LUTHER’S REVENGE [F, 5-8-26]

CHRIST IN WINTER: The Ramblings of a Finally Humble Old Man—LUTHER’S REVENGE [F, 5-8-26]

 

Whenever I trudge my daily mile, I always think of Luther White, the father of my great, late friend, Bill.

Bill and I were campus ministry colleagues. We often met to drink coffee and talk about our work. And our families. I never met Luther, but Bill used to brag about his father, specifically how he still walked a mile each day, even though he was 90. I would nod my head in affirmation, but secretly, I was thinking, “A mile? That’s nothing. Anyone should be able to walk a mile, at any age.” That was 60 years ago.

I wasn’t quite as ignorant as that sounds, nor as arrogant. But I had been a walker all my life, especially when we lived on the farm and had no car. I walked many miles, all the time, in all kinds of weather. Walking a mile just didn’t sound to me like an unusual achievement.

Now, in my 90^th year, one of my major ambitions is to walk a mile on my next birthday, and then look up at the sky [Yes, that’s where heaven is; didn’t you go to Sunday school?] and say to Luther White, “Okay. Now I understand.”

I call it Luther’s Revenge, this new humility that old age has brought upon me. [It would be a good book title, too, except that most folks would think it refers to the 16^th century church reformer instead of the 20^th century high school music teacher.]

Most of us assume that we won’t get any more decrepit than we are right now. Yes, we know we’ll grow older. Yes, we even know that our bodies are going to keep sliding down the slippery slope [sometimes literally!] In our brains we know better, but we assume that we’ll forever be able to do whatever we are doing today. More slowly, yes, but surely the day won’t come when we can’t even get up off the toilet by ourselves. And, yet, we all know someone for whom that day did come. So, why do we think we shall be spared?

When my father was close to the end of his life, at age 96, Helen and I took him to his favorite restaurant, for his favorite steak and gravy. He ate less than half of it. As we helped him out the restaurant door after we had finished, he could not get his legs to work to make the one small step down from the door to the sidewalk. One of us on each side, we had to lift him down. He sighed and said, “I didn’t know you could get this bad off and still be alive.”

As Luther White walked one morning, he was hit by a passing car and killed. Some folks would say that God directed that car, to save Luther the indignity of getting too old. I’m not one of those people.

But if you are driving in the Sherwood Green neighborhood someday, and you see a nattily dressed old man trudging along in shorts--even though it’s 20 degrees, but the belt was already in his shorts, and he didn’t want to go to the trouble of changing it to his flannel-lined cargo pants--it’s okay to offer him a ride. He’s now humble enough to accept it.

John Robert McFarland

No, that's not a photo of me. I use a black, wooden cane that once was Uncle Ted's.