pools of sorrow, waves of joy - thoughts on the art of sedan maintenance, part v
photo: flickrBy the time that I asked Mike to help me fix my windows, we had almost a year of friendship and thousands of miles behind us. Mike had proposed to Breanna, and together they asked if I would perform the ceremony - the first wedding I would ever officiate.
When I say that Mike helped me with the windows, what I really mean is that I bought the parts and found the instructions on the internet. He brought the necessary tools and did all the actual work while Lindsey and I were at church. Not a dime changed hands between us.
To many, this might seem a fairly ordinary act of friendship centered around a mundane task of mechanistic repair.
To me, it was a symbol of uncommon friendship.
At our first meeting, I was an unemployed pastor fretting anxiously about how I would provide for my brand new family and fulfill my life's calling. Mike a veteran reclaiming the pieces of postwar life and fighting battles of a different kind on the homefront. With good reason, neither of us felt very impressive.
Going to India breathed into us some much-needed new life - life that reflected our seemingly foolish beliefs that the God of the universe incarnated himself as a first century Jewish carpenter, was executed as a blasphemer and insurgent, and mysteriously reappeared alive three days later.
Mike met the woman he would marry and began a relationship with her that was patterned after this new-life way of existing. It exuded humility, gentleness, self-control and abhorred selfishness and inconsideration.
I started work as a high school teacher and found myself strangely fulfilled in my daily attempts to relate truth to adversarial and hormonal adolescents.
Together, we encouraged each other in these new endeavors, recognizing that going it alone seemed, at best, unwise and unsteady. He shared his automobile maintenance skills with me. I offered some counsel and perspective (whatever it was worth).
Our friendship was not transactional in nature, rather it was contra-naturally full of grace. Grace keeps no ledger, but it does not always come easily. New ways of living require practice, and most practice is imperfect.
I have found it uncommon, in my experience, that many people believe such practice worth the effort. Even fewer are willing to have their weaknesses exposed and remain trustworthy knowing the weaknesses of others.
Mike and Breanna, congratulations! I am thankful for your uncommon friendship.
When I say that Mike helped me with the windows, what I really mean is that I bought the parts and found the instructions on the internet. He brought the necessary tools and did all the actual work while Lindsey and I were at church. Not a dime changed hands between us.
To many, this might seem a fairly ordinary act of friendship centered around a mundane task of mechanistic repair.
To me, it was a symbol of uncommon friendship.
At our first meeting, I was an unemployed pastor fretting anxiously about how I would provide for my brand new family and fulfill my life's calling. Mike a veteran reclaiming the pieces of postwar life and fighting battles of a different kind on the homefront. With good reason, neither of us felt very impressive.
Going to India breathed into us some much-needed new life - life that reflected our seemingly foolish beliefs that the God of the universe incarnated himself as a first century Jewish carpenter, was executed as a blasphemer and insurgent, and mysteriously reappeared alive three days later.
Mike met the woman he would marry and began a relationship with her that was patterned after this new-life way of existing. It exuded humility, gentleness, self-control and abhorred selfishness and inconsideration.
I started work as a high school teacher and found myself strangely fulfilled in my daily attempts to relate truth to adversarial and hormonal adolescents.
Together, we encouraged each other in these new endeavors, recognizing that going it alone seemed, at best, unwise and unsteady. He shared his automobile maintenance skills with me. I offered some counsel and perspective (whatever it was worth).
Our friendship was not transactional in nature, rather it was contra-naturally full of grace. Grace keeps no ledger, but it does not always come easily. New ways of living require practice, and most practice is imperfect.
I have found it uncommon, in my experience, that many people believe such practice worth the effort. Even fewer are willing to have their weaknesses exposed and remain trustworthy knowing the weaknesses of others.
Mike and Breanna, congratulations! I am thankful for your uncommon friendship.
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