Due to my congenital eye problems, I grew up reading in my room instead of playing outside with the other kids. That may sound odd—reading when one has an eye problem—but, you see, reading was safe. As long as I had my coke bottle glasses I could sink back into my imagination and see the world. Whenever I tried to play with the other children, I always tripped over something I did not see, fell and skinned my knees, or got hit in the face with whatever ball we were playing with at the time because I could not see it coming, sometimes breaking those expensive glasses.
Then I married a man, and had two boys. Here I was with a house full of men and had absolutely no experience either playing sports or watching them. Well—I tried to watch football once when I was about 10. It looked to me like two bunches of men who every minute or so ran into each other and fell down. I did enough of that myself, and could not see the attraction at all.
But I wanted a close relationship with my family, so I started sitting with them on Saturday afternoons, watching what they watched—football and basketball. Although I still do not have any idea what a “pick and roll” is, or why in the world they call a guy a tackle and then forbid him to do exactly that, I can now identify a naked bootleg and tell when a charge is not a charge, but a blocking foul. The boys got a big kick out of teaching these things to Mom.
I went to that trouble because I cared about my family relationships. Do I care for my neighbors as well? Or have I bought into the egocentric American notion that the world should operate on my schedule and according to my desires, and no one else has any legitimate problems, or any other rationale for what they do other than to aggravate me and get in my way?
Will I ask the man next door about his golf game, while studiously avoiding the old joke about golf being “a good walk ruined?” When I meet the lady across the street at the mailbox, will I ask to see her latest crocheted creation, even though I don’t know the name of a single stitch, and can barely sew a straight line on a machine? If I want to develop the kind of relationships that will become closer and deeper, and perhaps eventually lead them to the Lord, I hope I will. These things may seem insignificant, but they pave the way for things that are anything but.
What lives will you and I try to touch today?
For though I was free from all men, I brought myself under bondage to all, that I might gain the more. And to the Jews I became as a Jew that I might gain Jews; to them that were under the law, as under the law, not being myself under the law, that I might gain them that are under the law; to them that are without law as without law, not being without law to God but under law to Christ. To the weak I became weak, that I might gain the weak. I have become all things to all men that I may by all means save some. And I do all things for the gospel’s sake, that I might be a joint partaker thereof. 1 Cor 9:19-23
Dene Ward
Then I married a man, and had two boys. Here I was with a house full of men and had absolutely no experience either playing sports or watching them. Well—I tried to watch football once when I was about 10. It looked to me like two bunches of men who every minute or so ran into each other and fell down. I did enough of that myself, and could not see the attraction at all.
But I wanted a close relationship with my family, so I started sitting with them on Saturday afternoons, watching what they watched—football and basketball. Although I still do not have any idea what a “pick and roll” is, or why in the world they call a guy a tackle and then forbid him to do exactly that, I can now identify a naked bootleg and tell when a charge is not a charge, but a blocking foul. The boys got a big kick out of teaching these things to Mom.
I went to that trouble because I cared about my family relationships. Do I care for my neighbors as well? Or have I bought into the egocentric American notion that the world should operate on my schedule and according to my desires, and no one else has any legitimate problems, or any other rationale for what they do other than to aggravate me and get in my way?
Will I ask the man next door about his golf game, while studiously avoiding the old joke about golf being “a good walk ruined?” When I meet the lady across the street at the mailbox, will I ask to see her latest crocheted creation, even though I don’t know the name of a single stitch, and can barely sew a straight line on a machine? If I want to develop the kind of relationships that will become closer and deeper, and perhaps eventually lead them to the Lord, I hope I will. These things may seem insignificant, but they pave the way for things that are anything but.
What lives will you and I try to touch today?
For though I was free from all men, I brought myself under bondage to all, that I might gain the more. And to the Jews I became as a Jew that I might gain Jews; to them that were under the law, as under the law, not being myself under the law, that I might gain them that are under the law; to them that are without law as without law, not being without law to God but under law to Christ. To the weak I became weak, that I might gain the weak. I have become all things to all men that I may by all means save some. And I do all things for the gospel’s sake, that I might be a joint partaker thereof. 1 Cor 9:19-23
Dene Ward
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