Earthly Loss Is Heavenly Gain: The Rewards of Faithful Suffering | Desiring God
Thursday, December 21, 2023
Wednesday, December 20, 2023
Monday, December 18, 2023
Saturday, December 16, 2023
How Do You Know If You've Earned Another Man's (Samson Or Otherwise) Respect?
When men begin sharing intimately regarding their passions, you've earned their respect. And this is particularly true when their passions DO NOT ALIGN WITH YOUR OWN.
Why is this relational development such the bellwether?
When a man loops in another to something HE KNOWS his friend isn't necessarily interested in, he's increasingly risking rejection (to some degree or another) by doing so. There is nothing men fear more than rejection from other men. As such, risking that with someone he's very much not wanting to ward off, implies that trust is concretizing between the two men.
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It was right around this time of year in 2015 that I acquired my first Silas. Not long afterwards, he had my family over for a New Year's dinner party. I remember this so vividly because my father-in-law had passed away not long before (the previous month), and though I wasn't at all close to this man, my wife certainly had been. As such, she was still in an emotional fog. Regardless, she did her darndest to be present / interested, but overall, she did not care to participate therein relative to this exciting (MY FIRST SILAS!) time for Rob.
Why was this (dinner party) a big reveal for my Silas?
He had an outrageously large family (I, of course, knew this going in, but seeing is believing). So large, in fact, that there was great risk that we would react (understandably) in a way that was obviously uncomfortable / stigmatizing to all of / in front of them. But we did not. Instead, we had a lovely time, and from there, his trust / comfort level in me grew exponentially.
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A year or so after this, I became a Silas to a much younger man who'd been so brave to seek professional help for his ongoing struggle with chronic Internet porn consumption. This fortunately had led him to our in-person Samson Society group.
Eventually, he and I both began attending a spin-off face-to-face Samson group, and in tandem with that routine, each Sunday afternoon, in advance of this meeting, we'd rendezvous at a local restaurant in order to hang-out.
At this time, I was busy studying for Securities licensing exams. Therefore, I'd often situate myself at this eatery well in advance of his scheduled arrival (in order to study).
But it was this regularly scheduled hanging out that he no doubt loved. It taught me that there's truly an art to hanging out (even as an adult).
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Pursuing a position of church leadership was another Samson guy's present passion. We talked extensively about whether he rightly should be qualified therein. From there, he submitted himself to the process of being examined before (or maybe after) being formally elected by the congregation. I learned a tremendous amount about what it meant to be Presbyterian even though he attended a Baptist church.
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Tattoos for some guys, particularly law enforcement types, are integral to their identity as masculine men. I served as a Silas to a Samson guy who immediately made this crystal clear to Rob. He would talk about not just the designs themselves but when and where and how (experientally) he received the inking. And it was the latter that was truly sacred to this man. For those experiences were tactile, supercharging the intimacy involved during the hours and hours it took for them to be executed. In turn, this made these designs precious in his eyes.
Photos that he would text to me of men who were inked were respectfully received. For though I'd no real interest in tattoos, I learned so much about him via the sacredness of this portion of his identity as an officer of the law.
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I'm a teetotaler, but I drank my fair share of craft beers whilst serving as another man's Silas. He knew and appreciated craft beers to the degree that I do automobiles (which is fairly extensively). To him, craft beer represented the ultimate in an uber-cool, relaxing, refreshing beverage. Nonetheless, I never could successfully down an entire container, but I never once struggled swallowing - my very intentional gulps of - what tasted (to me) like burnt water.
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Never in a million years would I have imagined the opportunity to tangibly support my officiating Silas. Whether it was a single or double-header, I'd stay to watch him make calls relative to the high school / community college baseball teams competing. He even once officiated in the Mississippi Braves stadium (good times!). This same Samson guy introduced me to CrossFit, even allowing me to accompany him to a CrossFit competition in South MS during the heart of the pandemic. I took the opportunity to take a number of crappy photos of he and his partner competing well, enjoying my time outright all the way up 'till their team were declared the victors.
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Whether it's music, sports, fitness, booze, hunting / fishing, inked body parts, writing (poetry, essays), and on and on, all of these passions may very well qualify relative to the complicated makeup of your friend.
If you're smart, you'll recognize the opportunity when it's presented via respectfully embracing this portion of your friend at face value by asking curiously about its personal origins. From there, attempt to insert yourself therein as a means to tangibly support this powerful identifier. Respect will then begin to deeply take root. Trust me, it never fails.
Friday, December 15, 2023
Thursday, December 14, 2023
The Harsh Reality of Xmas (Re-post)
We live in a day and age of deeper and deeper still - personal lifestyle facades. Facades that we work to constantly perfect to the point that we actually begin to believe they're our reality, and I suppose eventually a facade, if it ends up deep enough, will serve to replace reality itself. Wait a minute, nope. That's not possible. Scratch that.
In the past, it was consumerism that fed this pursuit of lifestyle facade construction, but today, it's also social media and any / all forms of technology that serve to buttress our camouflage.
The end-of-the-year holiday season can serve to ramp up that work on said facades when in actuality, there's tremendous experiential pain going on behind the scenes. I became aware of this as a teen right around this time of year when there presented itself a breach in my serendipitous reality one Xmas eve. Read on.
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When I was a boy, my father spent Thursdays out of town (in the MS Delta) for business, and often wouldn't return home 'till late Thursday night. On one particular Thursday night where he was absent from the homestead, my mother and I were spending the evening watching Christmas television programming in the den (or TV room). The home in Madison I was reared within was +/-1,800 square feet, therefore like the abode I reside in today, a loud enough yell or scream would easily resonate throughout. The den was on the east end of this ranch house with a "formal" living / dining room on the front (north side). That "formal" room was always cordoned off since it was "reserved for social gatherings".
Our TV consumption was interrupted when we heard something that sounded like a knocking on our front door (which was only accessible through the living / dining room). My mother noticed it first. This motivated me to investigate.
I remember just as soon as I breached the "formal" part of our abode, I heard a very loud banging on our front door along with muffled cries from someone on the opposite side. The solid core door had an arched glass window close to its head, but it was too tall to see out of. Nor were there any windows within close proximity to peer through prior to opening the door. I wasn't sure how to proceed so I hesitated.
I remember clearly the harsh white light streaming through that arched door window into the dark living / dining room. The source of that light was the ground mounted PAR lamp out in front of our door. This cheap lighting stunt was the typical suburban attempt to ring in the season by highlighting your home's Xmas entrance décor. At this point in time, I found myself leaning against the back of the door attempting to hear more from the other side, wishing all the while that my father were home to handle this (more and more) frightening situation.
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So, I eventually opened the door, and what I witnessed changed my perception of Xmas forever.
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An athletically built white teenager was crouching on our stoop in obvious emotional and physical distress. There was no doubt in my mind that he needed help, but in that moment, as we stared at one another, neither of us could even begin to fathom how best to clearly articulate anything of any substance. Nonetheless, this strange teen he'd ended up at our door, and he looked to be on the run from something or someone. And here I was peering out at him awestruck.
The next thing I remember was a station wagon coming to a screeching halt at the STOP sign in front of our house. It slid to a stop due to the street being slick from an early evening rain. When I attempted to take a closer look at it, despite the harsh glare of the floodlight, I made out the driver frantically exiting the vehicle right there in the street. The man rushed around the back of the car before sprinting towards the teenage boy through our small front yard.
All the while, the boy was continuing to plead for help, but when he became aware of his impending doom, his pleas turned to stark panic. At this point, time seemed to stand still, and I became frozen as I watched this bizarre scene unfold.
Within seconds, the man had the boy by the back of his coat, lifting him with ease off of our front stoop. From there, he dragged him back to the station wagon prior to tossing him into the backseat. The teenage boy went kicking and screaming all the way as the man repeatedly punched him in the head with his fist as he yelled obscenities at him.
Then I remember the car speeding away, but only after the man glared back at me right before opening the driver side door. What little I could make out of his looking at me was a combination of both threat and satisfaction.
By now, my mother was also in our front room, standing silently not far behind. From what I recall, she only witnessed what she could see from within the room itself. Eventually, I turned back to her, and we found ourselves standing there in stunned silence for a few seconds wondering what exactly had just happened.
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This was no doubt a once in a lifetime event. Madison, at the time, was countryside. Few people lived there, and those that did were church-going, lower to lower-middle class folks. Even today, I wonder why this boy picked our house to look for help, and of course, the greater question is why didn't I choose to respond in lieu of simply standing there like a pansy? It would have been so easy to simply let him inside our house, locking the door behind us. There was plenty of time for me to execute a rescue.
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My mother and I continued to look at each other without saying a word, and from there, both of us did the most shameful thing I care to admit to here. We returned to the den on the east side of the house prior to locking the front door and settled back in to watching television on our 19" Toshiba CRT. There was no telephone call to law enforcement. No discussion regarding the incident with my father. Nothing. The event was treated by us as if it had actually only existed as part of our TV programming.
Why?
Because we were too busy existing within our facade, and what we had just been sucked into didn't "fit" within that artificial construct. And this reflects perfectly of my entire growing up years and how shallow they truly were. It was like living within a Norman Rockwell painting in so many ways. A very deeply unoriginal Norman Rockwell painting.
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Xmas is a harsh, difficult, uncaring, brutally wicked time of year for so many folks, and all of these negative superlatives seem to only ramp up during the holidays in contrast to the traditional merrymaking. But, this ugly truth is so often hidden from view until you have it show up on your suburban doorstep.
If this reality decrees itself within your world during this Xmas season, don't cower away as I chose to do. Instead, come to the rescue of those in need. Open the damn door, swing it wide, and let the suffering inside for safe keeping. To hell with the devils of this world, but especially here at Xmas.
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