From My Journal: (Early May) Awoke this morning to learn that the Old Man of the Mountain is no more. Some time during the night the old guy’s 65,000 year old face fell off the mountain. Now the old stone face is a pile of rubble at the base of the mountain. The mountain is, well, just another mountain. The symbol of New Hampshire is gone.
I remember my parents taking me to see the Old Man. How many times have I taken our children and grandchildren to stare up at that peculiar rock formation.
The face simply fell off! Natural causes, I guess. How often “faces” fall off in real life. Shelley’s poem comes to mind: “(In the desert) a shattered (face) lies … on the pedestal these words appear: My name is Ozymandias, king of kings: look on my works … ye mighty and despair … ” Then the poet comments: “nothing (now) remains.”
The business tycoon who is “perp-walked” to an arraignment in court has lost his carefully created “face.” The leader caught in scandal has lost his once-admired “face.” The athlete who sticks around too long risks losing his. I guess we are all tempted to stick faces on ourselves to communicate a kind of value. Christians do this. God help us if it’s the wrong face. Lot, Sampson, Saul, Solomon (to name a few Biblical tragedies) made bad face-choices. And, come to think of it, I’ve made some bad face-choices myself in the past.
A prayer: “Lord, am I being too sentimental to seek a face like Christ’s? A face that is more than just a ‘face’? A face marked by solid virtue and compassion that would never fall off? Other ‘faces’ just don’t seem to last forever. And that’s the testing point, isn’t it? A face that will endure forever and find pleasure in your sight!”
Thought-provoker: Richard Lovelace writes of Count Ludwig von Zinzendorf (18th century) who founded Herrnhut (Germany) where Christians of varying traditions might live together and escape the constant religious wars in Europe. “Moravian Hussites, Lutherans, Calvinists, even Roman Catholics came together there. At first,” Lovelace says, “they were continually fighting with one another.”
For 3 years the different sects of Herrnhut fought like cats and dogs. Zinzendorf responded by breaking the community down into small groups for sharing and prayer … and escalated the volume of prayer on the Hutberg, the mountain of God’s watch … the eventual result was Herrnhut’s ‘Pentecost’ on August 13, 1727, a sunrise service in which all present received a powerful ‘baptism in the Holy Spirit.’ The main evidence of this outpouring … was the filling of members’ hearts with fervent love for one another, leading to mutual forgiveness.” (Renewal as a Way of Life, pp. 186ff)
From my favorite newspaper:The New York Times has an article (5/7/03) about Stephen Glass who was fired by New Republic five years ago for “fabricating details in 27 articles.” This came out just before similar revelations about the Times’ own Jayson Blair.
Glass has published a novel in which he tells the story of a writer who was guilty of many of the same things attributed to Glass. The writer confesses, “For me lying had become more than a vice, or a comfort, or a habit, or the easiest thing to do: It had begun to seem vital.”
Then explaining why he loved to bring people down with his lies, he says, “I saw it suddenly: They were all successes, all people who were loved and respected. They had actually done what I’d only aspired to, and at some subconscious level, I must have wanted to bring them down, to prove they and I weren’t so different after all.”
The same edition had a wonderful article about David Robinson, who will be retiring from the NBA San Antonio Spurs this year. He and his wife have given over 9 million dollars to found a school for urban children. “Life is not all about making as much money as you can and being as famous as you can; it’s about service,” he says.
“What does David Robinson mean to me? says Edwin Bates, a third-grader. “He’s very tall. He comes in and encourages us to pay attention to adults, at home and in school.”
The importance of perspective: A Christian and a hungry lion meet in the forest. The Christian prepares to meet his Maker. Then he sees the lion bow in prayer. “How fortuitous,” he thinks, “a Christian lion. I’m saved.” Stepping closer to pass the peace to the lion, he hears the animal say, “O Lord, for these gifts we are about to receive, we thank thee. … “
A reminder: 10-20 million people are in a starvation situation in Africa. Every church should be taking up special offerings. World Relief and World Vision come to mind as targets for your generosity. There are more than a million Christians in Iraq. And millions more in Iran, Syria, the Palestinian lands. I wish we prayed more for them and asked if we could help.
A worthwhile book of noble thinking:If I Get to Five by Fred Epstein M.D. and Josh Horwitz (Henry Holt & Co., 2003). “What children can teach us about courage and character.”
Gordon MacDonald is Leadership editor-at-large and chair of World Relief.
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