October 5, 2010: A Small Comfort

Can I offer a small word of encouragement to you who lament that some part of your life is unfulfilling?

It is a small encouragement, I admit, not earth-shaking - but at least I think it is helping me this morning. It is simply this: your disappointments and sorrows may keep you from saying things that come across as arrogant, clueless, or unsympathetic.

Last night, for minimum wage, I paced the mattress department alone at Sears for four hours. No customer came. The shift did not begin well - my poor wife called to say she had locked her keys in the car in Cicero (I've done that at least four times myself - once with the car running!),and I was unable to go help her.

She got a service to jimmy the lock for $35 and arrived home late, and tired. We texted back and forth. I said my good news was that I hadn't experienced any challenges at Sears that I couldn't handle. She asked if that meant it was dead, and I said yes, but I was trying to put a positive spin on it. She wondered if working in mattresses at Sears could be an act of worship, and I said, "Yes, a very languid-paced, Puritan-style worship."

The single mom who trained me at Sears struggles to pay her last month's rent. Her wages are garnished, and her old shoes are falling off her feet. She worries about leaving her 8-year-old son to a babysitter who is recovering from heroin addiction. She also worries about the hours her son spends in the car with her drunk ex-husband on weekends.

That's all background. This morning I listened to a sermon by Mark Driscoll, and it was pretty good. But he sure made me wince when he mentioned that he owned 40 pairs of shoes, which, he said, were a lot fewer than his wife owned. (The odd thing is, he didn't say it in a spirit of self-condemnation, like, "What's the matter with me? I'm turning into Imelda Marcos!" - but was simply explaining that he had to spend a lot to make himself look good for his wife.) He spoke contemptuously of cheap wine: he will only drink the more expensive stuff. And he gets his hair cut every 2 weeks. (This last point made me think about how I stretch meager resources by spacing long intervals between haircuts. As I hand a coupon to a stylist at a national chain, I say, "Please cut my long hair very short so I don't have to come back here for 6 months.")

When poor people listen to Driscoll, do they say in their hearts, "Oh, blow it out your ear, you indulgent rich punk"? I don't know. I do know that a struggling single mom who owns one pair of bad shoes is unlikely to be much inspired by a man who commends himself for owning 40.

That is why I say that your current sorrows and lamentable experiences, whatever they are, may perform the good service of keeping you from saying stupid things, unintentionally hurtful things. When I was 24 I said aloud, in a mixed a group of missionaries and missionary-trainees, that I wouldn't want to spend the rest of my life in North America. A wise older missionary simply asked me if I had ever actually lived overseas, and I said no. Later, when I arrived home after four and a half years in the (mostly hot and unpleasant) Third World, I was so grateful to be back in the wonderful U S of A that I felt like kissing the ground. Boy was I an arrogant jerk at 24. I just didn't know what life was like.

You are sick, perhaps? You have a bad spouse? Your house is facing foreclosure? Your children are no good? Salvage this small (I said it was small!) comfort: God has put a lock on your tongue that renders you incapable of uttering clueless inanities that only pour out of the mouths of people who haven't suffered much. He has equipped you with sympathies that you, being human, could learn no other way. Maybe someday you will use what you have learned to comfort the afflicted. In the meantime, at least you'll be kept from saying the kinds of things that make them wince.