Grandpa adjusted his position in the seat beside his hospital bed, looked up at me and said, “Sam, I support your decision to go into the ministry but I think you need to get a haircut.”
You see, my gingery mane hadn’t seen shears since at least last May. Admittedly, there have been aspirations of hair donation (so someone else could enjoy it) before it’s all gone. Meanwhile, I’ve enjoyed the compliments of being compared to a homeless man (always quick to remind that Jesus was, in fact, homeless) as well as embracing a “No-Shave Forever” attitude that was starting to leave split-ends in my beard. Talk about apathy; in a way it felt purposeful, when in reality I was falling asleep at the wheel.
So I guess you could say it took my nearly 88 year old grandfather (he’s a Christmas baby, by the way), hospitalized with his second heart attack, on the verge of stints 6 and 7, to wake up and realize that I needed to be willing to change.
He was sure to remind me several times before I left.
I know that I’ve inherited a good deal of stubbornness from the man I was sitting beside. I don’t think you can be a dairy farmer all your life without it, and I’m sure it helps explain why I’m a distance runner. Stubbornness, has a bright side, it’s called ‘resolute’. There’s something wonderful about being resolute, it doesn’t mean that you are a stick in the mud, it simply means (in my mind at least) that you are well established, founded in truth and therefore unwavering. There’s a real beauty when it is displayed (if only for an instance, at times). I think of the husband who always walks on the side of the sidewalk closest to traffic, as a way of keeping his wife, beside him, just a little bit safer.
Stubbornness has a nasty side too–a real stick in the mud. Call it a foothold, or a stronghold, it’s an aspect of life which we aren’t willing(or ready) to change.
Take it away, C. S. Lewis:
“Christ says, “Give me All. I don’t want so much of your time and so much of your money and so much of your work: I want You. I have not come to torment your natural self, but to kill it. No half-measures are any good…Hand over the whole natural self, all the desires which you think innocent as well as the ones you think wicked–the whole outfit. I will give you a new self instead. In fact, I will give you Myself: my own will shall become yours.”
We can stand resolute on a Savior who remains unchanging. I have a feeling that will mean waking up and realizing the need to change, the willingness to change. Maybe that starts with a haircut–my barber hardly recognized me. Maybe it ends with a transformation.
What does that look like for you?
