Grace Offered, Glory Received

Yesterday I deviated from my introverted routine just enough to ask an acquaintance how he was doing as I passed him in the lunch crowd. That's all it took for him to pour forth the crisis he was going through. After what amounted to no more than a few minutes of listening and a suggestion that he write down his feelings toward impacted parties before acting on them, he thanked me. He thanked me specifically for noticing that he was going through difficulties and for asking about them.

He must have mistaken me for Joseph from Genesis in the Bible. I've always admired the way in which this patriarch while still a young man looked beyond the injustices and impositions thrust upon him and noticed that others were troubled. I often revert to that Scripture when I admire a similar capacity God has given to other people in my contemporary sphere. Some empathize, and some don't. Some have a flypaper memory for other people's details, a phrase describing John F. Kennedy in The Death of a President, I decree, and some don't. My wife has both. I, preoccupied either with my own miniature crises or with my lofty speculations, generally don't.

I inquired after this acquaintance for fairly pedestrian reasons. In the crowd around me in a new chapter in life, faces and names are all too slow to match up as I lack even the basics of that flypaper memory. His happened to, so I could safely call out without fear of embarrassing myself. Furthermore, I've gotten to listen to him long enough in previous routine interactions to recognize someone facing some similar challenges. Since his tendencies toward envisioning catastrophe and voicing anxiety are more pronounced and less well hidden than mine, talking to him in the past has made me feel like an expert, even though in reality I am only a step or two ahead.

Drawing from the Pentateuch again, I'm amazed at God's capacity to do as he did with Moses, to hear us voice, and rehearse, and ruminate on our limitations, and then to bring them to a point of action. He asked Moses, "What's in your hand?" Then the One Who fashions planets and nations pledged to use a shepherd's staff, and the shepherd holding it. Even within my new setting, I don't know enough of the culture or the individuals involved to make a big impact, but yesterday before I had time to fashion a Moses-like objection, He dared to use what was in my hand, or rather what was in and coming out of my mouth. Between expression and impact, He both softened and multiplied by grace. How long until He does that again? How often is the glory of God I see and since in others an accumulation and reinterpretation of what they understand to be relatively ordinary gestures offered from limited experience and determined kindness?

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