My son John has declared that he wants to be called Spike. That’s his nickname, he said, and he for sure does not want to be called Robert, which is his middle name.
I asked if it would be OK to call him Buzz. He said that it would not. John or Spike, but not Buzz and definitely not Robert.
I dearly love that boy and, of course, all my children. I would gladly lay down my life for them. There’s no courageous heroism or grandiosity in that. Their lives simply mean more to me than mine does. It’s something instinctive, I think, something in nature.
Stories about parents standing in harm’s way in defense of their children are myriad in human history. We’ve heard of mothers lifting enormous tree trunks to free a pinned son. Fathers have drowned saving their daughters.
Sure, an evil world spawns aberrations in parent-child relationships. But in the natural order, a parent’s love is not conditional. Even a bird will die defending an egg.
What then are we to make of God the Father giving up His only Son to death? Surely that relationship is fraught with more love than even a dad could have for a small boy named Spike. I cannot understand it, but my faith confirms the truth of it, just as I do not doubt that a mother can lift three times her weight to extricate a son.
The Son of God was in fact Love Incarnate. The Father so loved the world that He gave His only Son. No, my mind quits – trying to comprehend.
I know this: I could not bear to live knowing that I had avoided saving my son from death, even at the expense of my own life. I might have physical life, but my soul would be forever anguished, rendering the physical life also tormented.
Jesus said He came that we might have life, and He freely laid down His own life in His purpose. I know, though, that the life He meant for us to have was not physical life, but spiritual. I know that to obtain this spiritual life, I have to die, not physically – but to my own will.
There must come a time to surrender to God, in yielding my will to His, when what I give up is not only sin, but also even that which is most precious to me. If the truth be known, what is most precious to me is my will.
Abraham was a father. Surely Isaac’s life was more precious to him than his own. Gladly would he yield his own life, but Isaac’s? A father’s will for his son to have life is very strong. With Abraham’s surrender, he gave up the powerful life of his own will. Isaac was spared. Jesus, however, was not spared. He did die.
That’s a radical turnaround, a surprise to the sensibilities. It calls the Son Himself into the picture. The Father freely relinquishes His Son; the Son freely relinquishes His life because of His Father’s love, not only for Him, but also for all His children.
A lot of dying going on, giving up, surrendering. But what’s really dying is any consideration of self. Only by doing that kind of dying, as we are taught by the life and death of Jesus, can anyone obtain the kind of life worth having. – T.R.
written by Thomas A. Russell
first published in the Lafayette Sunday Visitor on September 6th, 1987
Friday, December 28, 2007
Monday, December 24, 2007
A Christmas Story
Herbert was a Catholic gentleman; of that there was no doubt. He liked his drinks, but at 82, he was of age and no one questioned his moderation. He’d take a half turn on the barstool and all the whiskey in the shot glass; and then, like the whiskey didn’t faze him, he’d tell his stories.
“We lived down below the Sisters, went over to St. Mary’s to church. I was in the choir over there. I used to take the Sisters fresh cream so just so they’d have fresh cream to cream their coffee,” he said.
It was one Christmas morning, Herbert recalled. He got up before daylight that morning. Before he had gone to sleep, he’d prayed: “Angel of God, my guardian dear, to whom God’s love commits me here, ever this night be at my side, to light and guard and rule and guide.” Waking was bland and painful. But this was Christmas morning and something about it, we, he was just automatically peaceful it seemed, and full of joy inside himself. Outside there spun a flock of black and gray chickens. Snow had fallen and was falling.
He had to feed the chickens before Mass; but, boy, it was down below cold outside, that morning it was. Herbert stiffened to the cold as he strewed feed on the frozen ground. He talked to those chickens just like they were somebody that day. He wanted the chickens to share his joy.
Five-thirty Mass on Christmas morning was a large, quiet, reverent, freshly cooled bunch of people. The servers lit the candles for the low Mass. Herbert heard the shuffle of the altar boy’s cassock as he put the book. The big crib off to one side had a single bulb shining down on the Baby Jesus. In the background was a painted, dawning scene extending to Bethlehem.
Herbert walked the long way back home as the snow came harder. His mother fixed him one of those only-on-Christmas warm kind of breakfasts, creamed coffee, all. It was good. “Herbert, you’re not going back to the 10:30 this morning, are you? That snow is really coming down. You stay home now. It’s Christmas,” his mother said. No, he said. He was going back. Father Sullivan was depending on him.
Father Sullivan paced the chancel, half reading his Breviary and half losing his place, mumbling to the congregation about Mass starting late. He stopped, though, and espied a bowed, bustling, snow-stomping Herbert in the vestibule.
“Ah, we have a choir,” he said, and he turned for the sacristy to vest for the High Mass.
Herbert climbed to the choir-loft to find not a soul. He looked down at the altar with the high candles lit. There were poinsettias. St. Joseph and Mary watched over the Christ Child as Father Sullivan followed the server out, genuflected and turned to face the congregation with aspergillum.
“Asperges me,” Father Sullivan sang, as Herbert’s glance lowered to meet the rising gaze of the priest. There was an awkward pause. “Domine hyssopo et mundabor,” Herbert sang, embarrassed, alone. He sang the Kyrie, St. Jerome’s Gloria, the Sanctus and the Agnus Dei. His embarrassment eased and left him. At the end of Mass, the congregation joined Herbert in a triumphant “Adeste Fideles.”
Father Sullivan genuflected, turned and looked up at Herbert in the choir-loft. A beaming smile crowded Father’s face. “Herbert,” he said, “may I see you a moment in the sacristy, please.” Herbert knelt and Father gave him his blessing. He then produced an array of sacramental objects, asking Herbert to choose something that he liked. “Herbert,” he said, “the way you sang the morning has made my Christmas for me.”
Herbert, staying on his knees, said; “Father Sullivan, instead of these, well, Father, I don’t want to sing in the choir. I want to be an altar boy. I’ve always heard, Father, that if you were ever an altar boy that you’d never die without the assistance of a priest.”
Father smiled gently. “You sing in the choir, Herbert. And when you die, for sure a priest will be there.”
“O thank you, Father,” Herbert said. “You have made my Christmas for me.”
Herbert Howard was a lean fellow with a weathered face. His means were humble, though he had a big house. His wife was gone and he lived alone, using only a few rooms in the place. He enjoyed the company of the neighborhood tavern. People knew him as a religious man. Herbert died Oct 25, 1978, just after a priest had given him the last rites of the Church. He was 85. –T.R.
written by Thomas A. Russell
first published in the Lafayette Sunday Visitor on December 21st, 1986
“We lived down below the Sisters, went over to St. Mary’s to church. I was in the choir over there. I used to take the Sisters fresh cream so just so they’d have fresh cream to cream their coffee,” he said.
It was one Christmas morning, Herbert recalled. He got up before daylight that morning. Before he had gone to sleep, he’d prayed: “Angel of God, my guardian dear, to whom God’s love commits me here, ever this night be at my side, to light and guard and rule and guide.” Waking was bland and painful. But this was Christmas morning and something about it, we, he was just automatically peaceful it seemed, and full of joy inside himself. Outside there spun a flock of black and gray chickens. Snow had fallen and was falling.
He had to feed the chickens before Mass; but, boy, it was down below cold outside, that morning it was. Herbert stiffened to the cold as he strewed feed on the frozen ground. He talked to those chickens just like they were somebody that day. He wanted the chickens to share his joy.
Five-thirty Mass on Christmas morning was a large, quiet, reverent, freshly cooled bunch of people. The servers lit the candles for the low Mass. Herbert heard the shuffle of the altar boy’s cassock as he put the book. The big crib off to one side had a single bulb shining down on the Baby Jesus. In the background was a painted, dawning scene extending to Bethlehem.
Herbert walked the long way back home as the snow came harder. His mother fixed him one of those only-on-Christmas warm kind of breakfasts, creamed coffee, all. It was good. “Herbert, you’re not going back to the 10:30 this morning, are you? That snow is really coming down. You stay home now. It’s Christmas,” his mother said. No, he said. He was going back. Father Sullivan was depending on him.
Father Sullivan paced the chancel, half reading his Breviary and half losing his place, mumbling to the congregation about Mass starting late. He stopped, though, and espied a bowed, bustling, snow-stomping Herbert in the vestibule.
“Ah, we have a choir,” he said, and he turned for the sacristy to vest for the High Mass.
Herbert climbed to the choir-loft to find not a soul. He looked down at the altar with the high candles lit. There were poinsettias. St. Joseph and Mary watched over the Christ Child as Father Sullivan followed the server out, genuflected and turned to face the congregation with aspergillum.
“Asperges me,” Father Sullivan sang, as Herbert’s glance lowered to meet the rising gaze of the priest. There was an awkward pause. “Domine hyssopo et mundabor,” Herbert sang, embarrassed, alone. He sang the Kyrie, St. Jerome’s Gloria, the Sanctus and the Agnus Dei. His embarrassment eased and left him. At the end of Mass, the congregation joined Herbert in a triumphant “Adeste Fideles.”
Father Sullivan genuflected, turned and looked up at Herbert in the choir-loft. A beaming smile crowded Father’s face. “Herbert,” he said, “may I see you a moment in the sacristy, please.” Herbert knelt and Father gave him his blessing. He then produced an array of sacramental objects, asking Herbert to choose something that he liked. “Herbert,” he said, “the way you sang the morning has made my Christmas for me.”
Herbert, staying on his knees, said; “Father Sullivan, instead of these, well, Father, I don’t want to sing in the choir. I want to be an altar boy. I’ve always heard, Father, that if you were ever an altar boy that you’d never die without the assistance of a priest.”
Father smiled gently. “You sing in the choir, Herbert. And when you die, for sure a priest will be there.”
“O thank you, Father,” Herbert said. “You have made my Christmas for me.”
Herbert Howard was a lean fellow with a weathered face. His means were humble, though he had a big house. His wife was gone and he lived alone, using only a few rooms in the place. He enjoyed the company of the neighborhood tavern. People knew him as a religious man. Herbert died Oct 25, 1978, just after a priest had given him the last rites of the Church. He was 85. –T.R.
written by Thomas A. Russell
first published in the Lafayette Sunday Visitor on December 21st, 1986
Friday, December 21, 2007
Doing what’s necessary
It seems to me that Jesus didn’t do the things He could afford; He did what had to be done. He didn’t estimate His limitations and act accordingly. Rather, He acted according to the will of His Father.
When He had 5,000 to feed, Jesus didn’t feed only those for whom there were immediate provisions. He fed them all.
Jesus didn’t heal only during office hours, but as many as came to Him He made whole.
When He admonished, He did so with love – not to vent His spleen because somebody crossed Him, but because they needed correction to make straight the way for their own salvation.
So often the story of Jesus driving the moneychangers from the temple is cited as the text to justify justifiable anger. It’s hard for me to imagine Jesus doing anything out of anger and not love. Zeal is a very different thing from anger. He had zeal for His Father’s house and the moneychangers needed to have that, too. The moneychangers needed to be admonished. Surely moneychangers are people, heirs to the Kingdom, children of God. Surely Jesus loved them. He did what He had to do. It’s not easy to make a point in a raucous din.
For me, the challenge to live the Gospel message is a daily struggle. Always, it seems, I am beset on all sides because I count the cost rather than doing what needs to be done. I compromise, fear criticism, shrug because of weakness.
I’ve let banal, empty, vapid, inane television sap the vitality from the godly responsibilities and joys of fatherhood and being a husband. I use the old bromide that TV can be a good thing when I know that for every hour of decent programming there are a hundred hours of mindless crud. I compromise.
What Gospel imperative keeps me glued to the set? I know – the need for rest. Lo, on Judgement Day, the Lord said unto Tom, “Well done, good and faithful servant! You are among the best rested in My Kingdom!”
I spend time with, uh, unbelievers from time to time and God help me, I feel embarrassed identifying myself with Jesus Christ. I say it, but my heart and my mouth are in two different places. Among the faithful, faith is easy. Among those in sore need of Clear Light, I feel torn between wanting acceptance on the world’s terms and counting all as dung except the Cross of Christ.
However, if I continually focus on my weakness, my weakness becomes my focus. There is another way. That is to focus on what needs to be done, to keep my eye on the prize and on Him Who can accomplish what I cannot.
As I rise to a new day and feel the call to prayer, if my focus is no the ache of sleep, yesterday’s failure, today’s pressing business – I will not pray. If, however, I do not count the cost – the time, the mental energy, the foregone worldly strategizing – then comes the miracle, the blessing and the privilege of communion with God Himself, with Whom time does not exist, Whose mind is the engine of Life itself, Whose strategies long have been laid out. I will have done what had to be done. –T.R.
written by Thomas A. Russell
first published in the Lafayette Sunday Visitor on August 16th, 1987
When He had 5,000 to feed, Jesus didn’t feed only those for whom there were immediate provisions. He fed them all.
Jesus didn’t heal only during office hours, but as many as came to Him He made whole.
When He admonished, He did so with love – not to vent His spleen because somebody crossed Him, but because they needed correction to make straight the way for their own salvation.
So often the story of Jesus driving the moneychangers from the temple is cited as the text to justify justifiable anger. It’s hard for me to imagine Jesus doing anything out of anger and not love. Zeal is a very different thing from anger. He had zeal for His Father’s house and the moneychangers needed to have that, too. The moneychangers needed to be admonished. Surely moneychangers are people, heirs to the Kingdom, children of God. Surely Jesus loved them. He did what He had to do. It’s not easy to make a point in a raucous din.
For me, the challenge to live the Gospel message is a daily struggle. Always, it seems, I am beset on all sides because I count the cost rather than doing what needs to be done. I compromise, fear criticism, shrug because of weakness.
I’ve let banal, empty, vapid, inane television sap the vitality from the godly responsibilities and joys of fatherhood and being a husband. I use the old bromide that TV can be a good thing when I know that for every hour of decent programming there are a hundred hours of mindless crud. I compromise.
What Gospel imperative keeps me glued to the set? I know – the need for rest. Lo, on Judgement Day, the Lord said unto Tom, “Well done, good and faithful servant! You are among the best rested in My Kingdom!”
I spend time with, uh, unbelievers from time to time and God help me, I feel embarrassed identifying myself with Jesus Christ. I say it, but my heart and my mouth are in two different places. Among the faithful, faith is easy. Among those in sore need of Clear Light, I feel torn between wanting acceptance on the world’s terms and counting all as dung except the Cross of Christ.
However, if I continually focus on my weakness, my weakness becomes my focus. There is another way. That is to focus on what needs to be done, to keep my eye on the prize and on Him Who can accomplish what I cannot.
As I rise to a new day and feel the call to prayer, if my focus is no the ache of sleep, yesterday’s failure, today’s pressing business – I will not pray. If, however, I do not count the cost – the time, the mental energy, the foregone worldly strategizing – then comes the miracle, the blessing and the privilege of communion with God Himself, with Whom time does not exist, Whose mind is the engine of Life itself, Whose strategies long have been laid out. I will have done what had to be done. –T.R.
written by Thomas A. Russell
first published in the Lafayette Sunday Visitor on August 16th, 1987
Tuesday, December 18, 2007
Hot summer days
Memories of summer days flash like heat lightning at twilight – showing vague outlines, gently brightening, quickly fading.
Charley Pfiester and I crouched in the fine dust at the corner of his house, in the shade of a giant maple, peering intently at the conical indentation the size of a dime in the light brown powdery soil.
“Doodlebug! Doodlebug! Your house is on fire! Doodlebug! Doodlebug! Your house is on fire!” we chanted in unison, first one, then the other – persistently, not giving up. Slowly, slowly the silt at the base of the cone began to shift, push up in the middle, A tiny mound in the tiny cone formed in starts, stops, starts – each push of the duped doodle bug escaping his burning house creating wonder for two bored lads on a summer day.
Charley and I did our share of doodlebug calling. Charley claims to have called one all the way out one time, but I was never that bored. There were apricots to beckon. They were big and fat.
They hung on the limbs of the forked tree in the side yard, the one Mrs. Pfiester was forever telling kids to stay out of until she gave up. It sat too good. God made that tree to sit in.
A pan of apricots went across the fence for an apricot cobbler. A bowl of apricots went down the hill for an apricot pie. For all the warnings: “Stop eatin’ those apricots!” and “Ya’ll are goin’ to get sick eatin’ all those apricots!” and “You’re goin’ to run into a worm!” – apricot eating continued on until the tree was bare those summer days.
Moms would send kids over to Mr. Winkler’s or down to Bess Hazel’s Blue Plate Grocery Store for a quart of Purex or a gallon of Ideal milk or a loaf of Bunny bread. (A rabbit rode a horse, played a guitar and sang a jingle: “That’s what I said, Bunny bread.” We sang it, too).
The drink box at Mr. Winkler’s was a pleasant trysting place for the weary traveler from home. Always plenty of Barq’s root beer, Nehi grapes and strawberries, RC’s and Chocolas. Sometimes a big orange would be just what you wanted and Mr. Winkler’s box would have one cold and waiting. Tony Payne won two dollars once under the cork on his Dr. Pepper cap.
Of course lots of Milky Ways and Hershey bars were available in the ice cream box with the Popsicles, the Push-ups and the Cho-chos; but you’d better get what you wanted and get out of it.
Miss Hazel had a spool of string rigged on a coat hanger wire with the end of the string dangling through a fashioned eyelet. She tied up purchases of side meat and baloney wrapped in brown paper.
A few in the crowd decided to see how deep a hole they could dig in the railroad field. It became a fair-sized neighborhood project before it was over. The talk predictably centered on digging to China before it turned to the great dangers inherent in a project of this magnitude, particularly after a ladder was needed to descend the great depth.
Certain advantages became apparent. Stifling and muggy vapors lifted from the thick weeds of the field, but it was cool in the hole. At an admirable depth there was much discussion of heading the excavations sideways. Main diggers could have their place to go be alone. They could put cardboard on the floor, take a candle down there, maybe mix vile poisons from milkweed and pokeberries and squeezings from unknown species.
But nah, that wasn’t any fun. Better to go watch Mr. Weber turn on the streetlight in the back alley. Let’s play hide and go seek, kick the can, wave out, or hum-bum runway. (“Ink, ink a bottle of ink, what color do you choose?” “One potato, two potato, three potato, four…”) Let’s hook our feet in Buck’s fence railing and lean back in the lawn chairs, pretend this is an airplane – not just any plane, but a big plane.
Then the calls came. “Tooonnnyyyyy!” “Toooommmmyyy!” “Charles Lewis, you git in the house! It’s dark as the dickens out here!”
True, nostalgia brings memories likely not as true as they seem. Carried to extremes, it can cause heartache. But a taste now and then has a sweetness, a goodness, a serenity. It can soothe a troubled soul on a hot summer day. –T.R.
written by Thomas A. Russell
first published in the Lafayette Sunday Visitor on August 2nd, 1987
Charley Pfiester and I crouched in the fine dust at the corner of his house, in the shade of a giant maple, peering intently at the conical indentation the size of a dime in the light brown powdery soil.
“Doodlebug! Doodlebug! Your house is on fire! Doodlebug! Doodlebug! Your house is on fire!” we chanted in unison, first one, then the other – persistently, not giving up. Slowly, slowly the silt at the base of the cone began to shift, push up in the middle, A tiny mound in the tiny cone formed in starts, stops, starts – each push of the duped doodle bug escaping his burning house creating wonder for two bored lads on a summer day.
Charley and I did our share of doodlebug calling. Charley claims to have called one all the way out one time, but I was never that bored. There were apricots to beckon. They were big and fat.
They hung on the limbs of the forked tree in the side yard, the one Mrs. Pfiester was forever telling kids to stay out of until she gave up. It sat too good. God made that tree to sit in.
A pan of apricots went across the fence for an apricot cobbler. A bowl of apricots went down the hill for an apricot pie. For all the warnings: “Stop eatin’ those apricots!” and “Ya’ll are goin’ to get sick eatin’ all those apricots!” and “You’re goin’ to run into a worm!” – apricot eating continued on until the tree was bare those summer days.
Moms would send kids over to Mr. Winkler’s or down to Bess Hazel’s Blue Plate Grocery Store for a quart of Purex or a gallon of Ideal milk or a loaf of Bunny bread. (A rabbit rode a horse, played a guitar and sang a jingle: “That’s what I said, Bunny bread.” We sang it, too).
The drink box at Mr. Winkler’s was a pleasant trysting place for the weary traveler from home. Always plenty of Barq’s root beer, Nehi grapes and strawberries, RC’s and Chocolas. Sometimes a big orange would be just what you wanted and Mr. Winkler’s box would have one cold and waiting. Tony Payne won two dollars once under the cork on his Dr. Pepper cap.
Of course lots of Milky Ways and Hershey bars were available in the ice cream box with the Popsicles, the Push-ups and the Cho-chos; but you’d better get what you wanted and get out of it.
Miss Hazel had a spool of string rigged on a coat hanger wire with the end of the string dangling through a fashioned eyelet. She tied up purchases of side meat and baloney wrapped in brown paper.
A few in the crowd decided to see how deep a hole they could dig in the railroad field. It became a fair-sized neighborhood project before it was over. The talk predictably centered on digging to China before it turned to the great dangers inherent in a project of this magnitude, particularly after a ladder was needed to descend the great depth.
Certain advantages became apparent. Stifling and muggy vapors lifted from the thick weeds of the field, but it was cool in the hole. At an admirable depth there was much discussion of heading the excavations sideways. Main diggers could have their place to go be alone. They could put cardboard on the floor, take a candle down there, maybe mix vile poisons from milkweed and pokeberries and squeezings from unknown species.
But nah, that wasn’t any fun. Better to go watch Mr. Weber turn on the streetlight in the back alley. Let’s play hide and go seek, kick the can, wave out, or hum-bum runway. (“Ink, ink a bottle of ink, what color do you choose?” “One potato, two potato, three potato, four…”) Let’s hook our feet in Buck’s fence railing and lean back in the lawn chairs, pretend this is an airplane – not just any plane, but a big plane.
Then the calls came. “Tooonnnyyyyy!” “Toooommmmyyy!” “Charles Lewis, you git in the house! It’s dark as the dickens out here!”
True, nostalgia brings memories likely not as true as they seem. Carried to extremes, it can cause heartache. But a taste now and then has a sweetness, a goodness, a serenity. It can soothe a troubled soul on a hot summer day. –T.R.
written by Thomas A. Russell
first published in the Lafayette Sunday Visitor on August 2nd, 1987
Friday, December 14, 2007
Listening to God
Everybody talks about listening, but nobody does anything about it. What I need are not more pleas to listen, but more lessons on how. So often I cannot say what I want to be heard. So often I cannot hear what is being said so plainly.
On a purely physical level, my high-frequency hearing loss leaves me oblivious to some things in this life; and I’ll just have to live with that. My cat cornered a cicada the other night, for example, and my wife grimaced with empathy as she heard the piercing peals of the dying insect, succumbing as it was to the cold mauls of an unfeeling feline. I was not privy to the insect’s wails, they being out of range of my sensory receptors. Death would have its day on my doorstep and I would go blithely on.
The kind of listening I need, however, does not require much physical equipment. What I want most to hear is the voice of God.
I have little trouble believing that God hears me. Betty Maltz, writing about her after-life experiences, relates a striking image in this vein. She was in heaven, she said, and saw shafts of light entering the throne room of God, knowing within herself these shafts were prayers. God hears prayer. That’s easy. But what does God say back and in what way? How does one hear His response?
Some people I know seem to carry on with God like two old-timers on bench. I sometimes envy the Biblical folks who heard messages from God as plain as day, like me talking to you.
For my own part, sometimes I feel like that gargantuan radio dish the scientists have aimed at the cosmos, straining to hear with the most sophisticated gadgetry any faint trace of intelligent life out there. So far they’ve heard nothing intelligible, but have managed to an even more imponderable, and mute, void.
My faith tells me that God is working all around me, communicating His will to as many as will receive Him, to as many as long to be part of the action. However, I don’t believe the problem has so much to do with listening as with accepting the message. God is God. He can and does get my attention. I simply discount His messages in favor of ones with sometimes sweeter tones.
The thing I don’t want to accept is the startling and profound truth that God does speak to me personally. He speaks in a flash of lightning that makes the streetlights go of and sends a chill of awe through all that I am. He speaks in my soul and what He says is stillness, quietude, solitude. He makes a word among words in Scripture, glossed a hundred times before, burn in my heart, the word becoming a window on the page to a vastness of challenge. In the midst of my sin He pelts my conscience like a Chinese water torture, but with a softness that says love and hope and possibility for change.
What of the hard of heart, the jaded, the puffed up, the indifferent, the insensate? Having been all of these, I find the answer in my question: How is it, despite all of these, that still I long for the voice of God? God speaks an irresistible tongue. It is not for want of listening that I sometimes languish, but in hearing I do not hear. –T.R.
written by Thomas A. Russell
first published in the Lafayette Sunday Visitor on July 19th, 1987
On a purely physical level, my high-frequency hearing loss leaves me oblivious to some things in this life; and I’ll just have to live with that. My cat cornered a cicada the other night, for example, and my wife grimaced with empathy as she heard the piercing peals of the dying insect, succumbing as it was to the cold mauls of an unfeeling feline. I was not privy to the insect’s wails, they being out of range of my sensory receptors. Death would have its day on my doorstep and I would go blithely on.
The kind of listening I need, however, does not require much physical equipment. What I want most to hear is the voice of God.
I have little trouble believing that God hears me. Betty Maltz, writing about her after-life experiences, relates a striking image in this vein. She was in heaven, she said, and saw shafts of light entering the throne room of God, knowing within herself these shafts were prayers. God hears prayer. That’s easy. But what does God say back and in what way? How does one hear His response?
Some people I know seem to carry on with God like two old-timers on bench. I sometimes envy the Biblical folks who heard messages from God as plain as day, like me talking to you.
For my own part, sometimes I feel like that gargantuan radio dish the scientists have aimed at the cosmos, straining to hear with the most sophisticated gadgetry any faint trace of intelligent life out there. So far they’ve heard nothing intelligible, but have managed to an even more imponderable, and mute, void.
My faith tells me that God is working all around me, communicating His will to as many as will receive Him, to as many as long to be part of the action. However, I don’t believe the problem has so much to do with listening as with accepting the message. God is God. He can and does get my attention. I simply discount His messages in favor of ones with sometimes sweeter tones.
The thing I don’t want to accept is the startling and profound truth that God does speak to me personally. He speaks in a flash of lightning that makes the streetlights go of and sends a chill of awe through all that I am. He speaks in my soul and what He says is stillness, quietude, solitude. He makes a word among words in Scripture, glossed a hundred times before, burn in my heart, the word becoming a window on the page to a vastness of challenge. In the midst of my sin He pelts my conscience like a Chinese water torture, but with a softness that says love and hope and possibility for change.
What of the hard of heart, the jaded, the puffed up, the indifferent, the insensate? Having been all of these, I find the answer in my question: How is it, despite all of these, that still I long for the voice of God? God speaks an irresistible tongue. It is not for want of listening that I sometimes languish, but in hearing I do not hear. –T.R.
written by Thomas A. Russell
first published in the Lafayette Sunday Visitor on July 19th, 1987
Wednesday, December 12, 2007
A change in plans
I’ve changed my funeral plans. It used to be that I wanted to be buried in a Catholic cemetery near Dermont, Kentucky.
Bishop Francis Cotton, the first Bishop of Owensboro (my hometown), was the first person buried in that cemetery. Both my parents are buried there along with several relatives.
Thank goodness I didn’t go ahead and buy a plot, though. I want to find another place.
The reason I’ve changed my mind about the Owensboro cemetery is because it’s one of those places where everybody has to have the same kind of tombstone.
These cemeteries came into vogue several years ago. They seemed to make sense. Everything was nice and even and Romanesque and easy to mow. Then I visited an old-fashioned, cluttered cemetery over Memorial Day weekend, and something snapped inside me.
This was the old kind of cemetery where there are a million different tombstones. No ugly, forbidding signs said: No artificial flowers allowed! There was no list of rules at the entrance telling all the things you couldn’t do. In fact, at this cemetery, you could do whatever you wanted. People had planted every kind of flower there, and marvelous trees of every description. Graves were adorned with shrubs.
The place was busy, owing to the holiday of course. But here were people expending tender loving care upon the final place for those they loved, instead of being forbidden to touch a thing.
As we visited, I became touched with the idea that graveyards are very much for the living. To visit a gravesite and to plant a rose bush, or trim a hedge or put in perennials – these things are purgative and helpful for those who so dearly miss the ones they have lost. These activities help the living spend time with the dead in a way somehow deeper than just putting down a bouquet.
I’ll not soon forget seeing one heavy-set man in his T-shirt as he stepped back from his gardening at the grave of his loved one. He had just stepped back and looked, his hands out from his sides and covered with dirt, like all people do when they have just planted something. The look on his face, however, went way beyond the flowers. His eyes were full of great love and great sorrow. He was an ordinary man, a simple man; but he was at a point of contact with all the meaning any life ever holds: the point at which one person loves another.
So give me one of those kinds of cemeteries, please, when I die – one construed for the benefit of the bereaved and not for the convenience of the caretakers.
Also, I’ve decided I don’t want the Dies Irae sung at my funeral. You remember that, don’t you? “O Day of Wrath, that dreadful day. The sins of man before the Maker lay – As David and the Sybil say.” I thought I wanted that, but now I’ve decided differently.
I don’t want to offend anybody, but now I want a funeral procession headed up by a New Orleans street band playing a little Dixieland jazz. I just pray I’ve made enough black friends by then to join the procession and help my stiff white friends let go a little and dance. Nothing puts me in a happier frame of mind than Dixieland, and I plan to be one happy dude the day I die.
What more glorious, happy, joyous, exciting thing could ever happen to a person than to go be with Jesus? –T.R.
written by Thomas A. Russell
first published in the Lafayette Sunday Visitor on June 14th, 1987
Bishop Francis Cotton, the first Bishop of Owensboro (my hometown), was the first person buried in that cemetery. Both my parents are buried there along with several relatives.
Thank goodness I didn’t go ahead and buy a plot, though. I want to find another place.
The reason I’ve changed my mind about the Owensboro cemetery is because it’s one of those places where everybody has to have the same kind of tombstone.
These cemeteries came into vogue several years ago. They seemed to make sense. Everything was nice and even and Romanesque and easy to mow. Then I visited an old-fashioned, cluttered cemetery over Memorial Day weekend, and something snapped inside me.
This was the old kind of cemetery where there are a million different tombstones. No ugly, forbidding signs said: No artificial flowers allowed! There was no list of rules at the entrance telling all the things you couldn’t do. In fact, at this cemetery, you could do whatever you wanted. People had planted every kind of flower there, and marvelous trees of every description. Graves were adorned with shrubs.
The place was busy, owing to the holiday of course. But here were people expending tender loving care upon the final place for those they loved, instead of being forbidden to touch a thing.
As we visited, I became touched with the idea that graveyards are very much for the living. To visit a gravesite and to plant a rose bush, or trim a hedge or put in perennials – these things are purgative and helpful for those who so dearly miss the ones they have lost. These activities help the living spend time with the dead in a way somehow deeper than just putting down a bouquet.
I’ll not soon forget seeing one heavy-set man in his T-shirt as he stepped back from his gardening at the grave of his loved one. He had just stepped back and looked, his hands out from his sides and covered with dirt, like all people do when they have just planted something. The look on his face, however, went way beyond the flowers. His eyes were full of great love and great sorrow. He was an ordinary man, a simple man; but he was at a point of contact with all the meaning any life ever holds: the point at which one person loves another.
So give me one of those kinds of cemeteries, please, when I die – one construed for the benefit of the bereaved and not for the convenience of the caretakers.
Also, I’ve decided I don’t want the Dies Irae sung at my funeral. You remember that, don’t you? “O Day of Wrath, that dreadful day. The sins of man before the Maker lay – As David and the Sybil say.” I thought I wanted that, but now I’ve decided differently.
I don’t want to offend anybody, but now I want a funeral procession headed up by a New Orleans street band playing a little Dixieland jazz. I just pray I’ve made enough black friends by then to join the procession and help my stiff white friends let go a little and dance. Nothing puts me in a happier frame of mind than Dixieland, and I plan to be one happy dude the day I die.
What more glorious, happy, joyous, exciting thing could ever happen to a person than to go be with Jesus? –T.R.
written by Thomas A. Russell
first published in the Lafayette Sunday Visitor on June 14th, 1987
Monday, December 10, 2007
Preaching with conviction
My wife said she had never heard such preaching in a Catholic church. I agreed. Although I have been unsuccessful in identifying the priest by name, let it be said that he spoke with passion and conviction. He began his “homily” by saying, “Fasten your seat belts.”
My family and I visited relatives in Michigan during the Memorial Day weekend, and we went to Mass on Sunday at St. Vincent Ferrer Church in Madison Heights, a suburb of Detroit. The sermon we heard that morning was some kind of sermon.
Father spoke about the unchanging law of God and about how it would be well if people realized that God’s law was still in effect. The preacher contrasted God’s unchanging law with laws of the Church which, obviously, change.
“Listen to me now,” he said, “This is important.” The Church can make a law and the Church can change a law, but neither the Church nor the Pope nor anybody else can change God’s law. God’s law is just as true today as it was in the time of Christ. God’s law was true when Moses came down from the mountain and it’s true to this day.
The message we heard that morning was a simple message – nothing heady or intellectual, but spoken with fire and feeling, out of obviously deep and heartfelt belief. Here was a man preaching a faith he lived.
People’s lives are empty today, he said, if they are not following the law of God. People are living together, having sexual relations outside of wedlock and looking for fulfillment but finding none. Because why? Because fornication is still a sin! he shouted. Adultery is still a sin! You can’t break God’s law and get away with it!
Father said he was tired of all the experts called “they” out there who are giving their expert opinion about how God’s law may or may not be applicable to a particular case, about how the Church’s authority has somehow become “relative.”
“You hear somebody say you don’t have to go to confession anymore, you ask that person on whose authority they speak!” the priest said with pointed and deliberate and emphatic diction. “They talk about ‘liberal’ Catholics and ‘conservative’ Catholics. What? Is the Church a political party now? They talk about the ‘non-churchgoing Catholic.’ What is that? Is that some special, new branch of the Church? Does that mean it’s okay for Catholics to not go to Mass anymore? It does not!” he said with power.
Father told his listeners to come off their complaining about changes in the Church and get back to practicing their faith and following the law of God spoken in their hearts by a true and informed conscience.
“I had a woman come to me and say her husband didn’t come to Mass anymore. ‘Is that so,’ I said. ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘he just got to where he couldn’t take that guitar Mass anymore,’ she said.” Father made the Sign of the Cross. “I told her to tell him to go to one of the other Masses! Just because he doesn’t like the folk Mass doesn’t mean he doesn’t have to go to Mass! Get with it, people! You don’t like all these changes? Neither do I! That doesn’t mean you stop practicing your faith!”
Kind of does something to your heart to hear that kind of preaching, and I mean preaching. I felt some blood flowing in my veins that Sunday morning. Yes, Father what’s-his-name said a lot more things that morning: simple, uncomplicated, truthful things, things that make a person’s soul get stirred with the conviction that it is possible to walk in God’s way one more day. Thank you, Father.
It will be good to have something to cling to on Pentecost Sunday, something not half-baked and mealy-mouthed and soft in the middle, but something good and righteous and on fire.
written by Thomas A. Russell
first published in the Lafayette Sunday Visitor on June 7th, 1987
My family and I visited relatives in Michigan during the Memorial Day weekend, and we went to Mass on Sunday at St. Vincent Ferrer Church in Madison Heights, a suburb of Detroit. The sermon we heard that morning was some kind of sermon.
Father spoke about the unchanging law of God and about how it would be well if people realized that God’s law was still in effect. The preacher contrasted God’s unchanging law with laws of the Church which, obviously, change.
“Listen to me now,” he said, “This is important.” The Church can make a law and the Church can change a law, but neither the Church nor the Pope nor anybody else can change God’s law. God’s law is just as true today as it was in the time of Christ. God’s law was true when Moses came down from the mountain and it’s true to this day.
The message we heard that morning was a simple message – nothing heady or intellectual, but spoken with fire and feeling, out of obviously deep and heartfelt belief. Here was a man preaching a faith he lived.
People’s lives are empty today, he said, if they are not following the law of God. People are living together, having sexual relations outside of wedlock and looking for fulfillment but finding none. Because why? Because fornication is still a sin! he shouted. Adultery is still a sin! You can’t break God’s law and get away with it!
Father said he was tired of all the experts called “they” out there who are giving their expert opinion about how God’s law may or may not be applicable to a particular case, about how the Church’s authority has somehow become “relative.”
“You hear somebody say you don’t have to go to confession anymore, you ask that person on whose authority they speak!” the priest said with pointed and deliberate and emphatic diction. “They talk about ‘liberal’ Catholics and ‘conservative’ Catholics. What? Is the Church a political party now? They talk about the ‘non-churchgoing Catholic.’ What is that? Is that some special, new branch of the Church? Does that mean it’s okay for Catholics to not go to Mass anymore? It does not!” he said with power.
Father told his listeners to come off their complaining about changes in the Church and get back to practicing their faith and following the law of God spoken in their hearts by a true and informed conscience.
“I had a woman come to me and say her husband didn’t come to Mass anymore. ‘Is that so,’ I said. ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘he just got to where he couldn’t take that guitar Mass anymore,’ she said.” Father made the Sign of the Cross. “I told her to tell him to go to one of the other Masses! Just because he doesn’t like the folk Mass doesn’t mean he doesn’t have to go to Mass! Get with it, people! You don’t like all these changes? Neither do I! That doesn’t mean you stop practicing your faith!”
Kind of does something to your heart to hear that kind of preaching, and I mean preaching. I felt some blood flowing in my veins that Sunday morning. Yes, Father what’s-his-name said a lot more things that morning: simple, uncomplicated, truthful things, things that make a person’s soul get stirred with the conviction that it is possible to walk in God’s way one more day. Thank you, Father.
It will be good to have something to cling to on Pentecost Sunday, something not half-baked and mealy-mouthed and soft in the middle, but something good and righteous and on fire.
written by Thomas A. Russell
first published in the Lafayette Sunday Visitor on June 7th, 1987
Friday, December 7, 2007
Missed opportunities
Being an opportunist is not necessarily a good thing. Seizing upon a situation for personal advantage, but at someone else’s expense, may be good worldly wisdom, but it’s surely not God’s way.
Circumstances and things do come along, however, which are genuine opportunities and truly are blessings from God. We can pursue these things with enthusiasm and dedication knowing that here is our chance to succeed, indeed to excel.
There have been times like these in my life; and times, too, when out of laziness and ignorance and pride, out of immaturity and weakness and stupidity, I’ve blown it. I’ve messed up. I’ve turned fabulous opportunity into empty failure.
These ghosts of the past rear their ugly heads from time to time. If you’ve had the experience, you know what I mean when I talk about the guilt, the remorse, the anger, the unrequited anxiety. These are the missed opportunities.
Sometimes these experiences are big. Real big. Life changing big. At least one skeleton in my closet represents a missed opportunity that could have made a vast difference in my life, both from the perspective of personal satisfaction and probably financially. Not me, though. No. I was more interested in partying than in making the necessary commitment to a career in law. I wanted to boogie!
Suffice it to say that my decision to drop out of law school has flooded my late night consciousness more than a few times in the intervening years. My sarcasm belies my anger at myself and even a sense of shame and embarrassment. Too late now. The feelings can be unlovely. If you’ve ever blown it big, you know what I mean.
At other times my missed opportunities are on a smaller scale. The other night one of my young ones came into the living room wanting to show me some school papers. I was in a sour mood. I had lost something and was mad because I couldn’t find it. When the school papers were presented I said tersely, I don’t want to look at these now. Get them out of my way. Put them on the table over there and leave me alone. Have you seen my …?
The next morning I saw the stack of papers where my child had left them. He was now in school. When I saw the papers I felt empty and sad. I had been hell-bent on being boorish and bearish and I had accomplished that handily, but I had missed the opportunity to share a peaceful and joyful and pleasant moment with a child. Such life-giving pauses can never be recovered. There’s never really any such thing as making up for it at another time.
Each of us has an emblem or two from the past that represents what would have been, what could have been. All of us have missed the opportunities, great and small. For me, it seems the distinction is beginning to blur.
I have trashed whole giant opportunities in my life. Somehow those big circumstances, however, leave me wanting to kick myself no more than the smaller things that come along: the blown opportunity to say a kind word; the lazy excuse for failing to visit a sickbed; the angry preoccupation preventing a session of patient listening.
The older I get, the more I have come to believe that there can be great power in a single moment. Sometimes, eternity may be hidden in waiting 30 seconds more.
One might say it was nothing that I didn’t take a minute and look at my son’s papers, especially compared to those great rewards I could have had in a legal profession. We’ll never know. That minute with my son could have changed his life, and mine. –T.R.
written by Thomas A. Russell
first published in the Lafayette Sunday Visitor on May 31st, 1987
Circumstances and things do come along, however, which are genuine opportunities and truly are blessings from God. We can pursue these things with enthusiasm and dedication knowing that here is our chance to succeed, indeed to excel.
There have been times like these in my life; and times, too, when out of laziness and ignorance and pride, out of immaturity and weakness and stupidity, I’ve blown it. I’ve messed up. I’ve turned fabulous opportunity into empty failure.
These ghosts of the past rear their ugly heads from time to time. If you’ve had the experience, you know what I mean when I talk about the guilt, the remorse, the anger, the unrequited anxiety. These are the missed opportunities.
Sometimes these experiences are big. Real big. Life changing big. At least one skeleton in my closet represents a missed opportunity that could have made a vast difference in my life, both from the perspective of personal satisfaction and probably financially. Not me, though. No. I was more interested in partying than in making the necessary commitment to a career in law. I wanted to boogie!
Suffice it to say that my decision to drop out of law school has flooded my late night consciousness more than a few times in the intervening years. My sarcasm belies my anger at myself and even a sense of shame and embarrassment. Too late now. The feelings can be unlovely. If you’ve ever blown it big, you know what I mean.
At other times my missed opportunities are on a smaller scale. The other night one of my young ones came into the living room wanting to show me some school papers. I was in a sour mood. I had lost something and was mad because I couldn’t find it. When the school papers were presented I said tersely, I don’t want to look at these now. Get them out of my way. Put them on the table over there and leave me alone. Have you seen my …?
The next morning I saw the stack of papers where my child had left them. He was now in school. When I saw the papers I felt empty and sad. I had been hell-bent on being boorish and bearish and I had accomplished that handily, but I had missed the opportunity to share a peaceful and joyful and pleasant moment with a child. Such life-giving pauses can never be recovered. There’s never really any such thing as making up for it at another time.
Each of us has an emblem or two from the past that represents what would have been, what could have been. All of us have missed the opportunities, great and small. For me, it seems the distinction is beginning to blur.
I have trashed whole giant opportunities in my life. Somehow those big circumstances, however, leave me wanting to kick myself no more than the smaller things that come along: the blown opportunity to say a kind word; the lazy excuse for failing to visit a sickbed; the angry preoccupation preventing a session of patient listening.
The older I get, the more I have come to believe that there can be great power in a single moment. Sometimes, eternity may be hidden in waiting 30 seconds more.
One might say it was nothing that I didn’t take a minute and look at my son’s papers, especially compared to those great rewards I could have had in a legal profession. We’ll never know. That minute with my son could have changed his life, and mine. –T.R.
written by Thomas A. Russell
first published in the Lafayette Sunday Visitor on May 31st, 1987
Wednesday, December 5, 2007
Loving our neighbor
My friend Robin described me as a cat chasing his tail. Some people are called to be monks and live in monasteries, he said, but you’re not one of them. You go around in circles with pietistic, philosophical, heady notions about spirituality, but I never hear you talking about loving your neighbor, he said.
This is a writing about the Gospel message to love our neighbor. Robin says our job is to do that. If we reject the message, then we reject the One who gave us the message.
I’ll be honest with you; it’s not a very exciting prospect. In fact, it’s boring. I would much rather spend time pondering the great verities of the cosmos than sit and listen to some dolt drone on about his problems. Neighbor loving can be very uninspiring.
One thing about neighbor loving that always has perplexed me is that I don’t really seem to get a chance. None of my neighbors are starving. They all have clothes to wear and a place to stay. I can and do give money for the poor, but that’s hardly a concrete, hands-on experience of actually loving. Giving money is important, but it also can be a way to detach one’s self from any real commitment to loving others. I suppose it’s a matter of attitude.
One thing I could do to love my neighbors, I suppose, would be to avoid gossiping about them. That would be very hard for me to do. There’s a compelling thrill about passing on some good dirt. It’s certainly no fun to sit on a juicy tidbit. Besides, I can always absolve myself by saying, “This may or may not be true, but…” That’s a lie and a cop-out, of course. Love dictates that I keep my trap shut.
As I think about it, another way to love my well-fed, well-clothed, well-sheltered neighbors is to tolerate their idiosyncrasies with patience and cheerfulness. That would be hard. Some people have a lot of gall in things they say and do. If I couldn’t scorn and resent their incredible stupidity or their brazen actions – I mean are we talking about blessing them when they curse me? Doing good things for them when they run wholesale over me? Standing by patiently while they keep rambling on?
Other ways to love neighbors, in a practical sense, come to mind. There are hundreds of letters I haven’t written, for example. Community agencies beg for volunteers. People in care centers and rest homes love companionship, even from people they don’t know at first. Blood donors love their neighbor.
When was the last time I found a kind word for the checkout person at the grocery store? How often have I thanked my letter carrier, and sympathized with her sometimes-grueling job? I could remember that courtesy is not dead.
Probably one of the keys to loving one’s neighbors is being open to loving them. It’s probably a safe bet that the Lord will give us plenty of chances to do it, even among the great middle class. I can chase around after my tail in my spiritual life, thinking the great thoughts and having the great visions – ultimately, though, finding myself pretty much where I started. Or, I can begin to go out of myself a little bit, begin to ignore the gooey feelings and go for the hard realities of love. The Lord said He didn’t want to hear “Lord, Lord.” What He wanted, He said, was someone who would do the will of the Father in heaven. God’s will is done in monasteries, but most of us live in the neighborhood. –T.R.
written by Thomas A. Russell
first published in the Lafayette Sunday Visitor on May 24th, 1987
This is a writing about the Gospel message to love our neighbor. Robin says our job is to do that. If we reject the message, then we reject the One who gave us the message.
I’ll be honest with you; it’s not a very exciting prospect. In fact, it’s boring. I would much rather spend time pondering the great verities of the cosmos than sit and listen to some dolt drone on about his problems. Neighbor loving can be very uninspiring.
One thing about neighbor loving that always has perplexed me is that I don’t really seem to get a chance. None of my neighbors are starving. They all have clothes to wear and a place to stay. I can and do give money for the poor, but that’s hardly a concrete, hands-on experience of actually loving. Giving money is important, but it also can be a way to detach one’s self from any real commitment to loving others. I suppose it’s a matter of attitude.
One thing I could do to love my neighbors, I suppose, would be to avoid gossiping about them. That would be very hard for me to do. There’s a compelling thrill about passing on some good dirt. It’s certainly no fun to sit on a juicy tidbit. Besides, I can always absolve myself by saying, “This may or may not be true, but…” That’s a lie and a cop-out, of course. Love dictates that I keep my trap shut.
As I think about it, another way to love my well-fed, well-clothed, well-sheltered neighbors is to tolerate their idiosyncrasies with patience and cheerfulness. That would be hard. Some people have a lot of gall in things they say and do. If I couldn’t scorn and resent their incredible stupidity or their brazen actions – I mean are we talking about blessing them when they curse me? Doing good things for them when they run wholesale over me? Standing by patiently while they keep rambling on?
Other ways to love neighbors, in a practical sense, come to mind. There are hundreds of letters I haven’t written, for example. Community agencies beg for volunteers. People in care centers and rest homes love companionship, even from people they don’t know at first. Blood donors love their neighbor.
When was the last time I found a kind word for the checkout person at the grocery store? How often have I thanked my letter carrier, and sympathized with her sometimes-grueling job? I could remember that courtesy is not dead.
Probably one of the keys to loving one’s neighbors is being open to loving them. It’s probably a safe bet that the Lord will give us plenty of chances to do it, even among the great middle class. I can chase around after my tail in my spiritual life, thinking the great thoughts and having the great visions – ultimately, though, finding myself pretty much where I started. Or, I can begin to go out of myself a little bit, begin to ignore the gooey feelings and go for the hard realities of love. The Lord said He didn’t want to hear “Lord, Lord.” What He wanted, He said, was someone who would do the will of the Father in heaven. God’s will is done in monasteries, but most of us live in the neighborhood. –T.R.
written by Thomas A. Russell
first published in the Lafayette Sunday Visitor on May 24th, 1987
Monday, December 3, 2007
The middle of the night
My wife says God gets people up in the middle of the night so they will pray. I just read an article which says that prayer is an effort to find out what God is doing. So I guess my prayer is, what are you doing Lord, getting me up in the middle of the night?
I’ve been pretty sullen and irascible lately and I’m not proud of it. I probably deserve a little insomnia. I’m just in a place - you know what I mean? I don’t want to be melodramatic, but this image seems to fit: I feel like a prisoner in a cell with one high window through which he can see only the blue sky. The prisoner knows there’s something more and something good, but this ain’t it.
As I pray to discern what God is up to in my life, I find it hard just to listen and to wait. Prayer doesn’t seem like prayer unless I’m running my mouth. In my prayer, though, it’s helpful for me not to have to explain things too much. God, after all, is God. I don’t have to give Him all the fine points, for example, of a job I have waiting for me to do. God understands that I have to do this and do that, this call to make, that research to do. He understands my embarrassment for taking so long to finish and my anxiety about being able to do things right. God knows.
Usually what happens to me – in prayer in the middle of the night which God has awakened me for so He can tell me what He is doing – is that I begin to offload my troubles onto Him. I know He’s going to be up, and I’m trying to get some sleep. The circumstances and things of my life begin to flood my consciousness. As soon as something or someone comes to mind, I simply offer it or him or her to the Lord. It’s like: “Yeah, this situation, Lord. I can’t do anything about it.” Or I will think of someone I know and I will say, “Bless her, Lord. I don’t know what to do about her circumstances, but You do.” And on and on. I don’t spend too much time on any one person or thing, because so many people and things in my life compete for attention in this prayerful presence before God. I can’t concentrate, so I don’t bother to try. I simply try to fix my awareness on the Lord and ask Him to see and experience and be a part of all things that are on my mind. Usually this is a very satisfying kind of prayer.
I’m not a great issues person; I’m an ordinary person. God hasn’t called me to scale the peaks or to achieve much of anything spectacular in a worldly sense. That has bothered me in the past, but more lately it has been a comfort to me that God has finally realized that I’m not Mr. Big.
There is something good in the simplicity of having one’s half acre to plow. God has blessed my wife and me with three children, and I do have a tremendously loving wife. We have a small house and a car to get around in, and a cat. We have friends who love us and friends we love. We have old friends. We want for nothing. My job is, well, as I’ve tried to explain before: this is my job. My employers are good, decent, God-fearing, fair-minded, caring people. What further blessings could a person want?
Still I have the effrontery to sulk from time to time. You know what it is? Immaturity. Childishness. I have not put away former things and put on the Lord Jesus Christ.
God has given me so much raw material to work with. As I squint and strain to see what Christian maturity might look like, surely I see that God has called me to holiness in the place where I am. I might make a pilgrimage and I am indeed a kin of the world community. But this is the place where Jesus expects me to find Him – here, in these little digs. Here I am to be obedient, willing, surrendered. This is where the Lord expects to find me when He shakes me and wakes me up in the middle of the night and tells me what He’s going to do. –T.R.
written by Thomas A. Russell
first published in the Lafayette Sunday Visitor on May 17th, 1987
I’ve been pretty sullen and irascible lately and I’m not proud of it. I probably deserve a little insomnia. I’m just in a place - you know what I mean? I don’t want to be melodramatic, but this image seems to fit: I feel like a prisoner in a cell with one high window through which he can see only the blue sky. The prisoner knows there’s something more and something good, but this ain’t it.
As I pray to discern what God is up to in my life, I find it hard just to listen and to wait. Prayer doesn’t seem like prayer unless I’m running my mouth. In my prayer, though, it’s helpful for me not to have to explain things too much. God, after all, is God. I don’t have to give Him all the fine points, for example, of a job I have waiting for me to do. God understands that I have to do this and do that, this call to make, that research to do. He understands my embarrassment for taking so long to finish and my anxiety about being able to do things right. God knows.
Usually what happens to me – in prayer in the middle of the night which God has awakened me for so He can tell me what He is doing – is that I begin to offload my troubles onto Him. I know He’s going to be up, and I’m trying to get some sleep. The circumstances and things of my life begin to flood my consciousness. As soon as something or someone comes to mind, I simply offer it or him or her to the Lord. It’s like: “Yeah, this situation, Lord. I can’t do anything about it.” Or I will think of someone I know and I will say, “Bless her, Lord. I don’t know what to do about her circumstances, but You do.” And on and on. I don’t spend too much time on any one person or thing, because so many people and things in my life compete for attention in this prayerful presence before God. I can’t concentrate, so I don’t bother to try. I simply try to fix my awareness on the Lord and ask Him to see and experience and be a part of all things that are on my mind. Usually this is a very satisfying kind of prayer.
I’m not a great issues person; I’m an ordinary person. God hasn’t called me to scale the peaks or to achieve much of anything spectacular in a worldly sense. That has bothered me in the past, but more lately it has been a comfort to me that God has finally realized that I’m not Mr. Big.
There is something good in the simplicity of having one’s half acre to plow. God has blessed my wife and me with three children, and I do have a tremendously loving wife. We have a small house and a car to get around in, and a cat. We have friends who love us and friends we love. We have old friends. We want for nothing. My job is, well, as I’ve tried to explain before: this is my job. My employers are good, decent, God-fearing, fair-minded, caring people. What further blessings could a person want?
Still I have the effrontery to sulk from time to time. You know what it is? Immaturity. Childishness. I have not put away former things and put on the Lord Jesus Christ.
God has given me so much raw material to work with. As I squint and strain to see what Christian maturity might look like, surely I see that God has called me to holiness in the place where I am. I might make a pilgrimage and I am indeed a kin of the world community. But this is the place where Jesus expects me to find Him – here, in these little digs. Here I am to be obedient, willing, surrendered. This is where the Lord expects to find me when He shakes me and wakes me up in the middle of the night and tells me what He’s going to do. –T.R.
written by Thomas A. Russell
first published in the Lafayette Sunday Visitor on May 17th, 1987
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