WATCHWORD:
Dear friends, let us continue to love one another, for love comes from God. Anyone who loves is a child of God and knows God. John 4:7
Most important of all, continue to show deep love for each other, for love covers a multitude of sins. 1 Peter 4:8
There is no greater love than to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. John 15:13
For this is how God loved the world: He gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life. John 3:16
Meditation:
Being a Friend
He met me in the quiet village street —
And stopped and stood and talked a while —
Did lend himself entire to me. Moments fleet
Raced by! He taught me how to be a Friend.
He led me in my groping to a King,
And in his meek simplicity I caught
A soul-illumined likeness of the thing
That men call love in his own person wrought.
He lifted me to the eternal crystal height
Where he abode from early morn ‘til late,
The while he walked the earth with kindly might
In quiet gentleness that makes men great.
My Friend, my Teacher, Prophet, God-filled Man —
A Masterpiece in life’s unfolding plan.
— Gertrude Roberts Rays, 1926
Isn’t that a beautiful and blessed piece of poetry. As you read that, prayer-like, you can almost get caught up in the presence of God. For me the phrase “He taught me how to be a Friend”, brought tears of wonder. And “…he walked the earth with kindly might in quiet gentleness that makes men great” should cause the poet in each of us to pause and ponder that truth.
I found that inscription in the dedication of a little book, published in 1931, entitled What He Lived By, honoring Edward Increase Bosworth, Dean of The Oberlin Graduate School of Theology. Dean Bosworth was my dad’s favorite professor in Seminary in the early part of the 1920s, and the book is a collection of Bosworth’s prayers.
My dad rarely spoke to me about Dean Bosworth, but at my birth, my dad honored me by giving me the good Dean’s name. As a child, I never knew why I had that name, wondered about and resented it because, in my young mind, it was hard to spell, and my first name, Stanley, was hard enough! My resentment turned to pride in 1974 when he gave this little book, and explained to me why Dean Bosworth was the greatest man of God he ever knew.
“He taught me how to be a friend,” as the hallmark of dad’s relationship with Bosworth. How do you teach that? What are the nuances of that process resulting in learning the friendship of Grace?
A few years ago, I wrote an essay entitled “Not by Accident” where I explored that process of planting the seeds of character, the means of communicating and imparting those graces that make a person of God. In that essay I asked the questions; how do we teach love, or faith, or trust, or generosity, or compassion? I then made a few observations:
“We learn compassion because we have seen it in action. We have watched those that we love and respect, reach out to others and make a difference. We learn love, perhaps, because we have felt it, and because it was part and partial of our lives from our earliest remembrances. We learn trust because we have relied on it and it did not disappoint. We learn about faith because of the model that was right there in front of us as we grew up, and then it became our own.”
I think that is part of how we embrace those qualities, but it is not complete. The qualities that make for a Christian are God-given graces. We don’t earn them, we don’t copy them, we don’t need to define them, we just need to act them out: Go and make disciples, do likewise, love as I have loved you, to name just a few of Christ’s lessons.
Who were the models God put before you as you grew up? Were you aware of the affect they were having on you? How have you passed those on? Whether we are conscious of them are not, we do pass, the good and the bad, the language and the habits, our little idiosyncrasies, speech mannerisms, and on down a long list, all of which get passed on in one form or another to those who look up to us, who have counted on us.
I have had occasion to think about Dean Bosworth, and what his qualities were that impressed my dad and so many others. I read many of his prayers and I can imagine him standing in front of his class teaching, sometimes theology, sometimes humor, always Christ.
Sometimes we say, rather tritely, What Would Jesus Do? in a given situation. Maybe we should take that more seriously.
In a recent “My Utmost for His Highest”, Chambers makes this statement: “It is not your duty to go the second mile, or to turn the other cheek, but Jesus said that if we are His disciples, we will always do these things.” He went on to explain that we cannot imitate the very nature of Jesus, it is either in you or it is not. The point is, in those given situations, we might ask ourselves, what would Jesus do? But, if you have Jesus, then you already know the answer. Amen.
Prayer from Edward Increase Bosworth:
We thank Thee, our Lord, for all of the uncertainties of life, for the necessity of running a risk and taking a chance. We thank Thee for the mystery of life, so that our Souls find themselves intimidated to begin with. Give us the heart to search. Give us the determination to push forward. Give us the sense of security in the midst of uncertainty, as searching we find Thee in the common ways of life. It’s in Your name we pray. Amen.
