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:
He Met Me in the Quiet Village
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.
In the interest of honesty, I found that prose as the dedication in a little book 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. The book, compiled in 1931, is a collection of Bosworth’s prayers. My dad honored me by giving me the good Dean’s name.
Dad only spoke to me once about Dean Bosworth. As a child, I never knew why I had that name, I wondered and, at time, resented it because in my young mind it was hard to spell and Stanley was hard enough! The answer came in 1974 when he gave this little book, and told me that Dean Bosworth was the greatest man of God that he ever knew. That is when my pique turned to pride.
“He taught me how to be a friend.” How do you teach that? What are the nuances of that process that results in learning that Grace?
A few years ago, I wrote an essay entitled “Not by Accident” where I explored that process, that means of communicating and teaching those graces that make a person of God. In that essay I asked, how do we teach love, or faith, or trust, or generosity, or compassion? I then made the following observation:
“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 your models growing 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 on both the good and the bad, the language and the habits, our little idiosyncrasies, speech mannerisms, and on down a very 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, and maybe we should take that more seriously.
Oswald Chambers reminds us — “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 of Comfort:
God of love and mercy, embrace all those whose hearts today overflow with grief, unanswered questions and such a sense of loss. Grant them space to express their tears. Hold them close through the coming days. Help them, Lord, to feel the intimate closeness of Your Presence. These prayers we offer in the Name of Christ our Lord and Savior. Amen.
