The other day in Hannover, Germany: I am walking down a city street and see a man riding a bicycle in my direction. He turns his head away to look at something, and in that instant he crashes head-on into a pole. He flies from his bike, lands on his head with a sickening thud. For the next ten minutes he lies motionless in the gutter with a pool of blood growing larger and larger from under his head. I suspect that he is dead.
A group of people gather around him, each trying in some way to make him comfortable, trying to revive him. Others have gone for help. Soon the emergency medical technicians arrive, put him on the gurney, and speed him away to the hospital.
All day long this horrific scene replays in my mind. The sights—the fall to the pavement, the blood, the motionless body—cannot be resisted. Then as time passes, I see another picture. I see myself, many years ago, crashing violently in a different but just as real way. And I remember the people who crowded about me offering various forms of grace and compassion. They were determined to revive me—as it were—and to get me back on my feet. And they succeeded.
Today I never write a paragraph, give a talk, engage in some kind of hopefully redemptive conversation without remembering that I wouldn’t be doing this if it were not for the grace of people who were determined not to leave me as a fool in the gutter.
Each week I hear from some who have also crashed—in ministry, business, or life. Too often the story they write is not similar to mine. They are not surrounded by people who seek to revive and rescue. Rather, they hear the disapproving words of people who are far more interested in talking about why one shouldn’t have turned his head away, how the wounded one deserves what he’s gotten, and why he/she should never ride again.
I pray regularly for a church where those who have crashed will find gentleness, hope, counsel, wholeness. Where they will be lifted to their feet and clothed with grace.
From my journal: Our local newspaper has written of a company that plans to market a line of girl’s clothing in which all the pieces of an outfit deliberately clash. Get set for a revolution in “style.” The socks, for example, need no longer match. One brown and one blue sock today, an argyle and a plain gray cotton sock tomorrow. One outfit will yield more than 8,000 combinations of clothing.
The idea grabs me, and I can’t wait for a similar men’s line. Since I am color-confused (a step short of color blindness), I’ve been mismatching clothes for years. Perhaps I have been a trendsetter and didn’t know it.
I recall the night I wore a brown shoe and a black shoe to a meeting of Christian students at Harvard where I was to be the principal speaker. While praying before the meeting, I opened my eyes and—since my head was bowed and I was looking down—it was revealed to me that I was wearing a brown shoe and a black shoe. No one had said anything. At the University of Colorado (my alma mater), this would not have been unusual. But at Harvard! Oh, the shame of it!
The story about mismatched clothing might serve as an introduction to a sermon on the uniqueness of the Christ-follower in the real world. “We will often be mismatches in the larger world,” I can hear myself saying as I introduce Paul’s words to the Romans, “Don’t be conformed to this world’s ways…”
The truth is that I like to match. The natural me likes to fit in, not to make waves. How unlike Jesus I am in this sense. This was Peter’s struggle at the court of the High Priest on Crucifixion night. It was not that he wanted to betray Jesus. He was just scared and wanted to match the crowd—to fit in.
So don’t be surprised if when you next see me I am wearing a red shirt and purple socks.
A rebuke to me from out of the past when I was coming down with “hurry-sickness”: “It is refreshing and salutary, to study the poise and quietness of Christ. His tasks and responsibility might well have driven a man out of his mind. But he was never in a (rush), never impressed by numbers, never a slave of the clock. He was acting, he said, as he observed God to act—never in a hurry.” J. B. Phillips
A provocative Karl Barth quote: “When the hands are folded, a mighty onslaught against a world of chaos is begun.”
Pastor and author Gordon MacDonald is chair of World Relief and editor at large of LEADERSHIP.
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