Will Rogers, the humorist, wrote: It’s great to be great but it’s greater to be human. We all live in the same physical world, but there are many conflicting personal worlds created, and some of them are not human. I have known many persons who live in a shadowy world that I do not live in. They find little sunshine, either in the responses to the circumstances or persons in their lives. They have skills that inflate negatives, and deflate affirmatives. They seem not to own an encouraging word. They seem joyless, and probably are. Some husbands and wives seldom find any factor in each other that they will praise that makes the listener lift shoulders a bit, and feel self-worth. But they can find fault, especially can they imply it. They latch on to tiny failures, and make them big. They may not think of landing on small successes for enlargement. They seem to have no clue about the gift of inspiriting people, not even those they love.
When Jonathan Winters, the well-known comedian, was asked about what formed him inside he spoke immediately of his parents. Neither mother nor father seemed to him to be mother and father. When other parents were hugging their sons on the platform of the train station as they went off to war in the early 1940s, his mother simply told him to hurry and get on the train, he might miss it. There was no hug, no tug against his leaving. When he fought as a marine, he felt the greatest benefit was getting away from his alcoholic, later divorced, parents. When he returned home and looked for his collection of little soldiers, a collection he had purchased out of his own money, he found that the toys had been given away. The explanation: Well, we didn’t know if you were going to survive and come home. His father complained that Jonathan did not have enough education to be more than a corporal in the marines. All this, and more, gave the impression to a sensitive young man that he wasn’t really worth much. Some good emerged. Winters made sure he was always there for his son and daughter.
Jesus took time to be human. He was sensitive to the male put-down of women. He talked to women, gave them courage, made them equal to the privileges of immortal life. He spoke to children, made the men in the room cool their heels for a time while he touched little ones and blessed them. Mothers left with their children feeling courage they had not felt before – courage not only for their children but for themselves as mothers bearing their duties as worthwhile persons, blessed of God. The Apostle Paul followed in similar pattern encouraging those who would come under his tent and listen to him, that they were the children of God, and as children of God, they needed some acknowledgment and words that would motivate them to keep on keeping on. During the decades of my life I have observed many persons who have given extended hours to the study of Scripture, but they have never fathomed the meaning. They find the dark side, the sorrow, the judgment, the warnings, the evil, but they miss the larger light, hope, love, joy, and humanity with the divine that gives a lift by refusing the gloom and pride of flawed human nature, a nature that carries over to conducts of communities and nations. The contradictory world loses both the faith and the glory of God, recovered in redemption. Christ spoke of hell and heaven. Listeners could avoid the first by choosing the second, so to participate in either the problem or the solution. In faith one can deal with the voids of life, the barriers, ignorance, and violations. In faith all matters meaningful to the human being are addressed. Faith is not a matter of the weak meeting the strong but providing answers – for now. Humanity is visited by deity in Jesus Christ. It is up to the individual to call on that grace. *Mark W. Lee, Sr. — 2016, 2020