BEYOND WINTER: The
Irrelevant Daily Devotions of An Old Man—T
Yes, I’ve told you about Joe and Leroy before, but it’s too good a story to tell only once.
Joe and Leroy were long-distance truck drivers, with one of those sleeper cabs, so one driver could sleep while the other drove. They were called in for a periodic driving exam. Joe was the senior driver and went in first.
The examiner said, “Joe, you are going down a steep mountain side when your brakes go out. At the bottom of the mountain is a one-way bridge. Coming at it from the other direction, down another slope, is a big rig like yours. What do you do?”
“Well, first I’d wake up Leroy.”
“Why in the world would you take the time to wake up Leroy?”
“Well, he’s not been driving very long, and he’s never seen a really big wreck.”
I recently subscribed to a daily devotional series. No, not to get ideas for my own columns. I really want to hear the Word in the words of others. I know that will be good for my soul. But those well-meaning devotionals turn out to be a drag on my soul.
No, there is nothing really wrong with them. They are well written, by able thinkers, but they do nothing for me, because they are didactic and hortatory. Not a story anywhere.
There is a line, I think from a poem by William Stafford, where a little girl asks, “When you’re old, how do you know what to do?”
It’s a perceptive question for a child. They always know what to do, because older people are always telling them what to do. Be nice to your brother. Don’t talk back. Do your homework. Pick up your toys… but being told what to do does not mean that it always gets done.
You know what to do when you’re old just because you’re old. I don’t have to be told what to do. I already know what to do; I’ve known the right stuff to do for a long time. Just telling me to do it, regardless of how enthusiastically you tell me, isn’t going to make any difference. That is more likely to depress me.
In the church, for a long time now, we’ve been telling folks what they should do, and yelling at them to try to get their attention, get them to do it. It’s not working very well. We have the best story in the world, a life-giving and life-changing story, and we need to start telling it, rather than talking about it.
What I need are stories that illuminate the possibilities in such a way that I can see the way forward for myself. Don’t just tell me what the way is. Don’t just rail at me to try to get me moving. Show me the way!
Oh, wait, I just became didactic and hortatory, didn’t I?
Well, as Rosanne Rossannadanna used to say, “Never mind.”
But you’re thinking about waking up Leroy, aren’t you?
John Robert McFarland
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