The Nine Year Old Brain

           After a delightful Christmas and New Year’s visit, my wife and I drove our nine year old granddaughter to the airport for her trip home to Asheville, North Carolina. This adventure all started in mid-December when our “kids” had to go overseas, so our “Gidgy” flew to Columbus to spend that week with us. At the end of the week, the three of us jumped onto a plane (a couple of planes, actually, before all was said and done) and popped over the pond ourselves to meet the kids and spend Christmas there together. When the Family Christmas Adventure was over, Our Gidgy flew back with us, intending to fly home to Asheville after New Year’s.

            

            As I said, it was delightful . . . and a fellow learns a lot about how a nine year old brain works after a three week exposure to one. Now the fact that I have a granddaughter in the first place implies that I also have a daughter (or a son as the case could be, but in my case a daughter) who was once a nine year old herself, so I should already have a pretty firm grasp of how a nine year old brain works, right? Admittedly, yes, I should; however, I’ve also learned over these past nine years that grandparent perspective and parental perspective is radically different. Oddly, the petty annoyances of the 80s have become adorable and memorable events here in the second decade of the 21^st century. 

            For example, I arrived home from the University a few days ago to find that My Gidgy had discovered a ball of very colorful Christmas lights in a box Grandmother was using to put away Christmas decorations that we’d set up after Thanksgiving. She had plugged-in this soccer ball sized wad of lights, and just as soon as I entered the door exclaimed, 

“Help me hang up these lights, Grapper.”

            “But Christmas is over, Gidgy.”

            “But these are so beautiful.”

            By this time the 80s Dad in me would probably have launched into an explanation of why these lights need to be put away until next year, that while they are indeed beautiful, they really are out of place since Christmas is past, yada yada, blah blah; however, the second decade of the 21^st century Grandfather in me said,

            “Okay, where do want to hang them” and at her instruction plugged them into a receptacle near a window, draped them over the curtain, looped them across the corner of the room, over the window on that wall, then over the front door, leaving a trail of lights into the dining room. 

To me, it looked really quirky; but to My Gidgy, “It’s so beautiful.”

I wonder how much of what’s beautiful to me looks quirky to God? 

My beautiful projects, my hard work, my goals, plans and ambitions, must seem so small, and perhaps even ugly to him. Yet in me there is this keen sense of awareness of his personal strength and help in executing these very goals, plans and ambitions. 

Donning a proverbial nine year old brain is precisely what Jesus did when he became “Emmanuel, which being interpreted is, God with us.” (Mathew 1:23) And keep in mind that later, in Mathew 18:3, Jesus said that “Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven.” 

I have never told My Gidgy that her art was stupid or ugly or immature. I try my best to see it all with a nine year old brain . . . and when I do, it is most certainly beautiful! It would do all of us good to view life more with a nine year old brain than with our old, worn out, cynical ones. We’d hurt fewer people, and we’d encourage more beauty . . . even if that beauty wasn’t exactly everything we thought it should be.

Prayer

At the winding down point of a gathering, my siblings, parents, and I were sitting in the front room of my folks’ house in Berne, Indiana talking about God. Now there’s nothing terribly unusual about that, but this conversation went down a rather unexpected path.

For reasons I don’t entirely understand, I’m typically the one answering questions and leading the conversation. Perhaps because I’m the oldest. Perhaps because I’m “the preacher”, but then again, so is my brother, so that doesn’t make sense.

Regardless, on this occasion I was the inquisitor and my Dad the answer man. Frankly, that doesn’t make much sense either. I gave my heart to Jesus when I was just a kid. Dad, who stepped unsteadily into his eighty first year this past July, only gave his heart to Jesus four years ago. He rarely has much to say during these post family get together days . . . but not this day!

A conundrum that I’ve kept locked in one of the recesses of my brain is why God seems to prevent a tragedy on the one hand, yet ignores and allows tragedy on the other hand. Or why God miraculously heals one person from some awful illness, yet others die from that same illness. How and why does He make these distinctions?

I’ve raised that question on numerous occasions, in just as numerous group settings, gaining insight following each conversation, yet having never walked away satisfied, never quite feeling like my question had been answered. I raised that same question on this particular late Sunday afternoon, had barely gotten the question out of my mouth when my Dad blurted, “Prayer! It’s prayer. My mother’s and your mother’s continued prayers are why I’m a Christian today. That’s what makes the difference”

He was sitting to my left, and I turned and sort of stared at him . . . speechless.

I’m still a little speechless. Is the answer really that simple? Yes, it is; then again, no it isn’t.

My Grandmother Hartman died less than a month shy of her 75^th birthday. Family lore has it that she and Grandpa Hartman gave their hearts to Jesus when my Dad was just a boy. Assuming she started praying for her son almost as soon as she met Jesus, she prayed for him from 1946 (Dad would have been 10) right up until her death in 1980, for 34 years, and maybe longer.

My folks got married in May of 1956. Mom gave her heart to Jesus when I was five or six. She’s been praying for her kids and husband from 1961 or 1962 right up to this very day. So someone(s) had been faithfully praying for my Dad to give his heart to Jesus for at least 66 years before he actually did so, and according to him, it was those prayers that brought him to that decision.

So yes, it really does appear to be as simple as the act of entreating God for His influence and intervention; yet it’s as difficult as decades of faithfulness in our entreaties. Dad’s Mother never lived to witness the answer to her prayers, yet there that answer sits, right now, in that chair in Berne, Indiana.

As you leave the Grand Traverse Memorial Gardens in Traverse City, Michigan, where my paternal grandparents are buried, you’ll find yourself looking at the back of the entrance sign which quotes Alfred Tennyson; “More things are wrought by prayer than this world dreams of.” That Lord Tennyson used the word ‘wrought’ is significant. It implies the act of forging, or taking white hot iron and hammering it into the shape you want. It’s hot, sweaty work, but I can personally attest to the fact that the finished product is well worth it . . . as is prayer.

Remember that “The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man [or mother] availeth much.” (James 5:16 KJV) So keep praying.

Mittie

One of the most delightful parishioners from my old pastoring days was Mittie, a diminutive little elderly woman who lived alone with her beagle, JJ. She ran a very successful tailoring business from her small, simple home less than a ten minute walk from the church.

To say Mittie was unique would be an understatement. One of her quirks was that she refused to watch any news or weather broadcasts, claiming that they were always either frightening or depressing or both, and that there wasn’t anything she could do about any of it anyway. She didn’t have a clue about crime statistics in our city or neighborhood, and only knew the weather was going to be bad when, well . . . when it was bad!

And she happened to be one of the most perennially happy people I’ve ever known.

I should point out that this was back in the 80s when the only news that was available in the first place was from one of three networks, and even then only in the early morning, at midday and in the evening, and the only way to get news to us was through the television or the radio. We weren’t bombarded 24-7-365 back then like we are today via multiple cable news outlets, talk radio, satellite radio, and the internet.

Unlike Mittie, if we aren’t careful we can let ourselves get completely consumed by the constant, negative news culture, start thinking that things are so much worse today than they’ve ever been, that evil is winning, that the world is coming to an end, and that politics is more partisan than at any time in history . . . none of which could be further from the truth. It just happens that technology has made it possible for us to instantly know literally every tragic happening on the planet, and even on the moon for that matter. (http://www.nbcnews.com/health/heart-health/deep-space-radiation-caused-heart-problems-apollo-astronauts-n618116)

I recently read an article by Sarah Skwire (https://fee.org/articles/gone-fishing/) and she reminds us that in the middle of some of the greatest upheavals in British history (England’s Second Civil War), retired ironmonger Izaak Walton walked away from London’s craven feuding and wrote a book about fishing, The Compleat Angler. It was an immediate hit, and it’s been printed and reprinted scores of times over the past 360 plus years, and is still in print to this very day. What could possibly make such a simple treatise of such a common activity so popular when so many more “important” things were happening in the English government?

It’s really not hard, is it? Like Mr. Walton and his readers, we need to get our minds around what truly is important, and it isn’t the never ending news cycle, the electoral process, or Washington DC. It’s your spouse, your kids, those adorable grandkids, your friends, your neighbors, and Washington isn’t going to do anything to make any of those lives better; but you can! 

If I’ve heard it once, I’ve heard it dozens of times; “I’m so afraid for my children’s and grandchildren’s future.” Well, I’m not, because I’ve personally invested (and am investing) my values, my time, and my energy into their present, and I am perfectly contented to leave their future to God and the loving guidance and example my wife and I have been. The Wise Man said it this way; “Direct your children onto the right path, and when they are older, they will not leave it.” (Proverbs 22:6 NLT)

So turn off the technology, ignore the empty promises of power hungry politicians, kiss your spouse, hug your kids, spend lots of time with your grandkids, know your neighbors and keep a watchful eye on them without being nosey about it. Live right, tell your stories, and teach the lessons life has taught you.

Be intentional . . .  and let’s go a’fishing!