A kid with a clipboard and pencil came up to me on the street yesterday, and politely asked me, "Do you believe in a higher power?"
I answered yes and he thanked me and moved on, but what I really wish I'd said was, "Well, it depends on what you mean by higher."
But I don't suppose he had a category for that answer on his clipboard. I saw columns of checkmarks there, one I suppose for answers in the affirmative, another for answers in the negative, and perhaps another for the how-should-I-know types. But no column, I'm sure, for wiseguys who can't give a straight answer.
"Because," (and this is what I wish I'd said), "I believe in a lower power."
I imagine my young interlocutor tilting his head like an eager-to-understand beagle and saying, "You mean, like, the devil or something?"
"No, young man, I most decidedly do not mean the devil," say I, really grooving on the wise elder role (this is how I imagine it), "I mean that I believe in a higher power that made himself lower. Lowest, in fact, of all. The scum of the earth, you might say. And all by his own free choice, if you can imagine that."
I didn't say any of that. I just thought it afterward. And in my mind I see the young man say, "Why would he . . . ummm, or she . . . or whatever . . . do such a thing?"
That's when I put my arm around him and say, "Let me tell you a story . . . "
3 comments:
Hi Bob,Is this what you are talking about? God bless, toddp
Philippians 2
5Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus:
6Who, being in very nature[a] God,
did not consider equality with God something to be grasped,
7but made himself nothing,
taking the very nature[b] of a servant,
being made in human likeness.
8And being found in appearance as a man,
he humbled himself
and became obedient to death—
even death on a cross!
9Therefore God exalted him to the highest place
and gave him the name that is above every name,
10that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow,
in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
11and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord,
to the glory of God the Father.
Yup, and also this:
he had no form or majesty that we should look at him,
and no beauty that we should desire him.
He was despised and rejected by men;
a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief;
and as one from whom men hide their faces
he was despised, and we esteemed him not.
a very interesting question
for a boy to be asking
now if a man...say a man like
you for instance, were to
go on the street with your clipboard
and ask this same question, do you think
that people would react in the same
manner as they would with a boy?
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