November 09, 2011
Letter of Introduction
When the early church sent disciples to the various outlying towns they
often sent along letters of introduction. A few Sundays ago we had a couple of middle
aged visitors to church who mixed, mingled and shook hands both before and
after the worship service. When they came my way I asked all the normal ‘are
you a first time visitor’ questions. It seems they are transients and the Lord
brought them to our area. They said they are doing whatever the Lord wants them
to do and just trying to serve Him. In the meantime they’ve taken up temporary
residence at some old boy’s ranch east of town while they wait for the Lord’s
direction. They are unemployed and just doing odd jobs for the time being.
Certainly we need to extend the right hand of Christian fellowship and of
course it’s possible that we were entertaining angels unaware. However, I would
have felt more genuine in my welcoming had these guys brought along a letter of
introduction.
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1 comment:
Gail;
-----The fact is, the world is what it is, and the people in it are what they are. A letter of introduction doesn’t change who anybody is or what in the world they are up to. These people really could be trying to do “whatever the Lord wants them to do”. And I relate really well to what they are doing. I was dangerously suicidal in my early twenties. When I awoke to the changes my life needed, the suicidal bent eventually wandered into the wilderness. But the prospect of completely failing at what I best understood stayed home. It’s a fearful thing to live always thinking the next day could bring total failure. No longer having the pistol-to-the-head attitude, “whatever” was the only one left. Being socially awkward, nearly devoid of self-confidence, and about as single and unattached as a young man could be, I figured if I failed in my attempt at developing a career, then I would just stick a Bible in one pocket, a change of shorts in the other, and walk always towards the horizon.
-----I spent a lot of nights pondering how such an activity would proceed. I figured maybe upon entering a town I would go to a church and beg enough for a bath and a shave, then go find somebody who needed help. Surely there was some old neighbor or recovering daddy who needed a lawn mowed or a roof repaired. And it wasn’t that I would be doing it for money or food. Starvation would be ok, it is just another "whatever". I would be doing it because somebody needed something, and since my efforts poured into my needs summed up to zero, I my as well be pouring the rest of those efforts into someone else’s needs so they wouldn’t be wasted. I thought of it as kind of throwing myself away and walking into people, kind of dying into love. With an ambition to be only beneficial, there would always be an open door because the whole world is quite enamored with receiving benefits.
-----But the other fact is, we see the world and its people from our inside out. We know ourselves and our genuineness. We know when we want only to be kind to another and why. But the other people see us from the outside in. Having just met, they know nothing of us other than that we are another one of those humans. And humans seem most of the time to be self-serving, and generally very tricky at that. So the more a stranger appears to be kind and benevolent in his purposes, the more his purposes will be held suspect. It takes a relationship to get to know someone, and relationships take a lot of time. That’s where the letter of recommendation from someone trusted comes in handy.
-----Eventually I met a lady who picked my interests to the core. She went around collecting “letters of recommendation” from my friends. By this I knew I had met the one wise enough to take away my loneliness. She’s done it well now for twenty years. And I no longer think of wandering over the horizon with a Bible in one pocket and a change of shorts in the other.
Love you all,
Steve Corey
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