Seeking God Daily

The movie trailer caption read, “It’s all she’d ever known…it’s all he’d ever known.” She is white, affluent, successful home decorator Leigh Anne Touhy, who has two bright kids and a husband who is a Taco Bell millionaire. He is black, homeless, fifteen year old Michael Oher, who has twelve siblings scattered all over Memphis, his father dead from an apparent suicide and a mother enslaved by sex and drugs. What possibly could these two have in common? I would imagine that most people, from both sides of the tracks, would see little that might bring Leigh Anne and Michael together. But God is not limited to acting inside the boxes we human beings have a tendency to build.

The true story of Michael and Leigh Anne is a remarkable illustration of God’s grace and goodness being supplied in a person’s life at just the right time. God used another human being as the means by which He would extend those gifts. The unlikely encounter was brought into the public spotlight through Michael Lewis’ highly regarded book, “The Blind Side: Evolution of a Game” and the more recent motion picture, “The Blind Side” starring Sandra Bullock and massive newcomer Quinton Aaron. The book reviewers have raved about Lewis’ non-fictional narrative and I’m looking forward to reading it, that is, if Santa comes through this year and puts one in my stocking. As far as the movie is concerned, I’ve already seen it twice. Needless to say I gave it Roger Ebert’s (Chicago Tribune movie critic) “two thumbs up”.  I laughed, I ached, I cried, I cheered, I sighed, I….liked it a lot! For me, it ranks up at the top of excellent sport’s movies right next to “Rudy” and “Remember the Titans”. I highly recommend “The Blind Side”.

A quick synopsis: The Touhys rescue Michael, “Big Mike”, from the streets of Memphis, invite him into their home, and eventually are granted guardianship over him. A subplot traces Michael’s journey from a big, awkward kid in cleats who eventually leads his high school football team to a state championship then an all-American at ole’ Miss and finally a first round draft pick of the NFL Baltimore Ravens. In the mean time, the entire Touhy family and Michael have a mutual love affair. Their lives are transformed; Michael, by the Touhy’s gracious, unconditional acceptance of him into their home and their hearts and the Touhy’s, by Michael’s gentility, teachability, and protectiveness.

There’s an interesting spin in this movie. Leigh Anne was abundantly blessed with family, friends, funds, and fun. Michael had little to smile at, no money, so called friends who just wanted to use him, and no knowledge of his family’s whereabouts. Yet, I believe it was Leigh Anne who may have benefitted the most.  One of her “privileged class” female friends gushed over how Leigh Anne was “changing that boy’s life”.  Leigh Anne extinguished the woman’s patronage with a teary “No, he’s changing mine”.

I’ve thought a lot about her humble revelation and it led me to thinking about Jesus’ stirring teaching to his disciples in Matthew 25. “…whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me” (25:40). As one commentator has written, “When one shows mercy to a follower of Jesus, in a profound sense one is showing mercy to Jesus himself”. The recipient of such grace is most certainly blessed, as Michael was, but to know that one’s earthly benevolence is extended to Jesus himself is pretty overwhelming.  As Ben likes to say, “We are blessed to be a blessing”.

I can’t tell you the number of times that God has ministered to me through an individual to whom I was seeking to bring comfort, strength, and encouragement during a difficult time in their life. I’d leave a hospital or someone’s home thinking, “What just happened here? I came to care for this person and I’m leaving humbled and blessed by their ministry to me”.  It’s said that “what goes around, comes around” and when that is in the context of extending mercy to one of God’s “least”, the return blessing is from Jesus himself. For Leigh Anne it was packaged in a 6’5”, 300 pound bundle of joy.

While visiting my grandson’s pre-school recently I was reminded of a refreshingly fun book I read a number of years ago entitled Everything I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten by Robert Fulghum. I wholeheartedly agree with Fulghum’s simple assessment; “Wisdom was not at the top of the graduate school mountain, but there in the sand pile at Sunday School”.

As I watched the sights and listened to the sounds in Caden’s classroom I found myself longing for a world that emphasized the basics of life like they were emphasized in his classroom. Consider what our world would be like if everyone…shared everything, played fair, didn’t hit people, cleaned up their own messes, didn’t take things that weren’t theirs, said sorry when they hurt someone, used inside voices and loved…all of the time. Throw in The Golden Rule, flushing the toilet, Stop-Look-Listen, washing your hands before eating, cookies and milk and a nap in the afternoon, and occasional holding hands and then perhaps we could sing along with Sam Cooke of the 60s, “What a wonderful world this would be”.

Then I got to thinking why our world isn’t always a wonderful place to be; it’s people. We’re the problem. We’re selfish, we cheat, we hit emotionally as well as physically, we get even, we complicate the simple, we leave our messes for someone else to clean up, we steal, we don’t know how to say I’m sorry, we’re loud and obnoxious, we’re too busy, and we love when it’s self-serving. Now we’re not all guilty of all these attitudes all of the time but we all could plead guilty to many of them. We can blow it off by saying, “No one’s perfect” but that still doesn’t solve our world’s woes. How far we have wandered from the simple lessons learned when we were so impressionable, so teachable, so trusting, so obedient.

We can’t change the fact that we are all imperfect people but we can decide to draw upon the only perfect source to bring back the wonderful into our world. Perfect comes from the one who is called Wonderful; Jesus. And Jesus’ plan is to impact the world through his kingdom which can only be experienced and accessed by returning to our childish roots; back to basics. Jesus was very adamant in his expectations when he declared: “Don’t push these children away. Don’t ever get between them and me. These children are at the very center of life in the kingdom. Mark this: Unless you accept God’s kingdom in the simplicity of a child, you’ll never get in. Then, gathering the children up in his arms, he laid his hands of blessing on them” (Mark 10:13-16, The Message).

Jesus is the only one who can bless a life, a family, a nation, and a world with what they are so sorely missing. All he asks is that we step into his kingdom kindergarten and bring our impressionable spirit, our teachable mind, our trusting heart, and our obedient will back to his basics.

“But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light” (1 Peter 2:9, NIV).