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“Now choose life, so that your children may live . . .”  – Deuteronomy 30:19 

I am of an age, I’m afraid, where attending funerals has become all too frequent, as has reading the obituary columns become part of my daily routine, not only in search of people I might know, but as the old joke goes, to check and see if my own name happens to appear there.  It is all part of the life cycle I suppose.

As it may seem like a morbid topic to write about, obituaries and funerals, allow me to be a little more specific.  The ones I am referring to are people who have lived full, rich lives, not those tragic instances that seem to occur way too often among the young and innocent.  Like everyone else, I can’t get my arms around those events either, and often find myself railing at God about why such things happen.

Rather, I’m speaking about people like Shirley, the mother of one of our good friends, and a beloved friend of ours as well, and distinctively one of the funniest human beings I have ever known, with a sense of humor that, though laced with sarcasm, would have you rolling with laughter.  Few were those who escaped her taunts and gibes, nor were many quick enough to respond with a clever comeback.  In fact, I would list among my best days those rare occasions when I was able to get one over on Shirley.  Touché!

Yet, Shirley was also one of the kindest, most caring, hospitable, and loving people I have ever known, and a person of deep faith.  As a mother, grandmother, and great-grandmother she was second to none, loving her family deeply, including her late husband of whom she adoringly spoke frequently. When she passed away a few years ago a large crowd gathered at the church for her funeral service.  And while it was certainly a reverent occasion as it should have been, neither was it solemn.  In fact, laughter filled that church like I had never witnessed at any funeral service, as one Shirley story was told after another.  And believe me, there were plenty to go around.

“I have set before you life and death,” Moses instructed the Israelites toward the end of his life, “Now choose life, so that you and your children may live and that you may love the Lord your God.”  Shirley chose life and lived it to the full, a gift to all of us who had the good fortune of crossing paths with her – taunts and gibes and all.

“Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.”  – Luke 23:34 

I must confess that I have succumbed to being a bit of a Jack Reacher junkie in recent months, Jack Reacher, in case you are not familiar, being the main character in a series of popular crime thrillers by British novelist Lee Child.  A giant of a man – six-five, two-fifty, and former major in the army’s military police – Reacher’s post-military life consists of roaming from place to place, yet no place in particular, mostly by Greyhound bus, where he inevitably crosses paths with someone who needs help against some bad characters.  Not one to shy away from trouble, Reacher comes to the victims’ rescue where he employs his brawn, martial arts skills, street smarts, and law enforcement savvy to save the day.

Besides being classic good versus evil stories, what is so addictive about Reacher is that while he is never one to start a fight, neither does he back away, nor does he ever lose one – ever! – often taking on as many as eight or ten at a time.  (Not someone you want to encounter in a dark alley, unless he is on your side.)  And in the end, you can be assured that Reacher is going make things right for the victims he is defending.

I must confess, the real reason I am such a Reacher junkie is because I am entertained by the violence, a big guy beating up a bunch of thugs who deserve everything they get.  I suppose that is why good versus evil stories have always been so popular.

We love to cheer for people like Reacher, and all the other heroic cops and soldiers in the TV shows and movies we watch.  But what about those like Ghandi and Martin Luther King, Jr., also valiant warriors against evil, but whose methods were insistently nonviolent?  And what about Jesus who refused to resist his executioners despite his innocence?  “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing,” he prayed from the cross.  Yet, did not Jesus, Ghandi, and King defeat evil as surely as Reacher?

But we are entertained by the violence because it is easier and seems more fair, the bad guys getting their due.  Except for one difference.  In one instance violence eradicates the evildoers, but in the other nonviolence might actually win them over.  The first method is classic win-lose.  But Jesus’ method is win-win, and that is a radically different outcome.

“Which of these . . . do you think was a neighbor to the man? . . . The one who had mercy on him.”   –  Luke 10:36-37 

We once owned a small cattle ranch.  One fall afternoon we were about to leave the ranch when we noticed one of our young heifers lying on the ground tangled up in a hay ring.  How she got that way is anybody’s guess, but I suppose the hay was so tasty that she simply wanted to crawl inside the metal ring and wallow in it, like we sometimes do with a bowl of ice cream that is so delicious we wish we could jump in the bowl and swim in it.  Anyway, we needed to get that poor cow untangled and set her free, but the challenge was that neither the steel ring nor the cow’s leg was very flexible.

Fortunately, this whole incident occurred at the front of our property about twenty yards from the highway where we noticed a car had pulled off the side of the road and this fellow was climbing over the fence.  “Ya’ll need some help?” he asked as he studied the young heifer’s predicament while lighting up a Marlboro.  Lonnie was his name, he said, and he was headed to work in the nearby village where he was employed at a deer processing facility (only in rural Texas!).  His car was old and dented up, his clothes were dirty and tattered, he had on a pair of ragged rubber boots with his pants tucked inside.  And as I recall he didn’t smell very good.  You get the picture?  But that day Lonnie was an angel, our Good Samaritan; for without Lonnie’s help I’m not sure we would have ever been able to untangle that poor cow from the hay ring and get her back on her feet.

Among the many parables Jesus told, none is as often quoted as the story of the Good Samaritan.  It is about a man lying on the side of the road, robbed, beaten, and left for dead until a stranger happened by, saw his predicament, treated his wounds, and carried him to safety.  But Jesus added one other small subtle detail, that the stranger also happened to be a Samaritan, who in those days was an outcast from society.  (In case you didn’t pick up on it, Lonnie was probably an outcast from society as well.)

Seems to me, the moral of the story of the Good Samaritan points out the most basic humanitarian act any of us can ever do, that is to have compassion and provide help when we see a fellow human being in need, no matter which side of the tracks they are from.  Who is our neighbor?  The one who shows mercy, and Lonnie was our neighbor that day.

“. . . seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you.”  Matthew 6:33 

One of the great challenges we faced back in the days when I was working on a bond trading desk in the Wall Street world, as I did for thirty years, was the urgency of everything.  Phones rang non-stop during trading hours and every one of those calls was something urgent, which was the nature of the business.  And while in one sense the high level of activity was energizing and exciting (one never lacked for something to do).  On the other hand – and this was the challenging part – it was easy to get caught up in the frenzy – the urgency – and lose sight of the greater purpose and the mission and goals of the business.

Among his countless nuggets of wisdom the late management guru of the twentieth century, the great Peter Drucker, emphasized the importance of making the “important” rather than the “urgent” our priority in life.  But like most of us he struggled with it too.  “If I look back,” he once lamented, “my greatest frustrations are probably, in retrospect, this is hindsight, that I have, far too often, made the urgent rather than the important my priority and that as a result, some of the books I should have written I haven’t written.  And I have written books that were urgent, or I have taught the things that they needed at the moment rather than the things that were needed five years since.  I have been willing to run shorter rather than long-term.”

It’s a tough call because urgent matters do matter, but they should never be allowed to cause us to lose sight of the greater purpose and the longer-term mission.  That is why clear concise mission and vision statements are so critical for organizations and that that mission and vision be instilled in the organization’s culture.  Thus, the most successful organizations over the long haul are those who do.

Jesus himself reminded us that we should first seek God’s kingdom – the “important” – then deal with the other matters of life – the “urgent”.  By doing so we guard ourselves from being caught up in the frenzy of the urgent; or as Drucker put it, we must make the “important” rather than the “urgent” our priority in life.

“Make it your ambition to lead a quiet life . . . so that your daily life may win the respect of outsiders.”  – 1 Thessalonians 4:11-12 

Does the name Oceola McCarty ring a bell with you?  To jog your memory, or in case you missed the flurry of publicity some years back, Oceola McCarty of Hattiesburg, Mississippi, a “washer woman” with only a sixth grade education, gained notoriety following her death at age 91 when it was revealed she had left her estate of $150,000, an astonishing amount for someone of such modest means, to The University of Southern Mississippi to establish an endowment to fund scholarships for deserving students in need of financial assistance.

A Google search reveals that “McCarty never owned a car; she walked everywhere she went, pushing a shopping cart nearly a mile to get groceries. She rode with friends to attend services at the Friendship Baptist Church. She did not subscribe to any newspaper and considered the expense an extravagance. Similarly, although she owned a black-and white-television, she received only broadcast transmissions. In 1947, her uncle gave her the house in which she lived until her death. She also received some money from her aunt and mother when they died, which she placed [in] savings” as her mother had taught her.

But let’s be realistic.  While $150,000 is an amazing estate for someone to leave behind who had to rely on doing other people’s laundry to make a living, yet in today’s inflated economy with college tuitions being what they are it doesn’t seem that $150,000 would go very far.  But imagine if it only helped a few earn a college education who otherwise would not have been able to do so, and those few became doctors, nurses, teachers, and entered other professions that saved lives or helped others to also pursue higher goals, would Oceola’s estate not have multiplied, in a sense, way beyond its original value?

For most of my life, I’m afraid, I have misunderstood what it means to be successful, believing it to mean rising to the top of the corporate ladder, becoming wealthy or famous, the top expert in one’s field.  Not that those things aren’t good, and we need people pursuing them.  But if we really want to make an impact, the Apostle Paul says instead to “make it your ambition to lead a quiet life . . . so that your daily life may win the respect of outsiders.”  God bless Oceola McCarty.  She certainly won my respect.