On the Anvil - Max Lucado [4]
Billie resigned.
Her life stands as a quiet legacy to us all. Man must have something larger than death . . . or death takes man.
Do you know someone who has “resigned” from life?
What keeps you engaged in life when difficulties strike?
How do you think God is calling you to live?
6: For the Love of a Stranger and the Lack of a Name
John’s life peaked at age thirteen when he was homeroom president. So far, that office has been the high point in his life.
John’s life is an enigma. Though he was born in a $300,000 home, he is known as a penniless drifter. Though he is the son of a successful oil tycoon, John quits more things than he finishes. Though his parents are gregarious and social, John is introverted, reclusive, almost stoic.
Friends suggest that he became a victim of his own failures. In a family of successes, he had made no name for himself. His brother and sister made it, but he didn’t. The black sheep. The family failure. He had no name.
“Everything fits perfectly . . . except John,” one friend observed about the family.
College only added to the degeneration. He attended on and off for seven years, never graduating. John was a loner at school, a lumpish young man with glassy eyes and a glower. One of the professors recalls, “There were usually empty chairs around him, as if he consciously chose to sit apart.”
We don’t know what emotions stirred within John. Anger, perhaps, at a society that only reminded him of his inadequacies. Guilt. Painful reminders that “I let everybody down.” Nothingness. Barely known by those he touched, his passage was marked only by clutter and grime and confused scribbling.
We don’t know the emotions, but we believe we know their result.
John Hinckley, Jr., seemed to have had every intention of killing the president. For the love of a stranger and the lack of a name, he allegedly emptied a revolver into the bodies of four men.
The latest report has John in a federal correctional facility in North Carolina. His room has a sink, toilet, single bed, one bulletproof window, and no TV or radio. He tried to overdose on Tylenol and failed. John can’t kill a president, nor can he kill himself.
Our world has little room for failures. Our success-centered enterprise system is ideal for the successful but devastating for the loser. In an effort to create winners, we also create misfits.
Jesus had a place for misfits. In his book the last became first, and even the loser had value. It is our responsibility to be like Christ. It is our responsibility to intercept a life like John Hinckley’s and fill it with value.
Where does our value come from?
Have you ever questioned your own value? Why?
How does a relationship with Christ affirm our value?
How can you put into action Christ’s view of the misfits in your world?
7: Mercy, Not Sacrifice
But go and learn what this means: “I desire mercy, not sacrifice.” For I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.
Matthew 9:13
“Lord,” I said, “I want to be your man, not my own.
So to you I give my money, my car—even my home.”
Then, smug and content, I relaxed with a smile
And whispered to God, “I bet it’s been a while
Since anyone has given so much—so freely?”
His answer surprised me. He replied, “Not really.
“Not a day has gone by since the beginning of time,
That someone hasn’t offered meager nickels and dimes, Golden altars and crosses, contributions and penance,
Stone monuments and steeples; but why not repentance?
“The money, the statues, the cathedrals you’ve built,
Do you really think I need your offerings of guilt?
What good is money that’s meant only to salve
The hurting conscience that so many of you have?
“Your lips know no prayers. Your eyes, no compassion.
But you will go to church (when churchgoing’s in fashion).
“Just give me a tear—a heart ready to mold.
And I’ll give you a mission, a message so bold—
That a fire will be stirred where there