.  The setting is a small village in rural Kentucky during the middle decades of the twentieth century.  Yet the situations and characters in the story are as near real life as they come, so much so that reading the book feels more like history than fiction.

Nathan and Hanna Coulter were just ordinary type people of their day.  Neither was well educated nor had a particularly extraordinary upbringing.  They in fact were rather simple folks who struggled to raise their children, maintain a modest home, raise crops on a small farm, and keep their bills paid.  Yet they were people of great wisdom as was evident in their good deeds and humility, and in how they managed to “live right on.”

It has been a number of years since I read Hannah Coulter, one of a series of novels by Wendell Berry that take place in Port William, a tiny fictional community in rural Kentucky.  But given the polarizing political environment of our current times and perhaps the most contentious election any of us have ever experienced, I thought perhaps we might all benefit from a bit of Nathan’s and Hannah’s wisdom in that when we wake up Wednesday morning and after perusing the headlines, whether we are happy or sad, angry or elated, fearful or hopeful, whatever the outcome, or even if we don’t know the outcome – whatever it is, “well, we will live right on.”  We will all go about doing what we do, get the kids off to school, go to work, do the laundry, and go about our lives.  And that is as it should be because the greatest impact on our world does not come out of Washington anyway.  It never has.  Ultimately, it comes from each of us and how we live out our ordinary lives, our good deeds, humility, loving our neighbor, and loving God.  “Let us [then live right on and] run with perseverance the race marked out for us.”

“Jesus stopped . . .”  – Mark 10:49 

The father of one of my classmates died while we were in high school.  He had cancer I think, but I was not paying much attention at the time, as that particular classmate was not someone I knew very well, the sort of guy who kept to himself mostly and not part of my circle of friends. I had not thought of him in years, until I recently learned that he too had passed away, the news of which quite unexpectedly brought me to tears, not so much from grief as from shame.  It had to do with this vivid recollection I had of a conversation my own dad had with me following my classmate’s father’s death, about how deeply he had loved his father and the grief he must be suffering, urging me to take the opportunity to reach out and show some compassion.  I never did – never stopped and took the time.

Several years ago, my late beloved friend and mentor John Castle was on his way to his lake house in East Texas when he pulled into a convenience store at the edge of Dallas to fill up with gas.  There he encountered a homeless man named Shorty.  Perhaps Shorty was panhandling, and perhaps John gave him a handout, I never heard him say for sure.  What did happen for certain, though, was that John stopped and took time to engage in conversation with Shorty and learn something about his life.  Soon John began to stop regularly at that convenience store where Shorty hung out and they would always talk.  As was his nature, John saw Shorty not as a homeless person, but a fellow human being – and a friend.

Jesus and his disciples were leaving Jericho one day when they passed by a blind beggar named Bartimaeus sitting on the side of the road begging.  “Jesus, Son of David,” he shouted, “have mercy on me!”  “Many rebuked him and told him to be quiet,” the scriptures tell us, but the blind man kept shouting, “Son of David, have mercy on me!”  Suddenly, it says, “Jesus stopped . . .”

Like Jesus, when he encountered Shorty at the convenience store that day, my friend John stopped.  Yet, even at my father’s urging I couldn’t stop long enough to comfort a grieving classmate?  Shame on me!  Jesus must have wept that day.  And now, sixty years later I finally wept too.  All I can do now is pray that my classmate had had a good life . . . and pray that I had learned a valuable lesson – to stop for those in need.

“I am fearfully and wonderfully made.”  – Psalm 139:14 

Have you ever wished you could be like someone else, or be someone other than yourself?  I remember back in high school I became good friends with a guy who could play the piano.  I mean he could play!  Oh, how I wanted to be like him.  Well, as a matter of fact my parents had paid for me to have piano lessons for many years when I was younger, so I knew something about music and the keyboard on a piano, so I decided that if I worked at it really hard I might learn to play like my friend.  And I did learn a few songs alright, but I would never be able to match my friend’s ability to play and entertain because he had an innate talent I simply did not have.  He was he, and I was me.

The 1961 movie The Great Imposter starring the late actor Tony Curtis is an intriguing story loosely based on a real-life character named Ferdinand Waldo Demara.  Part drama, part comedy, the story follows Demara through a series of episodes where he literally fakes his way into being someone besides himself – lying his way into the U.S. Marines, then a Trappist Monk, later an aide to a prison warden (after serving time himself), and most amazing of all, pretending to be a surgeon serving on a Navy vessel where he successfully performed multiple medical procedures that actually saved lives.  The plot of the whole story was how well Demara (Tony Curtis) was able to pretend at these various professions, until of course, it all caught up with him, as it so often does.

The piano phase was only one of many times I could be accused of trying to emulate others.  The same pattern has occurred in pursuing various athletic endeavors in which no matter how hard I worked I was either not big enough or tall enough or fast enough or agile enough.  The same for hobbies and past times I have tried, not to mention career pursuits.  But over the years I have noticed that for me success seems to come when I am most uniquely me, rarely when emulating someone else.  As Buckminster Fuller once pointed out, “No one ever made a difference by being like everyone else.”

If only we would pray and take to heart the words from that beautiful Psalm: “I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well.”  For peace and joy and contentment lie in knowing that full well.