The Green Jacket
Surrounded by this cursed virus we all need some hope and some reminder that life will go on somehow. Days ago on the front page of the New York Times I got an uplift. Thirty six years old Dustin Johnson had just won the Masters. And there the winner stood with a smile on his face. Ands behind him was Tiger Woods--15 times champion of the Masters. And Tiger had lost this year--yet in the picture smiling Tiger is helping Dustin put on his green jacket. It was a moment of grace for me. Loser Tiger put his defeat behind him in order to congratulate the young man that had defeated him. He did not have to do that--maybe that's what that moment grace.
We all need a bucketful of grace right now. Some uplift, some unexpected wonder that carries us along and makes us glad to be part of this tangled human family.
Loss
Nobody likes to lose. But as most of us look back hopefully most of those losses so painful back there we have forgotten. It hurts to lose. I've lost friends, parents, a brother. I've lost churches I just knew would call me. From time to time I have lost hope, hair, years--until here I am at 85. Looking over my shoulder some those losses I thought would kill me. They didn't.
Somebody--many somebodies--gracefully stood behind me and helped me move on. I left a church one time feeling defeated. I was 55 years old. And I had never faced a real defeat in the churches I served. So the night before my last sermon there a cluster of friends gave me a party that was great. As we were leaving a woman minister who had known her own defeats gave me an envelope. "Don't read the card I have given you now. Open it just before you preach tomorrow morning" The next morning oin my office I could hear the organ prelude nearby in the sanctuary. The card read: " I know this will be a hard day for you--but you need to remember all the people yoiu have helped through the years. Your ministry isn't over--you have much to do. Go out there and do what you have many times--knock a home run. You can and you will."
Thanksgiving
I did not know about the green jacket then. I didn't feel like a winner. And yet around my shoulders my friend's words felt like the warmth of a green jacket. Grace came that day and I was the recipient.
We all lose--even the President--and he is not the first to stand in that painful place. Nobody likes a poor loser--and we have all been guilty from time to time. But in the middle of this virus when we have lost so many and we are still afraid of the future--this Thanksgiving let us remember the Green Jacket and the grace will always come. Even in hard days. Especially the hard days.
--Roger Lovette / rogerlovette.blogspot.com
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