Blind

I love snow.

It’s beautiful.

It just invites me to slow down and curl up next to a fire with a cup of coffee and a book.

But there’s a downside to snow. It kind of gets in the way of everyday life.

A couple of years ago we got a massive amount of snow (at least for St. Louis). The meteorologists called it a “polar vortex.” I’m still not entirely sure what that means. I do know that we got a lot of snow.

Crews were sent out to clear the streets and parking lots so that people could get out.

The challenge of clearing a parking lot, though, is that there aren’t a lot of places to put the accumulated snow.

So, at the grocery store I frequent, they simply shoveled it all to the end of an aisle. They freed up parking spaces but effectively created a “no outlet” situation.

I pulled into a row of parking spaces only to find that there were none available, and the plowed snow was blocking my way. I had to do a twenty-point turn to get back out the way I came.

Another car had followed me. She couldn’t see that the road was blocked and that there was nothing to do but turn around. She was livid at how long I was taking to get out. The whole time I was trying to correct course she was flipping me off and even rolled down her window to hurl curses at me.

I rolled my window down, too, and tried to explain that there were no parking spaces and that the snow was blocking the way but to no avail. She kept yelling about how I was wasting her time and needed to learn how to drive.

But she didn’t know what I knew. She didn’t know there was a roadblock ahead.

As I pulled forward, I saw her doing the same twenty-point turn in my rearview mirror.

I wonder how often I do that. I wonder how often I criticize others simply because I can’t see what they see. I wonder how often I’m blind to what lies ahead. I wonder how often I’ve failed to pay attention to those that have gone before me and heeded their wisdom.

Let’s make sure we have all the information before we get impatient or angry.

It may be that we don’t have the whole story.

Grow On

Ingeborg Syllm-Rapoport was born to Protestant parents in 1912 and grew up in Hamburg, Germany.

Her upbringing was relatively typical of the time and place – except that she broke gender norms by attending college and then medical school at the University of Hamburg.

She focused her studies on diphtheria and was in pursuit of a Ph.D.

Then Nazi Germany happened.

Though her parents were both devout Christians, her maternal grandparents were Jewish and that, according to the Nazi regime, made Syllm-Rapoport of mixed race and not truly Aryan.

Professor Rudolf Degkwitz of the University of Hamburg conceded, in 1938, that Syllm-Rapoport’s doctoral thesis would have been accepted and approved had it not been for the Nazis’ race laws which prohibited anyone of Jewish decent to receive a doctoral degree.

Syllm-Rapoport fled to America where she married. She received an M.D. and practiced medicine until she and her husband returned in Germany in 1952.

Nearly seventy-five years after she first submitted her research, the dean of the University of Hamburg, Dr. Uwe Koch-Gromus, gave Syllm-Rapoport a chance to defend her thesis.

In 2015, at the age of 102, she did. 

Her mind was still sharp, and she had not wavered in passion for her subject. She passed with flying colors and became the world’s oldest recipient of a Ph.D.

There is so much I want to do. There is so much I want to accomplish. I have dreams – lots of them.

But – more importantly – I think I have God-given dreams. I believe He has a purpose for me.

I believe He has a purpose for you, too.

I don’t know how long it will take to do all that God created you to do. But if you still have a beating heart you’re not quite done.

Keep going. Keep learning. Keep discovering more of what God created you to be and do.

Grow on.

Represent

The departure time was approaching and we still hadn't been assigned a gate, so I lingered around the departure board in my usual terminal at the Charlotte airport, waiting for my flight to St. Louis to update. My family didn’t know I was coming in for the weekend and I couldn't wait to see the look in their faces when I walked in the door.

Instead of assigning us a gate, they delayed our flight by fifteen minutes. Then another fifteen. Then thirty. Three hours later, we boarded.

And, for thirty more minutes, we just sat. No one came on the speaker to update us on the further delay. We didn't see a pilot or anything resembling a crew. Finally, a flight attendant emerged and informed us that they were fixing a minor maintenance issue and we would be off in no time. Another twenty minutes passed.

People were clearly getting agitated. If I'm being honest, I was too. I was supposed to be home hours ago. The man sitting next to me started to complain loudly about the poor communication (it really was pretty bad). The woman on the other side of me was really struggling with the concept of personal space. The kid behind me started to kick my seat out of boredom. Everything in me wanted to commiserate with the man on my right, elbow the woman on my left and whack the kid behind me. The only thing that kept me from being a complete jerk was my t-shirt.

It was from my church… where I work.

When I put on that shirt, I became a representative of my church. How I behaved, how I spoke, how I reacted would communicate something about my church and the kind of people that have aligned themselves with its mission. It’s like an athlete putting on his jersey.

It says, "This is who I play for. This is my team. This is who I represent."

As I sat on that hot, noisy plane, thinking about all of this, I realized that this is actually my every day.

When I wake up in the morning, the Bible says that I am to "put on Christ." I play for Him. I am on His team. I represent Him. How I behave, how I speak, how I react communicates something about the kind of person that follows Him. The question, of course, is whether or not I'm communicating what Jesus would have me communicate.

My motive for keeping calm in a frustrating airplane situation should not have been my t-shirt. It should have been Jesus.

I have aligned myself with His mission. And so now, I represent Him. In everything.

End of Construction

Ruth Bell was born in 1920 to medical missionary parents serving in China. She came to know Jesus as a young age and always thought she would remain single and, like her parents, serve as a missionary in Asia. God, though, had other plans. In 1940, while enrolled at Wheaton College, she met a man named Billy.

In 1943, the two were married and Ruth Bell became Ruth Bell Graham.

Neither could have predicted the adventure ahead. Neither could have known how God would use them to advance the cause of Christ. Through their ministry, hundreds of millions of people heard the message of Jesus.

Ruth passed away in 2007 and was buried at the Billy Graham Library in Charlotte, North Carolina. Next to her tombstone is a plaque that says, “While riding down the highway years ago, Ruth noticed a sign beside the road: ‘End of Construction – Thank you for your patience.’ With a smile, she said that these were the words she wanted on her gravestone.”

I’ve been under construction for three decades now. By the grace of God, there has been a lot of progress, but there is also still a lot of work left to be done. I’m more generous than I used to be, but I still hold tightly to what I perceive to be mine. I’m more forgiving than I used to be, but I can still hold a grudge. I’m more faithful to Jesus than I used to be, but I still wander. I’m more selfless than I used to be, but I still put myself first most of the time.

I’m not alone in that. None of us has arrived. None of us is all that God created us and saved us to be. None of us is without fault and failure. None of us is without sin.

We’re all still under construction. Let’s be patient with one another.