faithfulness

Crossing the Torrent

~ Paul Phillips ~ 1 Comment

I’ve written with increasing frequency about unhappy subjects of late. Like a flood of epic proportion, they have overtaken me — and, it seems, most of us. Death, sickness, natural disasters, and so much more.

I want to quit dwelling on the negative things before me.

I have, just tonight, realized anew that I have been standing — figuratively — at the water’s edge, watching the level rise. Mesmerized by the current and its power, I have awaited its inevitable surge above flood level.

And, watching the flow, I suddenly hear music.

No, really. Music.

Away, I’m bound away,
 Across the wide Missouri.

I suppose it’s no coincidence the words to the old folk tune Shenandoah are coming from the speakers on my desk right now. No, I didn’t select the song; it just came up in the playlist the streaming music service delivers while I sit at my computer.

When I say no coincidence, I mean I probably needed a nudge in the right direction.

I can take a hint; I’ll head that way momentarily.

Many times, I’ve compared our existence here to a journey — a life-long expedition to see what is around the next bend and over the next hill.

We are strangers in a strange land, headed for a different home.

They do not belong to this world any more than I do. (John 17:16, NLT)

Having said that, I also realize I have stopped here beside the rushing waters and taken shelter a little ways above the river’s edge in a place of safety.

I’ve stopped here for too long.

Much too long.

Too long, staring at the intimidating water. Too long, wondering when the awful flood will recede. Too long, waiting for rescue.

The road goes on up the mountain on the other side of this cataract of white water. I can see it from here if I have the strength of will to tear my eyes away from the terrifying flood and lift them to the hills.

The painting you see above hangs in my home. It is one of my favorites.  Although not necessarily from the brush of the most skillful of artists, the picture tells the story amazingly well.

The violent torrent roars and tumbles down the mountain rift with horrible menace. Nothing in its path could withstand for long the overwhelming power it wields. And yet, mere feet above the white water, on a rickety and cobbled-together wooden bridge, seemingly unconcerned and unfazed, a man stands resting.

The Lovely Lady and I jokingly refer to the piece of art as our Simon & Garfunkel painting, a none-too-clever reference to the duo’s song, Bridge Over Troubled Water.

A century old, the painting depicts nineteenth-century life in the Canadian Yukon Territory. The best word I can think of to describe living in that rugged wilderness? Hard.

Hard, and yet (dare I say it?) triumphant.

Here, amid the most unfriendly environment man could imagine, a bridge spans the cataract of water. In safety, where there was no safety, anyone can traverse the dangerous valley.

Someone had to build that bridge. Over the troubled water.

Over it.

While the river rushed and roared below them.

And still, I stand beside the flood and consider. It’s likely, you know, that if a bridge can be built over this river, there will be another one needing to be built up ahead, and another one, and another.

Rivers don’t run in a straight line, either. I might even have to build another bridge over this very same cascade, further on where it runs even wilder and more furiously.

Funny. As I stand here thinking, I seem to hear the voice of the red-headed lady who raised me.

“We’ll cross that river when we get to it.”

She is right. She always was.

But right now, I’m at this river.

Today, the rushing water directly ahead needs a bridge over it.

I have no choice but to follow the road ahead. And, it leads up the hill across this particular river. This wild, untameable flood.

It’s time to get building. It’s a good thing I know a Carpenter who is only too happy to teach the craft to any who ask.

After all, He built the greatest bridge of all time. Out of wood and nails.

Away, I’m bound away…

 

I lift up my eyes to the hills. From where does my help come? My help comes from the LORD, who made heaven and earth.
(Psalm 121: 1,2 ~ ESV)

A bridge can still be built, while the bitter waters are flowing beneath. (Anthony Liccione)

 

© Paul Phillips. He’s Taken Leave. 2020. All Rights Reserved.

Alexander, the Not So Great

~ Paul Phillips ~ Leave a comment

If my name had been Alexander, it would have made sense.  The morning at my junior high school hadn’t started out well, what with being sent to Mr. Chapa’s office for running in the hall.  Okay, so it actually started before that, when I missed the bus and my mom got me to school late.  After picking up my books from my locker, I was running to math class, but one of the teachers stopped me and sent me to the Assistant Principal.  “Paul, this is the third time this semester I’ve seen you in here,” he reminded me sternly.  “The next time, you’ll be getting swats.  For now, two afternoons of detention, but I don’t want to see you in here again!”  I assured him he wouldn’t, knowing that he would, and went to math class, only to have Debbie Gordon write on my shirt (in ink!) as she sat behind me.  What a day!  And my name wasn’t even Alexander!

But, like the protagonist of that popular children’s book “Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day”, it really was to be, well…just that.  After math, I stumbled through a few more classes which I hated.  Nothing bad really happened there, but never fear, that would change.  I headed for the one class I loved – Band.  Our band director, Mr. Olson, remains to this day, one of my favorite teachers.  He just had a knack for making you feel special, complimenting you when you got a difficult passage right, exulting with you when you had practiced for hours to be able to challenge the guy ahead of you in the seating arrangement and bested him.  My guess is that he commiserated with the loser in much the same way, to make him feel better, encouraging him to work harder the next time.  Band was the one place where this young nerd felt at ease and free to express himself.

On this day, that expression of myself was to be a big problem.  As Mr. Olson explained a fingering pattern to the flutes, Randy, who sat next to me in the horn section, and I started poking at each other.  All of the sudden, my horn…really the school’s horn, slipped off of my lap and to the floor with a crash.  The discussion with the flutes ceased instantaneously, all eyes focusing on me, and my face turned beet red.  An angry Mr. Olson (yeah, he could do angry too) snapped out a question which I didn’t understand.  I thought he said, “Did you get it?”, perhaps wondering if I had caught the horn before it was damaged.  I wasn’t sure, but answered timorously, “Yes.”  He grew even angrier, nearly shouting at me as he told me to put the horn away and get one of the beginner’s single horns to play.  I was mortified, but did as I was told, returning to my seat with the inferior instrument, to finish the period.  Afterward, the other guys told me that he had inquired if I dented the horn, which explained his reaction.  I hadn’t, but it made no difference by that time.

I stumbled through the rest of the day, but it wasn’t finished with me yet.  I had only gotten through the terrible, the horrible, and the no good parts so far.  The very bad was yet to come, although in retrospect, it was actually pretty funny.  That day, I couldn’t laugh about it at all.  I was preparing for All Region tryouts, so I had a private lesson scheduled with Mr. Olson after school.  While I waited my turn for a lesson, I went to warm up in the prop room on the stage, which was just behind the band room.  You went out through a door, up a short flight of steps to the stage, and the door to the room was on the right.  I closed the door, sat down, and began to play a scale.  It was a disaster.  The fingerings were all different and the bore of the horn was smaller, so it sounded bad, and I just couldn’t play anything right.  The time approached for me to meet with Mr. Olson, so I got up to leave the room, but found that the door was jammed!  It was completely stuck shut, and…it opened inward.  No amount of jerking the door knob would budge it.  I shouted; I pounded on the door, but there was no one in the gymnasium, and the other door into the band room was a solid slab of wood, so even shouting didn’t carry to anyone there.  Finally, as my panic subsided, I looked around for something, anything to help me; soon finding a long wooden pole lying on the floor.  Like many classroom doors in those days, there were slats in the lower half of the door, and one of them was broken out.  I stuck the pole out the slot, shoving it to the left and down the stairs, banging it again and again on the door to the band room.  Eventually, someone heard the racket and came up, shoving on the door from the outside as I pulled with all my might on the knob.

Free from that prison at last, I headed for my lesson; ten minutes late.  Once again, Mr Olson wasn’t happy.  By this point, he wasn’t even prepared to listen to my explanation, but as we started the lesson, he softened.  As I gamely struggled to play the notes that had come clearly and effortlessly on the good horn, he made a decision.  “If you hadn’t come to this lesson today, Paul, I was going to make you keep this horn all year.  I’m going to give you another chance.  Don’t make me regret it.”  Unlike the promise to the assistant principal earlier in the day, the promise I made to him was one I knew I could keep.  I’ve never asked him, but I don’t think he ever had a reason to be sorry.

Terrible, horrible, no good, very bad days happen.  Sometimes, when they come, I want to go home and wait for tomorrow from the safety of my bedroom.  I’m fairly certain that won’t work.  To get to tomorrow, hopefully a better day, you have to go through today.  The events which are put in our way are there for a purpose, sometimes to help us grow, perhaps to be an example to someone else who is watching.  How we deal with them speaks volumes about our character and our resolve to be who we say we are.

It is, however, a very good thing that those days don’t come every day.  And, when they do come, it helps to know that the bell is going to ring at the end of the school day.  Light at the end of the tunnel brings new hope…unless, of course, it turns out to be an oncoming train…

“To the victor belong the spoils.”
(William L. Marcy~New York Senator & Governor~1786-1857)

“‘I daren’t come and drink,’ said Jill. ‘Then you will die of thirst,’ said the Lion.  ‘Oh dear!’ said Jill, coming another step nearer. ‘I suppose I must go and look for another stream then.’‘There is no other stream,’ said the Lion.”
(C.S. Lewis~from The Silver Chair in The Chronicles of Narnia)

I’m peddling as fast as I can!

~ Paul Phillips ~ 1 Comment

It was one of those days.  As I rolled out this morning (well, yesterday as I write this), I actually thought that it would be a great day.  A Superman day.  You know,  a tights-and-capes, leap-tall-buildings-with-a-single-bound, no-challenge-too-big-to-conquer kind of day.  I’m trying to comprehend what went wrong, but can’t really put my finger on any one event.  I think the beginning of the trouble must have been the running out of milk thing.  Oh, and no instant breakfast, even if there had been a drop of milk in the house.  Ah well, no matter…Onward and upward!  There are damsels in distress to kill and horrible giants to save.  Wait!  That didn’t come out right.  You see what happens when you don’t have a good breakfast?

I won’t bore you with the details of the day, but the best I can do is to say that the damsels didn’t want to be saved and the giants were notable in their absence.  Have you ever noticed that on the really bad days, it’s not usually anything earth-shaking that causes the most disturbance?  Big problems, I can tackle head-on and I know when the task is finished.  It’s the insignificant issues, those little things that wouldn’t merit a second glance if they came in their proper turn to annoy you, that make your carefully ordered world come crashing down when they arrive in droves, as they tend to do so frequently.

My schedule didn’t gel as it should have, must-do jobs were interrupted by trivial phone calls (probably not so to the caller),  my carefully guarded morning marred by  disturbances (deliveries, repairmen, etc.), and not one objective that I needed desperately to reach was completed on time.  A thirty-minute job stretched out to an hour and a half, with other deadlines looming.  One repair which had been assessed by my expert eye as a “snap”, turned out to be just that, literally, with no less than three parts breaking in the process of disassembling the instrument.  Indefatigable salesmen, of late a rare breed, came out of the woodwork today, undoubtedly having been apprised of the situation by Lex Luthor. Having missed my customary morning repast of milk and instant breakfast, it was entirely fitting that the full line-up of the day kept me from my lunch until almost 4:30 in the afternoon.  Needless to say, my PB&J sandwich was eaten standing up

On this day, the avalanche of customers, vendors, and inanimate objects (which seemed to be imbued with life), proved to be too much for this superman.  Not quite so bad as kryptonite, but more like someone standing on your cape all day long.  By the middle of the afternoon, I was beaten and whining like a dog in a thunderstorm, but I persevered, running in place until the lights were turned out and the door locked against the perpetrators.

Come to think of it, I still sound like I’m whining.  Any of you reading this have had equally bad days, marred by worse problems, and probably at a heavier velocity than mine.  We all have them.  Some of us hold up better than others, but we get through them.  Better times lie ahead and we know it.  This evening, the Lovely Lady agreed to a quiet meal at a local eatery and I found, as we sat and talked, enjoying each other’s company and the good food, the epic struggle of the day faded into non-importance.  We’ve seen worse days and come through in fine shape. 

I have to remember not to start believing my own hype.  I’m not Superman and can’t leap buildings in a single bound, but neither is there any kryptonite that can cripple me.  When I believe either the hype or the scare-tactics, I set myself up for an unnecessary fall.  What is true and not hype at all, is that God allows us to develop skills and He gifts us in various and unique ways.  All we have to do is to be faithful in using that which is given to us.  Bad days and good days are guaranteed, but in the long haul, what counts is our commitment to the goal.  Hang in there!

Now it is required that those who have been given a trust must prove faithful.
(1 Corinthians 4:2 NIV)