Opinion

Some things are etched in stone

Wednesday, August 24, 2005

Sidewalk psychology 101 meets, frequently, on the west side of the Gazette when two or more people of close generations share common experiences and habits.

As we stood musing one day a co-worker dashed out the door, explaining that she was on her way to take her daughter to junior high orientation. This announcement took each of us back at least two decades, if not three, to our own years in junior high.

"Never again," I said emphatically. "Of all the days of yesteryear that sometimes call me back, junior high isn't one of them. In fact, if I could erase seventh and eighth grade entirely from my life experience, I would be better off." Nods and amens echoed from my fellow philosophers.

Alas, they cannot be erased.

They remain, for better or worse (and more the latter), part and parcel of who I am today. For one thing, I wouldn't have the "sidewalk" habit. (A more careful perusal of memory reveals that it was, in fact, early in the seventh grade that I made the single most important decision of my entire life -- to believe -- so I guess I really will have to take the good with the bad.) Other than that moment of brilliant clarity, that moment when my woeful humanity met its only hope, those two years were absolutely abysmal.

It was during this time that we were, as a family, sitting at the dinner table, when Dad noticed a boy's name colorfully written on the back of my hand. It was a junior high thing. If you had a steady you wrote his name all over your notebooks and the back of your hand.

Dad was not amused. Nor was he impressed with my burgeoning popularity. (He needn't have been. It was very short-lived.)

Dad's chair flew back with the force of his anger and without a word, he and I, linked by his firm grip on the offending hand, were on our way to the kitchen sink where the name, so carefully drawn on earlier in the day with what I thought was indelible ink, rapidly disappeared, scrubbed away with soap and very hot water. I didn't make that mistake again.

It has been a summer of training in the news room. One of the tools of the trade in the newsroom is the Associated Press Stylebook. And although each newspaper generates its own unique overall style, the AP book does give us uniformity in the trade and we adhere to the majority of rules contained therein.

Additionally, space constraints make other rules necessary, but within each of these parameters, I am quick to point out to new hires that if they find a better way to accomplish a task, a more attractive presentation, a more reader friendly format to "Go for it. Nothing around here is etched in stone."

There are some things, however few, that are etched in stone. The cross is one of them. It just won't go away. It has a life all its own and even if no one believed, it would still exist.

It is the place where the penultimate battle between good and evil -- God and Satan -- took place and it, confirmed by eyewitness testimony, is written in indelible ink on the history of man and is etched into our very souls. Once you encounter it, even if you disbelieve, disdain or dismiss it, you cannot escape its influence on your life.

A heart certainly can be hardened against it -- either by limiting its power with the arrogant, "God can't forgive me" or by dismissing one's need for it with the equally arrogant justification, "I've lived a good life. I've tried to do my best. That's just going to have to be good enough."

In the first case, the good news is that the grace of Christ is not limited by man's short-sightedness. God, who sees the end from the beginning, knows all. And he stands ready to remove your sins, large or small, few or legion, "as far as the east is from the west." Psalm 103:12

A night of honest soul-searching will quickly disabuse the self-righteous, for who among us, no matter how good, generous, kind-hearted and loving, doesn't have some thing, even one thing to regret? That sin too must be cast as far as the east is from the west, or it alone will stand between you and God.

Then there are those who engage in foxhole conversion resistance. Time takes its toll, it is inevitable. Perhaps a life-threatening illness or injury has come. Or maybe actual bona-fide bullets are raining down all around. While it has been said that there are no atheists in foxholes, the foxhole resistant heart says sorrowfully, "I've told God 'no, not right now,' until I'm sure he's given up on me. I would be the worst sort of hypocrite to cry out to him now to save me."

God has determined the number of years for each soul of man. He has seen the end from the beginning and has always known what it would take to woo and to win each heart. Each heart still must choose -- choose or lose all --the cross is still there to be embraced.

-- "See, I have engraved you on the palm of my hands." Isaiah 49:16 (NIV)

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