Good sense makes a man slow to anger, and it is to his glory to overlook an offense.

Proverbs 19:11, RSV

 

Among the things I like reading most about in history are those stories of men and women who sought to move ahead, rather than look backwards, those who did their best to bring people together, rather than separate. Such is the true story of Jackie Robinson and Branch Rickey. Not as well known now as he was a few years back, Branch Rickie was the owner of the famous Brooklyn Dodgers before they ruined themselves and moved to California. Just about everybody knows who Jackie Robinson was. He was the first man to break the color barrier in major league baseball.

 

Jackie tells the account of the first time he met Branch Rickey. Mr. Rickey had arranged for an interview in Brooklyn to discuss his idea for integrating baseball. His motives were two-fold. As owner of a professional baseball team in a business that rewarded success with handsome profit, Mr. Rickie saw firsthand that there were many excellent black athletes that could help his organization achieve those goals. More importantly, Mr. Rickey was a Christian, and he was determined to do his part to right some very serious wrongs of the past.

 

For Jackie's part, he was an outstanding athlete. He was the first man to letter in four different sports at UCLA. But Jackie was by no means the best black baseball player at the time. So why did Branch Rickey choose him to help break baseball's color barrier? It was because of something that Mr. Rickey believed he saw in Jackie's character. He had been carefully observing Jackie Robinson for some time and he was convinced that he could handle the pressure that would surely come from bringing a black man into an exclusively white man's game.

 

And it wasn't because Jackie was in any way weak or subservient in nature. Jackie Robinson had to go through a court marshal a few years prior because he refused to ride in the back of a bus while he was in the military - years before anybody had heard of Rosa Parks. The reason was because not only was Jackie Robinson a tremendous athlete, but Branch was convinced that he could hold his temper, even when it was tested to the harshest extreme. 

 

According to Jackie, the two met in Branch's office for three hours discussing together a plan for how they would accomplish this difficult goal. At one point Jackie said, "There will be trouble ahead. For you, for me, for my people, and for baseball."

Jackie recorded Branch Rickie's reply:

"God is with us in this, Jackie. You know your Bible. It's good, simple Christianity for us to face realities and to recognize what we're up against. We can't go out and preach and crusade and bust our heads against a wall. We've got to fight out our problems together with tact and common sense."

 

Well, Jackie was sold on Mr. Rickie's faith and optimism, and he agreed to his proposition. It was hard, but together they began something that eventually would go a long way to not only integrating baseball, but also in uniting the entire country. Part of the reason, I suppose, was it was just the right time. A larger part of the reason is this: When you begin to look past non-consequential things like color and start looking at the character of the man, and when you start cheering for that man, not as an individual of a particular color but as a vital part of your team, you then begin to see things differently. And when you begin to have an affection for a man or woman, regardless of what they look like or where they come from, you then begin to live and act as you were designed by your Creator to live and act.

 

There are enough problems in this world to worry about small-minded people who wish to divide over race. It is when we see people of true character - men like Jackie Robinson and Branch Rickie who could ignore the bigotry of the ignorant to move ahead with what they believed they were responsible in God's eyes to do, that we can begin to live as Christ intended us to. So I like looking at stories like these, for they show what can be accomplished when we have the good sense to be slow to anger and to have enough Christian character to overlook an offense. 

If the watchman sees the sword coming and does not blow the trumpet to warn the people and the sword comes and takes the life of one of them, that man will be taken away because of his sin, but I will hold the watchman accountable for his blood. Son of man, I have made you a watchman...

Ezekiel 33:6-7, NIV 

The British are coming, the British are coming!

Paul Revere

 

Which would you rather tell a child - that we are having ice cream for dessert, or that he has to get a shot today? Which would the child rather hear? For that matter, which statement would we rather hear? The fact is that we would all rather be the giver, as well as the recipient, of good news any day of the week. It's just a lot more fun.

 

I imagine that the people of the prophet Ezekiel's time were just about sick of hearing his warnings from God concerning their need to turn from their evil ways. God knew that this would be the case, but He still did not resolve Ezekiel from giving the warning all the same. God had made Ezekiel a watchman, and he simply had the responsibility to report on what he had seen and heard.

 

I imagine that the people of Paul Revere's day were also getting sick of hearing from all these "patriots" what was wrong with their country and their king. Since only about 10% of Americans actually fought on the side of the revolutionaries at the beginning, it is safe to assume that their message of warnings were wearing a bit thin. It would have been a lot more fun for Paul Revere to ride through the countryside and villages shouting, "Who wants ice cream", but the fun would have soon turned to misery since the British really were coming and they really were in danger. Also, ice cream had yet to be invented.

 

It's the same today. Whether the message is that we need to turn from sin or that there are enemies in high places, no one really wants to hear it. A college kid wasting his years with one drunken party after another does not want to hear that what he is doing is wrong. He really doesn't want to hear that he may become an addict from this behavior either. What he is interested in is more alcohol and more drugs.

 

Unfortunately, no one wants to hear that they may be separated from Christ either. No one wants to hear that they are in danger of being lost. They are convinced that they are destined for Heaven and that anyone who questions their particular path towards that destination is just judging them. Didn't Jesus tell us not to judge? Almost as unfortunate is the fact that no one wants to hear that the people they have supported are wicked. Few people want to hear that the national debt is so bad that it may end up enslaving their children, and fewer still want to hear that their support for deviant behavior will enslave their kids and grandkids just as quickly. 

 

But the fact is that our nation has serious problems that must be warned against. This is what patriots do. An even more important fact is that sin will separate us from God and make miserable the lives of those who sin and those who are around them. Christians have a duty to warn against such behavior. It's true that these warnings must be given out of love and with as little hypocrisy as humanly possible (we all struggle with hypocrisy, don't we?), but the warnings still must be given. Why? Because we have just as much responsibility to be a watchman in our day as Ezekiel had in his. And while being a watchman is just not much fun at the time, there is a whole lot of joy associated with a sinful man turning away from his sinful behavior. 

 

I want to emphasize the point that yelling "ice cream" is a lot more fun than yelling "repent", just as yelling "the deviant are your friends and are here to help you" is a lot more fun than yelling "the British are coming!" But in the end, like it or not, we are all watchman of one sort or another. And if we fail in that, some people really may die. On the other hand, if we take our duty to heart and issue the "no fun" warnings that have to be given from time to time, the results for those who heed those warnings will be nothing short of unbelievable joy and salvation. It's something we all need to think about, wouldn't you agree? 

We had just moved to Happy, Texas and I got a call on the church's number from a stranger out of the blue. He introduced himself as Kenneth Wood and said that he lived across the alley from the church building and that my lawnmower didn't sound like it was running right. It was kind of astute that he had noticed, for in fact it wasn't running right at all. As it turns out, the geniuses who removed lead from gasoline and then replaced it with ethanol failed to take into account how that would wreak havoc with small engines such as those found on a lawnmower. So, when my mower stopped running right, I just took off the air filter and jammed a screwdriver down into the carburetor to hold it open and let more gas flow through.

 

As it turned out, this hurt Kenneth's feelings. Kenneth happened to be blind and I was more than a bit curious as to how he seemed to know so much about lawnmowers. As it turned out, Kenneth was the lawnmower repairman for the Town of Happy for more than 30 years, and knew just about everything there was to know about them, including the fact that only a moron (or a preacher) would ever jam a screwdriver down into a carburetor to hold it open so it could get more fuel.

 

Thus began a friendship that was to last for the next five years, until Kenneth passed away at over 80 years of age. We would have coffee twice a week. Kenneth would make the coffee and even poured my cup the first time. Do you know how a blind man pours coffee? He puts his finger on the inside of the cup, near the top, and pours until his finger gets hot. Since Kenneth was still repairing lawnmowers and smoked 3 cent cigars (okay, I really don't know how much they cost, but if he paid more than that, he got gypped) it only took me the one time to offer to pour the coffee myself after that.

 

Kenneth was always teaching me something. One day, he asked me if my wife ever let me do the dishes at home. Slow though I might be, I inferred that he was suggesting that it wouldn't hurt anything if I washed the coffee pot when we were done, so I did. I remember one day when we were waiting for the coffee to finish perking, when Kenneth said that it was ready. I thought that I had heard it stop perking and said something to that effect when he said, "No, the little light came on". 

 

Kenneth kept a sheep to keep his grass down in the yard. I always thought it funny to see a yard ringed with broken down lawnmowers, only to have a sheep grazing in the yard. It was if to say, I give up! One day I noticed Kenneth with a bandage on his forehead. I asked him what had happened, and he said that old sheep of his had headbutted him the other day while he was bent over putting food in his dish. He added that this would not happen again. When I asked him why, Kenneth said that the next day he grabbed "Sheepy" by the collar and hit him over the head with a ball peen hammer. So far as I know, that sheep never did headbutt Kenneth ever again.

 

The last year of his life, Kenneth got a little worse off. He had broken his leg a few years earlier, and was now starting to have problems with his feet. Until then, he had been riding his exercise bike every day. He had an odometer on it and whenever I came by we would see how many miles he had gone. His plan was to ride the equivalent of peddling to Canada and back, but when his body broke down he had to stop. I think he was in Kansas or Nebraska at the time.

 

He was one of the most amazing men I have ever known. He was completely blind, wore hearing aids, and was in a wheelchair most of the time. But Kenneth just never seemed to get down. Part of it was because he had kept his freedom, still living alone with various friends doing different chores for him to allow him to do so. One did his shopping. One gave him his baths on Saturday night. He even had a friend (Charles) who would come over and read him his mail. Someone had asked him once what if the letter was personal, from an old girlfriend or something like that. He said it was okay because Charles was deaf without his hearing aids, so he would just turn them off whenever the letter to be read was of a personal nature.

 

I often think about Kenneth, even though he has been gone for over twenty years now. I think about how he rarely complained, though he had plenty of reasons to, while so many of us who have little to complain about, do so with regularity. It's something that took me a long time to understand, but I see it very clearly now. And it took a blind man to help me see it.    

He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall be there mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away. And He Who was seated on the throne said, "Behold, I am making all things new. " Also He said, "Write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true."

Revelation 21:4-5, ESV

 

Have you ever had a dream that was so real and so vivid and so terrible, that when you woke up you were beside yourself with relief and happiness because it was just a dream? I think most of us have. Conversely, we have all had times that were so terrible that we thought, "surely this is a bad dream, and I will wake up soon", only to have the realization that it was no dream, but reality.

 

I have had a number of such occasions, and some of the realities have not been pleasant to deal with. I think back to a time when I was 17. I had a brand new license and I was ready to drive. I wanted to run down to the local K-Mart and get a record, so I asked my Dad if I could take the car. We had two at the time. One was a '68 Plymouth Fury III that I had experienced my own personal nightmare with some 9 years earlier when I was only eight.

 

The other was a brand new 1977 Chrysler Cordova. It had a maroon exterior and fine Corinthian leather seats. My older brother thought it unwise, but my Dad thought I would be okay in the new car. We both came to wish that we had listened to my brother.

 

When I got back from K-Mart, the brand new car had a brand newer dent and a messed up bumper. I had been oh so careful in my driving, but when I got to the parking lot I had someone right on my tail and I panicked. I tried to squeeze into the parking spot but hit an old pickup with an even older, welded on bumper that was in the adjacent parking spot. I hit it so hard that it rolled into the vehicle parked in front of it. I won't go into further detail, but perhaps you can imagine the rest. 

 

Then I had to drive home.

 

It was one of those occasions where you find yourself in a situation that you just know has to be a nightmare from which you will soon awaken, but this was not one of those times. When I got home, my brother was kind of horrified, and maybe even a little bit delighted. His wise advice should have been listened to. If memory serves me correctly, he was waiting outside to see if I had done anything to the car, and when he saw, he ran in to tell our Dad. I just waited, wishing I were dead and more than a little afraid that my wish might soon some true.

 

But when Dad came out, I was pleasantly surprised - shocked might be a better phrase, for he looked at the car and said something like accidents happen. He then even took part responsibility for sending me out at night (did I mention it was night) and unprepared. It probably took a while to register that I was not going to die. Now, don't get me wrong, there were still reparations that had to be made, but this was one of those times that called for a fine rather than the guillotine and I was forever grateful. It was one of those times in your life that you realize how much you love your parents, and how much they love you.

 

Now, think about some of your nightmare situations. Some of them have involved events that were far more serious than a fender bender. Some have involved serious health scares, and some may have even involved the death of a loved one. There have been other moments when the time to pay for our sins came due, and the cost was seemingly unbearable. Whatever the particulars of your situation, you know that you wished you could just shut your eyes and wake up later to find out that it was only a dream, that everything was okay.

 

We know that this does not happen much in real life, but it will happen to all of us, someday. For there will be a day when we are called before God on Judgment to receive what is due us. Some of us have pretty big bills that we are certain must be repaid. But imagine going before your Father, who loves you, and hearing the words that He has made everything new. Imagine Christ wiping away every tear from our eyes. Imagine all of those times that we went through that we wished could be changed, and then understand that He has indeed changed them. In fact, He has made everything new again!

 

This is what is in store for those who are in Christ. This is what awaits, though none of us deserve it, for those who have had their sins washed away and then have been faithful to God. It's too unreal to even imagine for us now, but it will happen someday for the faithful. It will be like the time when I went before my earthly father expecting the worst. only to find that his mercy was only exceeded by his love for his son. It will be the same on that day, only far better than we can imagine. And though I cannot even begin to comprehend this great gift of renewal, I am looking forward to it. How about you?