“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.

“Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself.  Each day has enough trouble of its own.”  – Matthew 6:34 

Dagwood Bumstead has been making me laugh, teaching me lessons – and quite frankly, helping me see myself in a mirror – for about as long as I’ve been able to read the funny papers.  I recall one in particular that really grabbed me at the time: It was Friday afternoon and Dagwood was about to leave the office.  “Have a nice weekend, boss,” he bids his boss Mr. Dithers.  “You’d better rest up this weekend, my boy,” Dithers responds with a smirk, “Monday morning can’t get here soon enough for me!!”  The next scene shows Dagwood staring glumly out the car window when one of his carpool mates asks, “Do you have any plans for the weekend?”  To which Dagwood replies, “I’ll probably just sit around and dread Monday.”

Can you see yourself in that story?  I did.  I wonder how many precious hours I have wasted in my lifetime sitting around dreading tomorrow?  That’s what is so great about comic strips, how they highlight our own absurdities.  We laugh at poor old Dagwood for how silly he looks, until we realize the joke is on us.  Dagwood is simply holding a mirror up in front of us so that we can see our own folly.

“Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself.  Each day has enough trouble of its own.”  These wise words do not imply that we should not have “concern” about tomorrow, nor deny that trouble may lie ahead.  Rather it says do not “worry” about tomorrow, and there is a distinct difference between worry and concern.  Specifically worry paralyzes us, but concern calls us to action.  Besides, worry can have devastating impacts on us, including damage to our health, causing the object of worry to consume our thoughts, disrupting our productivity, negatively affecting the way we treat others, and perhaps worst of all inhibiting our ability to trust in God.

Imagine if Dagwood would spend his weekend planning for Monday rather than worrying about it?  Worrying is nothing but time wasted.  But planning is time well spent.  Planning is about thinking ahead, setting goals, determining the steps and scheduling the time – then letting go and trusting God. . . So thank you Dagwood Bumstead for highlighting our own folly, that we may see God’s wisdom more clearly.

“For when I am weak, then I am strong.”  – 2 Corinthians 12:10 

I’ve heard it said that life has three stages which most of us experience at various times:  dependence, independence, and interdependence.  Infancy is the most obvious example when we are totally dependent on our parents.  Then at about age two children start to declare their independence which continues until around age twenty-two.  (To the parents of my grandchildren, be forewarned.)  And hopefully by the time we reach some level of maturity in adulthood we begin to realize that the way life functions most effectively is through interdependence, and the better we can master that the better off we will be.

It was this kind of interdependency the Apostle Paul was referring to when he claimed that “when I am weak, then I am strong,” for it was through his shortcomings and weaknesses that he recognized his need for help – from God – and by so doing actually transformed into strength.  And how true it is for all of us that when we give up trying to be so self-reliant and hand it over to someone who is better or stronger, we in turn become infinitely stronger and more effective.

I can remember when for a time during my former career I began to think of myself as really good at what I did – I mean really, really good, if you know what I mean.  Then I began to notice that many of the people around me were becoming even better than I was, which sort of deflated my self-image from “really good” to just “pretty good”.  At first because of my competitive nature and ego I reacted by working even harder.  No way, I thought, are they going to outdo me.  Then I began to realize that if I am only “pretty good” compared to their “really good”, maybe it would be better to step out of the way instead of competing with my own people.  A better idea might be to focus on providing strong leadership and an encouraging and supportive environment.  The end result was win-win as my team received the benefit of growing even better at their jobs, and I received the benefit of my business producing better results, a classic testimony for the value of interdependency.

One person’s weakness is surely another person’s strength, so that when we work together it is to the benefit of all.  “For when I am weak, then I am strong.”