"The Most Unforgettable Person I Ever Met"
From the first epistle of John, these words, “That which we have seen and heard, we declare to you that you may have fellowship with us, and our fellowship is with the father and with his son, Jesus Christ.”
Unlike a woman whom I talked with some months ago who said she had gone through five mothers and two fathers before she finally gave up any hope of having anything that even remotely resembled a family, I was born into a home which was a home and to parents who fervently committed themselves to the task to which they had been called. Many childhood experiences have long since been forgotten, but there are one or two scenes in my memory which are as bright and beautiful as if they had happened yesterday.
One of these is of sitting on my mother's lap on a rainy afternoon toasting my toes before an old-fashioned cast-iron woodburning stove, and sensing by some kind of childish intuition that the wonderful warm feeling that I still remember, came not so much from the stove as from the love of my mother as her heart reached out to encircle mine. The highback chair in which we were sitting had the inevitable creak, and as mother rocked back and forth slowly, the pattern of the rain on the roof mingled with the creaking of the chair and the crackling of the fire formed an almost perfect accompaniment to a song which she sang about a man who loved little children, whether they be red or yellow, black or white. And when she sang, “Little ones to him belong, they are weak but he is strong,” wee lad that I was, I knew that I loved him even though I scarcely knew his name.
The ensuing years provided ample opportunity for me to learn more about this wonderful person. From the time I was a tiny tot, I had been taken to a small, brown, wood-shingled building where I met many people who spoke of him and sang of him with radiant love. I just knew I had to meet him.
As an adult I have been privileged to worship and even preach in some of the world's famous churches, but so long as I shall live, none of these will be as precious or as meaningful to me as what I came to think of as that “Little Brown Church in the Vale” where a growing boy heard the name of an unforgettable person spoken with reverence and love.
In our home was a well-worn dog-eared copy of a book from which Mother and Father often read stories of this most interesting person. I had wanted a copy of that book for my very own, and sure enough, just before I was nine years of age in that place that bore his name, they presented me with a brand new bright shiny black copy of the book, and when I opened the cover, there inside was a picture of this person who was going to play such an important role in my life. As I fingered through the Bible, I saw other pictures of him. One was of a little boy reaching up with a basket containing five loaves and two fishes, and this person was smiling down at him. And I remember thinking to myself, “Gee, I wish I were that little kid. How wonderful it would be for him to look down and smile like that at me.”
I had learned his name by now, but he was still a figure from the distant past, until one day I heard a white-haired parson by the name of Daddy Kirk speak of him with profound simplicity. He stood straight and tall like a northwood oak and described how this unforgettable person had been betrayed and crucified and led away to a cross. And as Daddy Kirk told how they picked up that cross and plunged it into a hole and left this friend of children hanging there like a purple rag between earth and sky, I remember thinking to myself, “Why did God let him die?”
And almost as if he had read my thoughts, the preacher said, “Do you want to know why God let him die? God let him die so that you might live eternally, abundantly, creatively.”
And then Daddy Kirk invited all those people who had not yet made this person a vital part of their life to do so, and something irresistible within me stirred. I slipped out of my seat and started down the aisle, and about half-way to the front, I was met by a presence which I knew to be the spirit of this person, and a voice as soft as an angel's song, which I understood to be his voice, said, “Follow me, son, and I will make you a fisher of men.”
It was shortly thereafter that Daddy Kirk became ill. He didn't come to that little brown-shingled building for many weeks, and when he returned, he was so weak it seemed that he could barely climb the pulpit stairs. But when he stood up to speak about this unforgettable person, he went through an amazing metamorphosis. It seemed as if his whole personality was charged with strength and power. His face began to glow as if it was lighted from some source from within, and it was then that I began to understand the amazing magnetism of this unforgettable person. For the thing that makes people love him so is that he has the ability to draw out the best of them whether they be physically weak like Daddy Kirk or morally weak like some of those deeply troubled people who had been brought to him.
This unforgettable person has a way of meeting people where they are and helping them become what they were meant to be.
I think it was Henry Ford who, when asked the name of his best friend, took a pencil from his pocket and on the white tablecloth, wrote the name of this individual and then beneath the name, wrote this sentence, “Your best friend is he who brings out the best that is within you.” Henry Ford was right. The thing that makes this person the best friend of millions of people is that he lifts them out of themselves and stimulates them to do and to be their best. And when they fail, when they miss the mark, when they fall short of what they were meant to be, it is he who stops, and stoops, and lifts them up and says to them, as he did to a poor forlorn woman long, long ago, “I don't condemn you either. But you were made for something better than this. Come walk with me.”
I wish, when I was a teenager, I had known a little more about the forgiving nature of this unforgettable person. It could have saved me many a heartache. Somewhere along the line I picked up the erroneous notion that anybody who chose to follow his way of life, would automatically be perfect and never sin again. But I did sin, often and in many ways. And as a result I thought our friendship was broken. I thought that because I didn't have the courage to look him in the eye, that he didn't have the compassion to look me in the eye. As a consequence I forgot what I have now come to believe with all my heart, that he is infinitely more willing to forgive than we are prepared to be forgiven. He is always more ready to bless than we are ready to be blessed.
But because I forgot that, I was driven by guilt and shame away from him until one day during my college years, I actually denied ever having known him. I found that Johnnie's faith wasn't adequate for John. I discovered that the sweet and beautiful stories that had stirred me so as a child, now seemed like fairy tales. I was caught up in a terrifying and terrible confusion of ideas and ideals, and then at the very moment when I was most vociferously waving the red flag of rebellion in his face, I met him again.
A young man, who had gone through intellectual and moral fires similar to mine, reintroduced me, and in a new birth of faith which lacked much of the sweetness of childhood, but had a lot of the rugged reality of adulthood, I had what someone with a poetic flair has called, “Meeting the Master Face to Face”:
I'd walked life's path with an easy tread
Had followed where comforts and pleasures led
Until one day in a quiet place
I met the Master face to face.
I'd built my castles and gird them high
Their towers had pierced the blue of the sky
I'd sworn to rule with an iron mace
When I met the Master face to face.
With comfort, and wealth, and ease as my goal
Much thought for my body, but none for my soul
I'd entered to win in life's mad race
When I met the Master face to face.
I met him, and knew him,
And blushed to see
That his eyes full of sorrow
Were fixed on me.
I faltered and fell in the street that day
While my castles melted and vanished away
Melted and vanished, and in their place
Naught else could I see but the Master's face.
My thoughts are now for the souls of men
I've lost my life to find it again.
E'er since that day in a quiet place
When I met the Master face to face.
Since then my experience with him has been one of learning to really love and truly live. In the process I have learned what many others have discovered — he is not only the greatest teacher who ever lived, he himself is the greatest lesson he ever taught. I've learned that he is the unchallengable yardstick by which people measure their personhood, because when Francis of Assisi prayed that he might be selfless, he prayed that he might be as selfless as this person. When Brother Lawrence, doing the lowliest task in the monastery, prayed that he might be humble, he prayed that he might be as humble as this person. When David Livingstone, dealing with the perils of darkest Africa, prayed that he might be courageous, he prayed that he might be as courageous as this person. And when Mahatma Ghandi prayed that he might be meek and kind, he prayed that he might be as meek and as kind as my best friend.
This most unforgettable person I ever met is not only the unchallenged and unchallengeable revealer of God as he is, but he is also the supreme example of man, as he was meant to be.
It was sometime after I had remade my acquaintance with him, that I met another person, a young woman, in whom I saw all the wonderful qualities I wanted in a wife, and I began to understand more deeply his teaching about the quality and character of womanhood, the reverence with which all women should be treated, but particularly that one set apart for me. When our three children were born, I heard in their birth-cry, a call to remember these words, “Let the little children come to me. Don't forbid them, for to them belongs the kingdom of God,” and, “Unless you become like a child, you cannot enter into the kingdom.”
Sometimes when our home floundered because of lack of confidence in ourselves and in our future, this unforgettable friend reminded me that our extremity is God's opportunity, that nothing really worthwhile, nothing enduring, nothing beautiful is created without struggle and without pain. And I came to understand the deepest meaning of his words, “Have faith in God,” because these are the words that have led Lucille and me through mountains of joy and valleys of peace.
Sometimes when my sense of values has gotten twisted by this secular world, he has spoken to me in those unforgettable words, “What shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose his soul?”
Sometimes when concern about things has caused me to slip into anxiety, how unforgettably he has reminded me of the father's tender mercies. “Don't be anxious about your life, what you are going to eat, and what you are going to drink; or your body, what you are going to wear. Your heavenly father knows you have need of all these things, But seek his kingdom first and his righteousness, and all these things will come to you as well.”
Sometimes when in misguided haste and activity, I've been tempted to ride roughshod over other people, this unforgettable person has brought me up short by bringing to mind a story he told once of a shepherd who wasn't satisfied to have ninety and nine in his flock, but spent the whole night searching for one lost sheep.
Sometimes, when in zealous fervor for his cause, really believing at the moment that the burden for building his kingdom rested entirely upon me, only to discover in a moment of terrible self-awareness that I had come to the end of myself, and I had nothing more to give or to go on, this unforgettable person spoke to me in these unforgettable words, “If you being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly father give the holy spirit to those who ask.”
“Ask, and you will receive; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you.”
Do you wonder then why it is that I call him the most unforgettable person I ever met? He's everything a friend should be, and more. He's dearer than life to me because in and through him I have found a love that can never be fathomed, a peace that can never be understood, a joy that can never be diminished, a hope that can never be disappointed, a glory that can never be clouded, a strength that can never be destroyed, a light that can never be darkened, and a life that can never die.
And everything he has been to me, he can be to you if you will make him your friend and savior too because while I haven't mentioned his name, you've known of whom I've been speaking from the very beginning, haven't you? Yes.
What does he look like — this most unforgettable person I ever met? Oddly enough, my favorite portrait of him is one I've never seen. It's kept, I am told, in a small chapel in the city of Jerusalem. At the far end of this vaulted room hangs a magnificent tapestry rich in color, rugged in weave. In front of the tapestry there is a rough-hewn picture frame and under the frame these words, “Whom having not seen, we love.”
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