A MIDSUMMER KNIGHT
It makes perfect sense for those who’ve been given a
wondrous gift to be grateful for it and, all things being equal, for them to
think highly of the one who gave it to them. It’s no surprise that they will
praise the generosity of the giver and the costliness of the gift. But it would
distasteful if the giver went on and on and on about how much it cost him and
how good it was of him to make the gesture.
Can you imagine being invited to a sumptuous meal of the
tastiest and most nutritious things in the nicest of company and having to
listen to the host explain it minute detail—not once but over and over
again—how much trouble and how much expense she had to go to to produce the
grand spread? (Could you enjoy a meal, however fine it is, under such
circumstances?) Everyone knows that such matters should be left to the guests
to winkle out of the reluctant host who is all the while saying things like,
“Really, it was nothing!” “Honestly, it was no trouble.” Such a host isn’t
lying; she’s simply expressing her pleasure at having the opportunity to go out
of her way to please and it is precisely because she will not make a big thing
of it that the guests think so much of her and her efforts.
There is something Christ-like in that spirit. We have no
record of Jesus setting his disciples down and telling them how good it is of
him to do for them and others what he is doing and going to do. “If only you
could know how much this is all costing me, but, alas, no one can appreciate
the depths to which I have descended. If I could only make you understand…”
None of that. That others do some of that is no surprise, but even they are
sparing in how they deal with that aspect of the Lord’s sacrifice and we aren’t
left to feel so overwhelmed by his trouble that we can’t enjoy the gift of life
he gives us to enjoy and express. Now that we’ve come to know him it’s the kind
of thing we expect from him.
O’Henry tells of Gaines, “the man who said he thought New
York was the finest summer resort in the country.” While others moaned and
melted in the heat, dived for the shade or an electric fan, and wished for the
mountains, he mocked the notion of going to the woods to eat canned goods from
the city, being wakened in the morning by a million flies, getting soaked to
the skin catching the tiniest fish and struggling up perpendicular cliffs. No
sir, he preferred to stay at home. If he wanted fish, he’d go to a cool
restaurant—home comforts, that’s what he chose, while the fools spent half
their summer driving to and from their spartan locations with all the modern
inconveniences.
A friend urged him to come with him for two weeks to
Beaverkill, where the fish were jumping at anything that even looked like a
fly. He said a mutual friend, Harding, had caught a three-pound brown trout—but
Gaines was having none of it. “Nonsense!” he’d snort and then off to his office
to plunge himself into a mountain of work until late in the afternoon when,
with feet up on his desk, he mused to himself: “I wonder what kind of bait
Harding used.”
The man who said he thought that New York was the finest
summer resort in the country dozed off in the stifling heat, was wakened by his
mail-bringing clerk, and decided to take a quick look before he left for the
day. A few lines of one of them said:
My Dear Dear
Husband:
Just
received your letter ordering us to stay another month...Rita’s cough is almost
gone...Johnny has gone wild like a little Indian...it will be the making of
both children...work so hard, and I know that your business can hardly afford
to keep us here so long...best man that ever...you always pretend that you like
the city in summer...trout fishing that you used to be so fond of...and all to
keep us well and happy...come to you if it were not doing the babies so much
good...I stood last evening on Chimney Rock in exactly the same spot...when you
put the wreath of roses on my head...said you would be my true knight...have
always been that to me...ever and ever.
The man who said he thought New York was the finest
summer resort in the country, on his way home in the sweltering summer heat,
dropped into a cafe and had a glass of warm beer under an electric fan. “Wonder
what kind of a fly old Harding used,” he murmured to himself.
I love it when those in love sometimes “tell lies”
gallantly. They say things no one believes—least of all themselves. They’re
forever making sacrifices—some large, some little—to make life easier, finer, lovelier,
for those they love. They’re in love and they do what lovers have done in every
age down the centuries—they give themselves in whatever ways their love and
situation calls for. And they do it without trumpets blowing or affected
sweetness and they don’t wear pained expressions. They’d almost convince you
that they really did believe that New
York City was the finest summer resort in America.
[Quoted from my little book called Let Me Count The Ways with permission from Howard Publishing
Company, West Monroe, Louisiana, 2001]
©2004 Jim McGuiggan. All materials are free to be copied and used as long as money is not being made.
Many thanks to brother Ed Healy, for allowing me to post from his website, theabidingword.com.