The owner of the music store sits and thinks as the quiet music plays.  He is not at ease, nor is he contented, as on most nights.  It is the first time he can ever remember dreading the next workday.  Oh, there have been days when he was not happy about the events he anticipated on the day to follow.  There have even been a few people who caused him to cringe as they approached the entrance to his domain.  But, this is different. For once, he is at a loss to know what to do.

Reality hit him today as he worked.  It began with an ordinary phone call.  Those happen with regularity throughout every workday and are not normally threatening in the slightest.  This one was no different…he thought.  However, the events following would eventually lead to his present mental state.  As he answered, the male voice on the other end of the phone line asked if the music store were purchasing musical gear.  Specifically, he inquired about a particular type of amplifier.  Realizing that the amp was an older and non-collectible piece of equipment, the shopkeeper suggested that the man might do better selling it somewhere else.  The caller was not to be brushed aside and insisted that this music store was where the person selling the amps wanted to do business.  In an aside, he spoke to that person, asking what price they wanted to get for the amplifier.  The price named was much too high, so the store’s owner countered with a figure, one which was commensurate with the age and stated condition of the equipment, but which he was sure would discourage any further conversation.  Alas, the voice at the other end proclaimed that they would be at the store soon.  He kept his word, arriving within half an hour with the young female owner of the gear in tow.

The young lady had tears in her eyes as she took the money.  She hadn’t just brought the amplifier to sell, but had also carried in a vintage guitar for his consideration.  Although it was filthy and the electronics were not functioning, it was worth much more than the amp.  As she heard the price he was offering for the guitar, she began to tear up.  Apologizing, she explained.  First, she thanked him for the generous offer, considerably higher than she had expected for the old, dirty thing.  But the reason for her tears was that this guitar had belonged to her father, now deceased.  “What else can I do?” she asked, her voice shaking.  She was a single mother, with three children to feed and clothe, and she had no job.  She was grateful, but she was also heartbroken.

The shopkeeper murmured a few words of encouragement, and she thanked him as she walked away, still dabbing at her eyes. He  watched the young lady leave, a little heartbroken himself.  There was no time to dwell on his feelings, though.  More customers needed to be waited on, and the phone would need to be answered again.  More needy folks would come also.  As the afternoon passed, he felt a strange need to work on the guitar he had purchased from the young lady earlier in the morning.  It was covered with dust and bore the signs of having been played hard for nearly all of its forty-five years of existence.  Dirt and oil were caked on the fretboard, and the switches and controls were dirty and emitted nothing but static when moved.  He spent several hours cleaning and adjusting, repairing broken wires and straightening bent parts.  As he worked, he thought. They weren’t happy meditations.

“This is not what I signed on for.  I love restoring old instruments, seeing them brought back from years of abuse and neglect, but I’m not a pawnbroker.  I don’t want to be the last resort for people, giving them money for their family treasures when they’re desperate.  I don’t want to do this anymore.”

As he sits now and thinks, the beautiful, vintage instrument rests above his head, hanging on the wall.  It is, once again, a thing of beauty, almost a work of art.  True, it bears the telltale marks of use and age, but it is not anywhere close to used up or obsolete.  From filth and dysfunction have emerged usefulness and vitality.  He stares, almost unseeing, at the instrument and considers the lesson, wishing he could not see the truth before him quite so clearly.

He never should have let his father pray that prayer, many years ago!  They had been speaking on the phone, his Dad having called from miles away in California.  As the conversation came to an end, the wise man on the California end asked if he could pray with his son.  If only the son had declined, he wouldn’t be in this mess right now!  But, he had agreed, and the pastor/father had prayed those fateful words, “…and bless my son in his ministry there in the music store.”  His instantaneous reaction had been, at least mentally, “What?  Ministry?  No!  This was a business, pure and simple!  Sell musical instruments, take the money to the bank, that’s all!”  But the words couldn’t be unsaid, nor the prayer unprayed.  Oh, if only that idea had never been planted in his mind…or taken root in his heart.

Now sitting there, years later, the shopkeeper laughs, a humorless sound to be sure.  No.  He had prayed right along with his father, agreeing that his vocation would be his place of ministry.  And so it has become.  He will see it through, because it is a worthwhile task.  The heartbreak doesn’t decrease the impact one iota.  It may not be what he envisioned, but God uses people in the way He designs, to do His will.

Many years ago the aging music store owner, then a young man, had considered the truth of the words which the Apostle wrote…”For it is God who is at work within you, both to will and to do His good pleasure.”  Back then, he had accepted the challenge to want what his God wanted and to put into action what that entailed.  He’s not going back on that now.

Tomorrow approaches.  Too fast.  The businessman wonders if it will bring more of the same.  He hopes it will not.  But then again, the beautiful guitar hangs there on the wall, a reminder that from disaster comes triumph.  It is only as we persevere through pain that we emerge in jubilation. His prayer is that it will be so for that young lady and her children, as well as the multitude of broken people who will walk through his front door in the coming days. He prays that it will be so in your life also. 

Our Father does indeed, bring beauty from the ashes.

“He heals the brokenhearted, and binds up their wounds.”
(Psalm 147:3~NIV)

“Now I know I’ve got a heart,because it is breaking.”
(The Tin Woodman~”The Wonderful Wizard of Oz” by L. Frank Baum~1856-1919)

© Paul Phillips. He’s Taken Leave. 2013. All Rights Reserved.

“Why don’t you sit and watch the game for awhile, Honey?”  The cute redhead was buzzing past in her quest for a bit of clean laundry, but I was engrossed in the Razorback’s basketball game.  The Hogs were winning, which will give you some clue of how many years ago this event occurred.  The Lovely Lady declined my invitation, partially because she had work to do, but I could tell that there was more to it.  Wondering if I had done something wrong, I asked her why she couldn’t take a minute to cheer for her team (she is a native Arkansan, you know).  Her reply evoked a burst of laughter on my part–not the best response from a caring husband, but I couldn’t help it.  She said, with a straight face, “If I watch them play, they’ll lose.  They always do.”  No amount of logical discussion about the physics of sitting on a couch in front of a television, and its lack of effect on a team playing in an arena miles away would shift her in her resolute refusal. I can’t remember, but I think the Hogs may have lost anyway.

Why is it that we expect to have unpleasant things happen when we want good things?  How do we become cynics about some things specifically, and about life in general?  I have to think that it is the human condition.  We talk about a glass half full, or a glass half empty, differentiating between optimism and pessimism, but it seems to me that, at one time or another in our lives, all of us are pessimists, anticipating and expecting that awful things are bound to happen to us.

I think back, and I remember another red-head sitting in the living room of the house I was raised in.  This lady seemed to have an unending supply of cliches’ on the tip of her tongue.  I find myself using them still today.

“Always a day late and a dollar short.”  
“Well, that’s par for the course!”  
“I just can’t win for losing.”
“I’m sick and tired of being sick and tired!”

I didn’t have a miserable childhood.  We didn’t have disaster after disaster in our lives; we simply had the normal everyday situations to be faced and put behind us.  Good things happened, too.  My father had a good job.  We had food and clothes.  We took vacations, went to the beach and went fishing with friends.  We loved and were loved.  As it does for all of us, life had its ups and its downs.  But, words like those quoted above tend to make you focus on the bad, to have an expectation that, every time things seem to be going well, you’d better be on your guard.  Bad things were sure to happen, because, as we all know, “nothing good lasts forever.”

How sad!  We focus on the potential for bad in the midst of the good that has been showered upon us.  We love distressing news.  We must.  It is what we crave from our news sources.  We sit enthralled for hours, as the story unfolds of a mentally ill man who murders his mother and then her school students and co-workers.  But, the story of  thousands of schools with no such incidents, where educators teach and care for and deal with special-needs students with considerable success?  That is no story at all.  We don’t want to know about success, just about failure.

Earlier tonight, I was rereading a few of the Winnie the Pooh stories.  What’s that?  To the grandchildren?  No…no, I was reading them because I enjoy them myself.  There’s nothing wrong with that, is there?

Anyway, as I was saying, rereading a Pooh story or two, I was suddenly struck with the truth about pessimism.  In the story I read, Eeyore is feeling sorry for himself.  He looks in the water at his reflection and declares it “pathetic”.  Moving to the other side of the river, he checks again.  “Pathetic. That’s what it is.”   It is his birthday, and no one has remembered him, but then, he expects that.  The expectation doesn’t keep him from being unhappy, though.  It is only at the end of the story as he realizes that his friend, Piglet, is unhappy about breaking the gift he was bringing to him, that Eeyore understands what must be done.  Turning his focus off himself, he seeks a way to cheer up his friend and in doing so, is cheered himself.  It is a universal truth.  We can’t lift ourselves out of self-pity and gloom by concentrating more on ourselves.  It is only as we consider others around us that we realize our circumstances aren’t bigger than we can handle.  As we see (and help fulfill) the needs of others, ours pale in comparison and soon become unimportant in the bigger picture that we now can see. 

It is to believe a falsehood to think that I can’t win for losing.  I am not always a day late and a dollar short.  Our God tells us about the plans He has for His people and promises that they are plans for good things and not for disaster; plans for a future and to give hope.  But, as long as our focus is on what we desire and not on what others need, we’ll be tied up in knots over our problems, both real and imagined. And that, my friends, is par for the course.

The little gray donkey serves as a warning and a lesson for our lives.  I’m all for looking up and around at those near me.  How about it? 

The view in the mirror probably isn’t all that great anyway… 

“Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life!  And, I shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever.”
(Psalm 23:6~KJV)

The day is cold, and dark, and dreary;
It rains, and the wind is never weary;
The vine still clings to the mouldering wall,
But at every gust the dead leaves fall,
And the day is dark and dreary. 

My life is cold, and dark and dreary;
It rains, and the wind is never weary;
My thoughts still cling to the mouldering past,
But the hopes of youth fall thick in the blast,
And the days are dark and dreary.

Be still, sad heart, and cease repining;
Behind the clouds is the sun, still shining;
Thy fate is the common fate of all,
Into each life some rain must fall,
Some days must be dark and dreary.

(“The Rainy Day”~Henry Wadsworth Longfellow~American poet~1807-1882)

© Paul Phillips. He’s Taken Leave. 2013. All Rights Reserved.

“Speak softly, and carry a big stick.”

You’ve heard the quote, used so often that it has almost become a platitude.  President Theodore Roosevelt, at the beginning of the twentieth century, coined the phrase, or at least brought it into common usage.  He meant by it, that you back up the words you say with visible strength.  On several occasions during his time in office, Teddy Roosevelt had the opportunity to test the veracity of the saying, each time, achieving success.

Without getting into a political argument, I’m wondering if we’ve gotten somewhat off course in our personal relationships by implementing the big stick theory in more areas of life than was ever intended.  It would seem that the big stick theory doesn’t hold true in every difficulty we are faced with.

“Grandpa, when are you going to put up the basketball goal?”  The young fellow with the twinkle in his eyes was itching to use the Christmas gift which he and his brother had received a few days before.  It was cold outside, but the young man’s enthusiasm for getting the project underway couldn’t be extinguished by a little chilly air.  “It looks like Saturday is going to be sunny,” replied his Grandpa, and the date was set.

The goal was mostly assembled indoors at Grandpa’s house, but the task of adding weight to the base, approximately three hundred and fifty pounds of sand, would have to be done outdoors.  Saturday was, indeed a sunny day, but the temperature never rose much above thirty.  The promise would still be kept.  Sand was purchased, seven fifty-pound bags of the gritty material, and the partially completed goal loaded into the bed of Grandpa’s old pickup truck for the trip over to the kid’s house.  Within moments of his arrival, all of the children, both boys and girls, were outside, several of them without their shoes, since they couldn’t be slowed down by the time-wasting task of putting on unnecessary pieces of clothing.  They were getting their basketball goal today!

Grandpa was almost as excited as they, but his fervor was short-lived.  The parts of the goal went together easily and quickly.  The sand was not so cooperative.  The instructions had said to pour the sand into the base.  They said nothing about whether to use wet or dry sand.  This was definitely wet sand.  It didn’t wish to be poured.  It wasn’t going to be poured.  A huge funnel was procured, but the aperture for pouring the material into the base was just over one inch in diameter, so the globby, sticky stuff had to be coaxed into place.  One helper suggested poking it down with a stick, so one was located rather quickly.  It was a slender, fragile looking thing and Grandpa soon tired of the anemic switch and went in search of something more substantial.  He returned with a longer and thicker stick, one almost the exact size of the aperture in the funnel.  It pushed down more material, but with each downward push, the stick itself stopped up the hole, preventing the sand from slipping into the base.  “No, Grandpa,” came the remark from one onlooker.  “That stick’s just too big.  We need to use the little one again.”  Watching the thin twig work its magic, enticing the reluctant and damp sand into the opening, he had to admit that the reasoning was sound.  This was one time that getting “a bigger hammer” wasn’t the cure for the problem.

Have you ever noticed what the shepherds in nomadic cultures carry in their hands when herding their sheep?  While the stick they use may be long, it would never be described as big.  The thin rod is used to guide gently and, if necessary, to flip the animals momentarily, causing a stinging pain which disappears quickly and inflicts no physical damage.  It does, however, leave a memory of the undesirable effect which straying has and encourages future acquiescence to commands. The goal of having individual lambs which do not stray into danger and certain injury is achieved, not by terrifying them or maiming them, but by gently urging them back into the way of safety.

I’ve mentioned before a friend of mine who many years ago used the big stick method to work with livestock.  It used to be common for farmers who worked with big animals, such as cattle, to keep a loose two-by-four somewhere near the place where they worked the stock.  One farmer explained to me that they sometimes needed to “get the cow’s attention.”  This particular friend used such an attention getter one day on an unruly beast, popping it once right on the forehead.  The thousand dollar beast fell down…dead.  A rod, perhaps, might have served the purpose better…

There is a point to my verbal meanderings tonight, and it’s not just about beasts and basketball goals.  I am thinking of my own approach to personal relationships; remembering the times when I have hit folks between the eyes with my verbal two-by-fours, just to get their attention.  Some of them don’t come around anymore.  I wonder why?

I have been told of churches that embarrass and demean people who are found in sin.  One infamous church sends its members around the country to stand at funerals with their big sticks, pointing fingers of blame and reproach at victims and soldiers.  This is surely not what the Teacher meant when He told of the master of the feast who sent his servants “into the highways and by-ways”; compelling people to come in and be fed.  But, I’m not speaking tonight of institutions and their misuse of the power they have.  I’m talking, mostly to myself, and maybe a little to you, about how we deal personally with other pilgrims wandering along the same road as we ourselves are.

When we smack people with the truth, it usually indicates a selfish motive on our part, showing our power and moral superiority, and belittling the person we have smacked.  But the words I read say that we are to speak the truth in love.  Power and moral superiority aren’t indicators of love.  They don’t draw anyone to the truth, but in fact, drive them from it.  Is it any surprise when people avoid us after they’ve been treated so?  Shouldn’t we, rather, be seeking ways to attract them, to teach them, to partner with them, as they try to achieve the goal set before them?

Big sticks may have a place in the world of politics and of diplomacy, but they’re fairly useless in dealing with sheep.  And that is what we are.  The psalmist had it right when he suggested that we are His people, just sheep in His pasture. 

A big stick causes injury.  I think that I’m finally ready to use the soft words, and see if we can accomplish better results with the rod which comforts.  It will be a welcome change to those around me, I’m sure.

Maybe you’re ready to give it a try, as well. 

“Brothers, if anyone is caught in any transgression, you who are spiritual should restore him in a spirit of gentleness.”
(Galatians 6:1~ESV)

“Your gentleness shall force, more than your force move us to gentleness.”
(from “As You Like It”~William Shakespeare~British playwright~1564-1616)

© Paul Phillips. He’s Taken Leave. 2013. All Rights Reserved.