Do All The Good You Can . . .

Quote by John Wesley. Photocredit: www.123rf.com

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Agostino's Messenger

Agostino plodded through his morning schedule, burdened by worry’s invisible weight. 

When lunch arrived he fled the office to a bench on the edge of a nearby park. The air around him was cold and clear. Agostino ate in brooding silence, angry now that the change in scene had not erased his fears. 

A girl approached along the path that led by his bench, and sat beside him. She looked to be about ten years old.  She was dressed in a pair of fading jeans, with a coat and a knit cap to keep out the autumn chill. 

Agostino regarded her with some impatience, wondering why she had chosen his bench. There were several in sight that were empty.  He silently wished her away from him.

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After a little, she produced a bag of breadcrumbs and began to spread them in a wide arc around the bench. Almost magically it seemed, pigeons appeared and busied themselves with the feast.  

"Christ," he thought, "more company."

She looked up and nodded to Agostino as she scattered the bread crumbs.  

When he did not acknowledge her, she said, “It’s my job, you know.”

“Your job?” Agostino asked, a little startled.

“Why yes. I asked God to show me how I could help.  And then in church the pastor read this verse.  ‘Consider the lilies, how they grow: They neither toil nor spin; yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these.’ And then there's that part about the birds."

“I know God can do it without me, but I don't think he minds the help."

"So you're helping God out by feeding pigeons . . ." Agostino couldn't keep the sarcasm from his voice.

The girl cocked her head up at him and just smiled. "That's what I thought too.  But you know Jesus said ‘consider,' so I've been considering."

"Then in the next part, Jesus said 'seek,' so I began seeking. And I found it."  

"Salvation through feeding pigeons," Agostino remarked, trying and failing to sound playful, unconcerned.

The girl giggled.  "I never thought of it that way.  I just felt like this was where God wanted me.  And it felt good.  In here." She tapped her chest lightly.

There passed a period of silence as Agostino and his companion regarded the pigeons.

The girl reached over impulsively to tap Agostino’s chest. “Now its your turn to do the same.” 

She bounced up from the bench before Agostino could ask what she meant, then skipped away. A little way down the path a man whom he took to be the girl's father reached out to take her hand.  The girl looked back and she and her father waved at him, then turned to walk down the path.

Agostino watched them for a long time before he became aware of movement. Birds surrounded him, enjoying the meal the girl had spread out for them. The bag of bread crumbs sat on the bench next to him.

Agostino laughed as the worry drained out of him. Sunlight washed cold radiance over winter grasses and sparkled in the eyes of the birds as they cocked their heads to gaze at him. In the center of his chest, where the girl's finger had lightly tapped as if knocking at his heart’s door, he felt the stirrings of a peculiar, half-forgotten memory.

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Stumbling into a River of Grace

There is a line in one of my all-time favorite movies, "A River Runs Through It," that sums up so much of the peculiar ambivalence about grace that I have felt all of my life. 

Norman MacLean is talking about his father, a Presbyterian minister who has an ardent love of fly fishing.  "My father was very sure about certain matters pertaining to the universe. To him, all good things - trout as well as eternal salvation - came by grace; and grace comes by art; and art does not come easy." MacLean goes on to say that if it were up to his father, no one who fished the wrong way would ever be allowed to disgrace a trout by catching one.

Photo Credit: Mark Grace

I’ve been stuck on that statement for years, trying to think it through.  Some days I cannot see an ounce of grace in that philosophy.  All I see is the older brother complaining about the prodigal son getting off scot free.  The prodigal certainly didn’t go about catching his fish in the right way.  

He stumbled out of a good home with a generous parent, then  hit the road to drunk and disorderly, and finally came crawling back a filthy disgrace.   Didn’t seem to matter.  His father gave him the ring and a feast all the same.

Meanwhile his older brother did everything right.  He worked his heart out to get it right.  To use MacLean’s metaphor, he learned to fish the right way.  In the end, however,  it seems his brother was the one who caught the fish.  That sloppy ne’er do well tripped all over himself and lucked into the biggest catch of a lifetime while his faithful brother had nothing to show for all of his hard work.

Most of my life I’ve stood firmly in support of the older brother in this story, and by extension of Norman MacLean’s father’s take on grace.  Grace should come to those who have mastered the artist’s craft.  The individuals who have put in the time and effort are precisely those who should catch grace

Over the last decade or so, however, things have changed for me.  Passing through agonizing darkness, I confronted my own carefully ignored prodigal failures and found myself sitting at Jesus’ feet in the long hour before dawn, asking him what a braggart who always thought he was the one who got it right but finally realized he had it just about as wrong as it could be gotten would have to do to find peace of mind.

He smiled and said quietly, “You must be born again.”

I hope I haven’t lost you by this point, because I have covered a lot of ground- a movie, a parable ,painful self-disclosure and Jesus talking to Nicodemus.  A lot to take in . . .

I want to pause for a moment and say to you, “Stay with me.  Just a  few more words and I believe I can show you the beauty I found.”

You see, many trout will be caught by hard work and expertise, but now and then some fool will luck into a trophy catch.  And prodigals will have their parties and their fattened calves, as they should have. But then prodigals must wake up on the morning after the big party and learn how to be responsible, hardworking sons of their heavenly father.  

THAT is the real reward. That is why the prodigal was given the ring, after all, as a sign that he had come back to those who really loved him and responsibilities that could finally satisfy him, not just a lucky reward.

I can imagine the older brother waking up after a night of sulking, hung over from an overdose of bitterness and realizing that not one moment of the time he spent working shoulder to shoulder with his father was wasted.

I can see him laying in bed just a little longer on the morning after the feast, remembering the days he basked in the wisdom and love of his father’s presence.  When he gets up to go to work, he may pass his younger brother’s bedroom, the one who is a prodigal no more, and think to himself, “I am so glad I stayed.  I could see the anguish in my brother’s eyes last night.  It will be a long time before he can accept the love that has been offered him. He'll need someone to remind him that it is his to receive.”

Now the prodigal stirs, and stumbles out of bed.  It is his first day back home and he is determined to make good on this second chance.  The obligations from which he fled so long ago no longer appear as chains holding him back.  They have become the new life he was always seeking.

In the end, both the prodigal and his older brother get what they need.   Life in the presence of their father.  

May it be so with you.

Mark

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