Ten Good Things
By Foy Valentine, Founding Editor
For many years the editors of USA Today asked me to write a column for their first issue of the New Year. Their assigned topic was "Ten Good Things that Happened" during the past year. It was a pleasant exercise. Without meaning to appropriate the idea for this present occasion, I sat down recently and reviewed the year 1000 to see what might pop into my head. Sure enough Ten Good Things came to mind.
Would you be willing for me to share them with you?
LIFE AND A MEASURE OF HEALTH were extended to me. The ongoing gift of life itself could never be basely taken for granted. On the contrary, life last year seemed to me to be more and more the special gift of God; and I have savored it day-by-day, week-by-week, and month-by-month. Moreover, God forbid that I should consider the measure of health with I have experienced as anything but undeserved, unearned, and unmerited icing for the cake of life. In the year 2000, God did this again for me and for most of those I truly love. I am much obliged.
FAMILY AND A MEASURE OF JOY were embraced. The richest blessings of life were encompassed in this circle of family. Godly parents, a wonderful wife of 53 years, three splendid daughters, fine sons-in-law, five marvelous grandchildren, brothers who are both kin and kindred spirits, and a cloud of cousins near and far, close and distant, have affirmed us, propped us up in our leaning places, and furnished us a context for joyous and abundant living. Things could not even begun to be as good without them.
FRIENDSHIPS AND A MEASURE OF ENRICHMENT were experienced. Let me illustrate with how we have capsuled in a two-day get-together on Valentine`s Day an institutionalized Friendship Festival. Friends from near and far come flying in, driving in, shuffling in, and hobbling in. Some spend the night with us, staying up late and talking non-stop. Some get up early. Some sleep late. All eat a right smart. We have a big Luncheon Blowout at Neiman Marcus` Iris Room where they clear off a wide space for us and try to stay out of our way. We share news, tell yearns, make jokes, and do what we can to keep one another appropriately humble. Nobody has an agenda. We are totally and happily relaxed. As one of them e-mailed back the next day after returning to his home, "It just doesn`t get any better than that." So. It really doesn`t.
PEACE AND A MEASURE OF JUSTICE were proffered and, in various ways, accepted. There is a biblical figure of speech which speaks of righteousness and peace kissing each other (Ps. 85:10). When righteousness, or justice, come out on top of all our strivings, peace prevails. This is not just an absence of hostility but a shalom of heavenly proportions, a peace that has surmounted injustice, soared above strife, and broken down middle walls of partition. Some great points of light during the past year have been the incredible work of many who have done the things that make for peace. We gratefully salute them.
DELIVERANCE AND MEASURE OF CLOSURE for some of the loads I had shouldered were tendered and thankfully received. A Director, Dr. Robert Kruschwitz, was enlisted and installed for the Center for Christian Ethics at Baylor University, the consummation of a decade of prayers, hopes, and dreams. An Editor, Dr. Joe Trull, took the torch for publishing Christian Ethics Today and with the enlistment of a new Board of Directors has successfully completed the sixth year of this journal`s publication. My own sense of deliverance from these duties has been capped with a deeply satisfying sense of closure regarding my own part in these enterprises. They are in good hands, and I wholeheartedly bless them.
WORK AND A MEASURE OF FULFILLMENT continued. I never doubted that they would. Fate handed me a lemon in the form of the Great Depression when I was six years old. That long night began in 1929. Hard Times. But my family, with the help of God, made what little lemonade we could of it. I went to work. And I have been working ever since. Like Virgil`s Aeneas who kept bending his personal will to that of his divine mandate to found and build the city of Rome, I have not been disobedient to my own heavenly vision. I have stayed hitched, continuing to heed what I have perceived to be the high calling of God in Christ Jesus to help "changed people change the world." God has set before me a bountiful table of marvelous fulfillment. There are signs, moreover, that he may not be plumb finished.
ORDERING AND A MEASURE OF ALIGNMENT began to fall into place during the year 2000 in ways that made life better and more satisfying. Too much work can be as hurtful as too little work. For most of my life, for whatever neuroses may have been goading me. I`ve worked too hard, burned the candle at both ends too foolishly, and undertook too much. Now at long last I am beginning to find breathing room., gradually getting my house in order, and slowly catching up on lots of things too long pushed aside. There is an insightful and moving old pioneer gospel song that speaks of the world`s turning and turning till it turns around right. Right on. It`s a good feeling to see things turning around right, to be getting some of my ducks in a row.
CALM AND MEASURE OF ASSURANCE. When the Bible says that the stars in their courses fought against Sisera, the Canaanite enemy of the people of God, it is a way of saying that this is a moral universe. Ultimately all those who array themselves against the redemptive and just purposes of the Lord God are destined for defeat. Conversely, those who identify themselves with God and his righteous rule can relax in calm assurance. Some propitious developments came together last year to blanket me with a sort of cosmic calm bringing reassurance that God`s people are everlastingly covered with God`s gracious hand. This is insurance guaranteed not to lapse.
PROVIDENCE AND A MEASURE OF REST. Providence can be a king of synonym for Deity; and it can also be a noun that speaks of care, foresight, and advance planning. It has seemed to me that the past year has brought abundant evidence of God`s providence, care when it is needed most. Things have been clearly seen as having worked together for some good to those who love the Lord and are called according to his purpose (Rom. 8:28). When the profundity of this truth is embraced, there comes deep rest, deliverance from weariness, despair, commotion, annoyance, confusion, and agitation. Such tranquility has often been the wonderful gift of God throughout the past year, a foretaste of the blessing of rest in eternity which God is preparing from those who love him.
GRACE AND A MEASURE OF BLESSING were bestowed beyond what might have been asked or thought. What more could be said? Praise God from whom all blessings flow.
Now, lest I leave you with the impression that I am hopelessly Pollyannaish, I offer a caveat. Yes, I know about sin, evil, failure, pain, suffering, injustice, and death. Yes, I am aware of a personal diminution of strength, some fading of vision (the medical texts call it by the decidedly inelegant name of senile macular degeneration), a gradual shutting down of the functions of my auditory nerves, and the steady demise of millions of brain cells. Yes, like T. S. Eliot`s J. Alfred Prufrock who saw the moment of his greatness flicker, who saw the Eternal Footman hold his coat and snicker so that, he says, "in short, I was afraid," so I lived last year with a rather vivid awareness of the frailty of my humanity. And that awareness, if anything, is increasing as this new year begins to unfold. And yet . . .
Yet. Yet these ten good things remembered are not figments of the imagination. They are real. And so "if there be any virtue and if there be any praise…think on these things." Philippians 4:8).
