Saturday afternoon, early August. Hot and humid or, as the locals call it, “close.” Mood? Questionable. Thirst? Very. So I pulled off the road along US Route 11 and into the parking lot of a no-name service station, the sort of which was what you’d expect for rural Virginia—dirty windows, questionable service, and people who made putting up with both well worth the effort.

People like Hank.

The man behind the cash register greeted me with a “Howdy” as I walked through the doors, each of which had been propped open by two twelve-packs of Budweiser. I nodded back and made my way toward the drink cooler in the rear of the store.

“BETTER ONES UP HERE,” shouted a voice.

I turned, and there beneath the mounted head of a deer sat an old man. His red suspenders clashed with his brown pants and blue shirt. He twisted in a vinyl chair and tapped his cane on the bin beside him.

“ICE MAKES ‘EM COLDER THAN THAT GOL’-DARNED ‘FRIDGERATOR CAN,” he shouted again.

“You got a point there,” I told him.

“HUH?”

“YOU GOT A POINT THERE.”

“AH,” he said and smiled.

I grabbed a Coke from the bin and swabbed the condensation with my T shirt, nodding once more. The old man wheezed and coughed a hunk of phlegm into his handkerchief.

I took a sip and paced the store, taking stock of the sardines and canned vegetables, both of which had expired three months prior.

A mother and her brood of three came in just then, all of whom got their own howdy from the cashier. The kids made a bee line for the magazine rack while mom paced the aisles in search of an elusive Something.

“Do you sell salt?” she said to the cashier.

“LAST AISLE, YOUNG LADY,” the old man said, pointing his cane to the opposite side of the store. She smiled a thank you, and he smiled a you’re welcome.

He wasn’t done, either. In the next fifteen minutes, the old man had noticed the keys a customer had dropped, reminded another that his headlights were on, and squished a rather nasty cockroach.

“You have a pretty good helper over there,” I told the cashier as I paid.

He smiled and said, “Yeah, Hank’s been around forever. Used to own the place until he started getting sick.”

As if on cue, Hank began hacking again.

“So he still comes around?” I asked.

“Yep,” he said as he offered my change. “He’s deaf, weak, and the doc told him last month all those non-filter Camels have eaten his lungs up. But he still shows up every day wanting to help out and do somethin’.”

I shoved the change into my pocket and looked at Hank, who had made himself busy by using his cane to scrap half of the dead cockroach from the bottom of his boot.

I had to smile at the sight. Though I knew nothing of the man, it seemed so utterly Hank.

That a simple man in a no-name gas station on a summer afternoon could teach me something was a little unexpected, but then again there are lessons to be learned in most anything. Especially in the sight of an old man clinging to what little life he had left.

Strip away theology’s pretense and philosophy’s theories and we are faced with this one basic question when it comes to the conduct of our lives—what does God expect from us each day?

Over the years I had come up with many possible answers—to love Him and others, to do our best to leave the day a little better than we’ve found it, and so on. But after watching Hank, I knew the real answer to that question.

What does God expect from us each day? Simple.

To show up.

We can give God our hearts and our desires, give Him our minds and our talents, but if we don’t give Him our time, those things just don’t matter.

Poor Hank could have spent his last remaining days at home watching HGTV, but he didn’t. He still showed up in that little gas station every day willing to do whatever he could to help despite his weaknesses and infirmities. I think we should do the same.

Because no matter how wounded we are, no matter how broken and beaten, we can always do something to help. We can always make a difference.

On life’s list of Big Moments, few can top the first day of kindergarten. Mostly because the emotions present on that day–excitement and disappointment, confidence and fear–pretty much remain a jumbled constant for the rest of our lives. Before kindergarten, the world is small and manageable. After? Big and scary.

Such was two Mondays ago for my son.

You may be able to decipher from the picture that there was a tad more disappointment and fear than excitement and confidence. At least for that moment. That’s okay, and I told him so. Not everyone is expected to jump headlong into academic life without bothering to glance backward to days that were free and relatively lazy. Besides, my first day of school? Not good.

Thankfully, by the time he walked out of the front doors and into the parking lot that afternoon, both his mood and his posture were vastly improved. My son had not only survived his first day of school, he had triumphed.

To find out how he did so, I invite you over to katdish’s blog. Take a few minutes to visit. School might be a distant memory for most of us, but that doesn’t mean the lessons of surviving kindergarten still can’t help us all…

I’ve read that men look into mirrors up to three times more often than women. I’m not sure if that’s true or not (I’m vampire-like in my distaste for the looking glass), but it is interesting.

We’re all vain in some ways. It’s the appearance we’re drawn to before anything else. There may be plenty below the surface of something, but we seldom plumb those depths if what’s on top doesn’t please the eye. And because it’s the surface we notice first, we maybe put more emphasis on it than we should.

Which is where this week’s offering from Dr. Gregory Stock’s The Book of Questions comes in.

What do we value more, the seen or the unseen? Which is more fulfilling? Which adds more to the quality of our lives?

And which could we better live with?

Feel free to discuss in the comments. Ready? Here goes:

If you could increase your I.Q. by forty points by having an ugly scar stretching from your mouth to your eye, would you do so?

If you would by chance happen to knock at my front door and ask to see where I keep my most prized possessions, I would lead you to my upstairs attic, pull the string on the exposed light bulb, and point to a spot along the far wall just beneath the vent leading outside.

There you would see an old toolbox, battered and rusty from years of use. The chipped green paint and rusted hinges may lead you to believe its contents are inconsequential at least and forgotten at most.

You would be wrong.

What’s inside that toolbox represent my life’s more memorable moments. A gum wrapper, some pine needles, a spent ring from a cap gun, and so on. Like I said, my most prized possessions. Knowing they’re up there makes me feel a little more comfortable being down here.

My mother has something similar, though her toolbox is disguised as a hope chest that sits in the corner of her bedroom closet. Inside you’ll find old report cards, forgotten toys, and pictures. Lots of pictures.

My father opts to store his keepsakes in the top drawer of his dresser, which had for years been strictly off limits to my prying hands until last week, when I summoned the courage to ask permission to rifle through its contents. I found old coins and older knives, one gun, several bundled letters I did not read, one wooden cross, and more old pictures.

I asked around, and most everyone had their own places for such things hidden somewhere out of sight. People have confessed to stashing their tokens of both past and present in socks and safe deposit boxes, cookie jars and coffee cans. One friend even stored his the old fashioned way—under the mattress of his bed.

Each admitted that no one else would be much interested in their private treasures. Again, none of them could be defined as valuable. Not on the surface, anyway. But beneath? Beneath they were priceless. I could tell they were by the hushed tones and soft smile they would offer along with their confession, as if the telling conveyed some holy secret.

Which I suppose is exactly the case. Handling those relics of the things we hold most dear often takes on the appearance of religious ritual. Touching a memory can be a powerful experience. An old photograph may not represent a mere moment in time, but a token that love is something worth holding onto. And a trinket may not be a trinket, but a symbol that faith does indeed move mountains.

We should consider these things holy. We are, after all, the sum of our experiences. We need those reminders lest we blur our today and cloud our tomorrow. We need to know where we’ve come from if we’re to know where we’re going.

One person I asked had things a little more figured out than the rest of us. A full-blooded Sioux, his people have had much experience in placing great meaning on physical objects. When I asked him where he kept his most precious things, he pulled his T shirt down and pulled out a leather necklace. On the end was a small beaded pouch that was fringed at the bottom.

“Here,” he said. “I keep them here.”

I told him about my toolbox, about the hopes chest and dresser drawer and socks and coffee cans. I even told him about my friend the mattress stuffer. He nodded and smiled, then said, “We all have our sacred things. But you keep yours hidden and far away. What good will they do you there? Why not keep them visible and close instead?”

I opened my mouth to answer, but nothing came out. He was right. Everyone I had talked to kept their treasures hidden away in the darkness of a chest or drawer. Myself included.

Why? Was it because we felt them too valuable to risk the light of day? Or too fragile to be handled often?

I wasn’t sure. But I began thinking about the things our treasures represent, the love and the faith. And I began thinking that often they, too, go hidden and unused. We tuck them away for fear that they are too valuable or fragile, when they are the very things we should carry close to us every day.

Is it me, or do kids seem to have a lot more stuff now than they used to? Take a walk through my son’s bedroom, and you will see only a slightly scaled down version of your local Toys R Us. Matchbox cars? He’s got ‘em. Toys guns? Yep. Legos, action figures, costumes, books, and blocks, too.

In keeping with the technological advances of our times, most of these toys are intricate designs of electronic know-how built to provide about three weeks of quality entertainment before self-destructing, at which point you have two choices: try to fix it, or go buy a replacement.

Me, I try to fix it.

And I do a good job for the most part. I know how to use screwdrivers and pliers and hammers (that one only as a last resort, of course).

But it seems that the more value my son places on a certain toy, the more impatient he is to get it fixed. I found this out the other day when his favorite plaything suddenly quit working. Fixing it was easy. The lesson I learned, though? Not so much.

To hear all about it, stop over at Katdish’s blog. And remember, God can fix anything as long as you give Him enough time to do it…

The bedtime story is a given in our house, an activity that has evolved into a ritual. And I don’t mind. Not really anyway, provided there is enough time. Reading a story to my children is an event unto itself more than a bridge to travel from awake to asleep. Not because of the telling, but because of the question-and-answer period afterward.

Because to them, a tale cannot end. My children are still too young to understand the mechanics of a story, of the introduction, the rising and falling action, and the resolution. They enjoy all but the last. So after every knight slays every evil dragon and saves every damsel in distress, the inevitable question is always asked:

“What happened then?”

To simply say, “Nothing, that’s just the end,” won’t do. I’ve tried that, and to unsatisfactory results. So I have to come up with something else.

Like maybe the dragon’s mother comes and swallows up the knight as punishment for picking on her poor dragon baby. Or the knight and damsel got married and both had to get a real job to pay for the mortgage on their castle. Or that either the knight or the damsel was a witch in disguise all along and the dragon was the good guy.

And if that doesn’t work, I’ll get tired and say something like, “The dragon stopped chasing after knights and damsels and started eating little children who refused to go to bed instead.” That usually does the trick.

But I can’t blame them. Fairy tales capture us early in life. They speak to some hidden inner part of us longing to bring life into a clearer focus. They teach us impossibility is simply a word rather than a truth. Stories allow us to indulge in a freedom our circumstances often do not.

And that, I think, is why the ending is so important to my kids. To them, a story must end in the right way — with the maximum amount of happiness and the minimum amount of pain. No one should die, for instance. Not even the villain. It’s better if the bad guy just got hurt a little, which convinced him to mend his ways to the point where he became a good neighbor to the knight and damsel. Even at their young age, my kids already know the story continues. Something else always happens.

Yes, that is a bit simplistic, especially in such a complicated world. But in that simplicity are the seeds of a knowledge I see sprouting in my children. A knowledge I think everyone should realize more often.

We are all writing our own story.

Our days are our pages, filled with our triumphs and failures, our big moments and our small hours. Sometimes we write with passion, other times with doubt, and many times with both. But still, we write. Whether we know we are or not, whether we want to or don’t. Even making the choice to say nothing says a lot. God provides the paper and the pen, but he expects us to do the telling. Our story is ours and ours alone. He’ll do the editing when we’re done.

We don’t have a choice in that. We do, however, have a choice in what sort of story it will be. Drama or comedy? Fairy tale or tragedy? Romance or horror? That’s largely up to us. The quality of our lives can be determined by whether we regard the next chapter of our lives with hope or dread.

Maybe that’s why the ending is always the most important part. Because all the pain and suffering in a story is worth it as long as the last three words are “happily ever after.”

There is an innate human desire to possess the faith that if you hang in there long enough, things will work out in the end. I happen to think that’s true. I might be a grown man, but a part of me still believes in those fairy tales. And always will.

(This piece was first published as a column in the Staunton, VA News Leader)

Though my job is a relatively peaceful one, that’s not generally the case this time of year. Students are returning after their three-month vacation, bringing with them a bevy of noise, confusion, and above all, questions.

Most are straightforward: “How do I send mail out?” “Where is the academic building?” “Is there anything around here to do other than stare at the mountains?”

Others are a bit more complicated and require a good deal of thought in order to correctly answer. Like the one I got yesterday when the phone rang.

“Hello,” the voice said, “my daughter is an incoming freshman, and I was just trying to make sure she has everything she needs before she leaves here.”

“I think you want the Student Life office,” I answered.
“Oh,” he sighed, “my apologies.”

“No problem. Hang on and I’ll get you their number.”

“Uh…” he started, then stopped.

“Yeah?” I asked.

He sighed again. Then: “Man, I hate this.”

I smiled into the phone. “I can understand that,” I said. “Got a daughter of my own. She’s only seven, but she’ll be seventeen before I know it.”

“You’re time’s comin’, young man,” he answered. “My time’s already here. Guess I’ll call that other office. I’m sure she’s gonna need more than new clothes and a computer, huh?”

“I would guess so,” I said.

We said our goodbyes and I hung up, trying to busy myself with the tasks of the day. But our conversation lingered and refused to be pushed away by the other phone calls and questions that followed.

In my experience, it was the mothers who seemed to be fine with their daughters going to college. Sure, there were tears and the wringing of hands. But they seemed to more easily share a sense of excitement with their children. They had mothered their daughters for seventeen years, and now was the time to push them out of the nest and see if they could fly.

It was the fathers who had such a tough time. They were the ones unpacking cars and walking around campus with a how-did-this-happen-so-fast? look on their faces. Not yet accepting of the truths of both time and reality, they were fighting the battle letting go and hanging on. This experience may have been a wonderful beginning for their daughters, but it was a bittersweet ending for them.

It wasn’t that they didn’t trust their little girls. They did. And it wasn’t that they were not excited for this new phase of their children’s lives, because they were. No, what bothered them was what was bothering the man who had called me earlier. They were trying to ease their worries. They were trying to convince themselves that their daughters had everything they needed for college.

And the man on the phone was right. His little girl needed much more than new clothes and a computer to get through this new phase of her life. She also needed what we all need when going somewhere both scary and new.

If I could have had that conversation over, I would have told him to make sure his daughter packed plenty of courage. Leaving the familiar for the strange is tough on most of us. There were always those students who discovered how tough it was to walk the tightrope of college without the safety net of parents. Courage would allow them to look ahead instead of down.

And I would have told him to double up on love, because no matter how all-knowing and confident his daughter might seem, inside she was still a little girl who would always need the approval of her father. She couldn’t take her home to college, couldn’t take her neighbors or her friends. But she could take the love of those closest to her, and that would be enough. Because love is really all you need.

Faith, too, would be important to send. Not just faith in herself, her abilities, and the choices she’s made, but faith in God. Because if God is needed anywhere, it’s on a college campus.

And there were other supplies he could send too, things like determination and perseverance and joy. Curiosity and hope and openness.

That’s what I should have told him. And that’s what I promised myself I would tell the other fathers who called from then on. Because in the end it’s not the things you can purchase in minutes that you have to take with you from one place to another, it’s the things you have to gather over time.

You learn a lot of things in church. Not a very profound statement, I know. But it’s true, and all truth is profound in its own way.