The Campus Hawk

Ashamedly, it’s been a wee bit more than a year since my last post. I could enumerate a litany of excuses . . . a major move from Ohio to South Carolina, and a job change from Ohio Christian University to Columbia International University probably being the biggest . . . but the real truth is lack of inspiration and focus.

But this past Thursday, I was inspired!

The Columbia International University (CIU) Campus is located in the middle of 400 acres of woods and rolling hills, filled with trails, ponds, streams, with the Broad River as its western border. Wildlife abounds!

I am fortunate to live in a lovely apartment in a fully modern, six building apartment complex in the valley on the Broad River side of the campus, thus privileged to walk just under the half mile it takes to get to my office every day. 

Back to this past Thursday.

My morning “commute” brought me to the campus, where I saw the regal campus hawk (yes, he appears to be “the campus hawk”, seen regularly around the place), parked haughtily on the corner of the chapel, approximately twelve feet up. Amazingly, I was able to walk right up to him and engage in a rather one-sided conversation. He had his back to me, but cocked his head just a wee bit in order to see me with one eye, then immediately turned back around away from me. I continued speaking to him in low tones, hoping he’d turn around and “engage” me with at least a passing interest. 

Alas, he grew bored with my droning and flew into a tree between the chapel and my office building where a couple of squirrels were scurrying about, staring hungrily at the playful little fellows. All of a sudden he swooped down, stretched his enormous talons toward one of those squirrels, who dashed like a streak of lightening into a bush barking furiously at that hawk from his hideaway. 

To add insult to injury to the breakfast deprived hawk, a couple of crows happened upon the scene and starting dive bombing the guy, driving him from the tree, even from the heart of the campus, and off somewhere toward the Broad River, the squirrel still in a maniacal, barking rage under the bush.

Besides the entertainment value of my Friday morning commute, I took away three lessons;

1.       Speed is better than strength. (That squirrel was really fast.)

2.       Two are better than one, even if that one is bigger. (The crows understand what “team” means.)

3.       Never give up. (The hawk will be back.)

Make that four lessons; take time to enjoy your commute. There are lessons to be learned if you just pay attention.

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.