There’s a Friends graveyard across New Garden Road from the Guilford College campus in Greensboro, North Carolina. Max Carter, recently retired as the William R. Rogers Director of Friends Center and Quaker Studies, leads tours of the cemetery (when he’s not leading tours to Palestine and Israel). This week in Fruit of the Vine, Max tells stories about some of the dead “who, having led vibrant lives, need others to tell their stories now.”
Yesterday, Max wrote of Baptist evangelist Vance Havner – “qualified to reside in a Quaker burial ground through his wife, Sara Allred, born into a North Carolina Quaker family.” Tomorrow, Max shares the story of a mother and her three children dying together and the effect of this loss on surviving family members. This morning, Max introduces us to George and Emily Levering. They established the Friends school in Ciudad Victoria before returning to the U.S. from Mexico. George is remembered for his “stand against purchasing war bonds during the popular First World War.” Emily, for her service “at Guilford College as matron of a women’s cooperative residence hall.”
These stories Max shares don’t include any heroes. Just faithful people who lived the lives God gave them. Who did the work God called them to do. As Max puts it, life “was an uphill climb for the Leverings ... but their Christian witness led to mountain top experiences for many.”
I hope, someday, the same might be said for each of us.
Eric Muhr
On forgiveness
Steve Diehl writes in this morning’s Fruit of the Vine about a poster in a computer programming class he took years ago: “‘To err is human, but if you really want to mess things up it takes a computer.’ Of course it was a play on the famous quote from the English poet Alexander Pope’s 1711 poem An Essay on Criticism part 2, in which he wrote, ‘To err is human; to forgive, divine.’”
I know what it feels like to be forgiven. When I was ten years old, my dad entrusted me with driving his brand new pickup truck down a narrow alley between two warehouses at the fertilizer plant where he worked. I adjusted the seat while he demonstrated how to work the clutch, and then he ran inside to load up the forklift and meet me at the other end with the load intended for the back of the truck. Except I didn’t get to the other end. On the way there, a sharp turn to avoid a stack of pallets got mixed up with my as-yet-undeveloped sense of depth perception, and I plowed into the side of one of the buildings. I didn’t die in that accident. But I suspected I might die. The passenger-side headlight was smashed. I’d knocked off the mirror. There was a deep gouge in the shiny paint on the truck’s right front fender.
My dad must have heard what happened because by the time I got out of the vehicle, he was already running toward me. I wanted to explain, but I didn’t get to. He hugged me. He said he was glad I wasn’t hurt. And he gave me permission to not say anything about what had happened to my mother. As it turns out, that last part wasn’t necessarily for my protection. But still, that feeling. A weight lifted. The freedom to breathe again. It was good.
Forgiveness.
Steve reminds us that “forgiveness is not something we make happen.” And I’m convinced that’s why it feels so good. We cannot free ourselves. “God made forgiveness happen.... We are just catching up to what God has already done.” Technically, we don’t free others either, but in forgiving them, we give them a glimpse of the freedom God has provided for all of us. Together.
Steve offers this prayer: “Lord, please help me to not rely upon myself, or my own ideas about forgiveness, but to learn from you.”
And I offer this: Take a breath wherever you are right now, and celebrate the freedom that God has given you to start over, to try again, to live.
Eric Muhr
On going out
Anne Willis writes in this morning’s Fruit of the Vine about the parallels between her life on the road with her husband, LeRoy, and God’s call for Abraham and the Israelites to trust and to follow. In Genesis 22, God calls Abraham to take his son “and go to the land of Moriah.” The strangeness of God’s call for Abraham to sacrifice Isaac is tempered by Abraham’s faith, expressed in verse 8, that “God himself will provide,” and God does. Later in Exodus 13, God doesn’t just call the Israelites out of Egypt, God also leads them “in a pillar of cloud by day ... and in a pillar of fire by night, to give them light.”
Anne writes that in her own life, selling a house, retiring, and “leaving Kansas for life on the road” didn't just happen. “I had issues to work through. Could I leave our family?” she asks, writing about her children, her mother, and her church. “How could I leave all that behind?”
Last Friday I left Newberg with a group of 53 others for a weekend in the Gifford Pinchot National Forest. We explored caves. We rafted the White Salmon River. We went without showers and wifi. We slept on the ground. Some of us were cold at night. But we also came home, back to our normal lives.
We had an adventure. And it was good. But what if God is calling us to something more? Anne writes that “God’s question to me, and to all of us, was and is, ‘Who comes first in your life every day? Are you really willing to follow my lead?’” And if God calls you out, are you willing to leave?
These are hard questions. But Anne reminds us that we can trust God, especially when our “comfort zone[s], like those of the Israelites, [are] seriously threatened.” And she offers this prayer for today, as we consider what God might have for each of us: “Lord, help me to make you my focus and to see my day through your lens.”
Eric Muhr