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“Is there anyone among you who, if your child asks for bread, will give a stone? Or if the child asks for a fish, will give a snake? If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good things to those who ask him!”
Brand new to the neighborhood, a man took a break from unpacking boxes to go out to retrieve his Sunday newspaper from his driveway. There, he had the opportunity to meet his new neighbor who was across the street washing his girlfriend’s car. Sounds pretty innocuous, right? Yet, the neighbor who was vigorously scrubbing and polishing happened to be 103 years-old!
I am currently reading a delightful book by David Von Drehle entitled, The Book of Charlie. Charlie, attentive car-washer and retired anesthesiologist, would live to the age of 109, and in the six years Von Drehle lived next to him, the two would share a deep and abiding friendship. Imagine living, thriving in the age of digital domination while having been born three years before the first Model T rolled off Ford’s ingenious and new assembly line. It is astounding to consider the variety of events, storms, threats, and challenges to which Charlie had to adapt in his extended century of life. Charlie’s father died in a freak accident when Charlie was nine years-old, leaving his mother with five children and no income. Yet, that did not hold Charlie back from scratching his itch from adventure. At the age of four, Charlie loved to sneak up behind the trolly that ran by his house and jump on its bumper for a ride. At the age of 16, Charlie and two friends got access to a Model T, and decided to drive west from Kansas City to the California coast, not telling anyone where they were going or when they’d return. That’s a bold journey in any era, but their conveyance was one of the first cars ever made, and this was before there was such a thing as roads. Somehow, they lived to tell about it, including the story of sneaking a ride on a train by jumping onto the cowcatcher and holding on for dear life.
Charlie’s 109 years were greeted with no fewer challenges, threats, and tragedies than anyone else, but through it all he seemed to focus not on what went wrong, but on what was possible. I cannot fathom being a single parent of five children as a world war raged, a pandemic loomed, safety measures had yet to be enacted, and polio lurked, yet Charlie’s mom did the best she could in impossible circumstances. Charlie’s story is a witness to the fragile balance of life versus existence and risk versus security. Every era welcomes new theories about the best ways to thrive, to parent, to protect, and to plan. What seems to be ludicrous now, was once considered the best practice, the unassailable policy, the unquestioned rule. What seems standard practice now may well seem absurd in the age to come. What we learn from the arc of Charlie’s life is to pursue life doing the best we can with what we have and what we know, and trusting God’s love to sustain us and abide with us whatever may befall us.
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