RandomPokesMosquito Bites in the DarknessSteve Dennie
Before Pam and I bought a house, I never stepped foot in such places as Builder's Enormous Square and Lowe's Handyman Paradise. Living in an apartment, my only major handyman job was putting together a Souder bookshelf, a task I could accomplish in one winter. My tools consisted of a $14.95 set of fully bendable screwdrivers, complete with play hacksaw and hammer, acquired via mail order from LTD.
But then we had to go buy a house, and suddenly I found myself awash in complex mechanical and construction chores, such as replacing the lawn mower spark plug and filling the water softener, each of which required a totally different tool. As a result, I now find myself trekking regularly to Lowe's. I purposefully walk the aisles noting advances in paintbrush technology, testing the balance of hammers, admiring the futuristic design of cordless drills, and inspecting the knotting and warping of 2-by-4s. I look like I know what I'm doing, like I've done guest appearances on Tool Time. Especially if I wear a Craftsman cap.
Recently, I bought several things at Lowe's, each one crucial to some new project (such as installing a nail on which to hang the flyswatter). As I placed everything in the trunk, I noticed, hidden in the cart under a board (you can never have too many boards), a little plastic container of tacks which got overlooked by the cashier. A mere 95 cents. Lowe's wouldn't miss it. But, of course, you know what I did, being the honest Christian sort. I took it back. Otherwise I wouldn't be writing about it.
Just inside the front door was a young lady doing her Hi Welcome to Lowes Do You Want a Cart thing, a job invented in a secret lab at Wal-Mart. I handed her the pack of tacks.
"This was hidden in my cart and didn't get paid for," I told her. "I don't need it now, so just put it back on the shelf."
She stared at me with an incredulous expression, and then said, "You're so sweeeeet!"
That is not something a guy wants to be told, in public, in a hardware store. I knew I should have worn my Craftsman cap.
The New Yorker recently published excerpts from the diary of Victor Klemperer, a Jew who survived World War II living in Dresden, Germany. Though he had converted to Christianity and married a non-Jew, in Hitler's eyes he was a Jew and deserving of the sufferings that went with it. Being in a mixed marriage is what saved him from the gas chambers.
Klemperer kept a diary from 1933 until the end of World War II. His purpose was to record the everyday indignities he observed. He wrote of the sudden house searches, during which everything would be ransacked and his wife would get slapped around. Of being forbidden to drive a vehicle. Of wearing the Star of David in public, and being derided by schoolchildren. Of being cast from his own home merely for being a Jew.
During one house search, the soldiers came very close to finding his diary stuck in the pages of a Greek dictionary. That would have meant his death. "But I shall go on writing. That is my heroism. I want to give evidence, precise evidence," he wrote.
Somebody told Klemperer that nobody cared about the little things he wrote about, and that he knew nothing of the things that truly mattered--Auschwitz, the exterminations in Kiev, Treblinka. Klemperer responded, "It's not the big things that are important, but the everyday life of tyranny, which gets forgotten. A thousand mosquito bites are worse than a blow to the head. I observe, note down the mosquito bites."
Taking back those tacks was like a mosquito bite on Satan's thick hide. It was a small, small victory for Righteousness. But it mattered to God, and it probably irritated Satan that I bothered. Made him slap his neck at the pin-prick.
Some people accomplish really "big" things for the Lord. The Apostle Paul, John Wesley, Billy Graham--they are giants chosen to do giant things. We've had some giants in our own denomination. I think of bishops Christian Newcomer and Clyde Meadows, of missionaries like Y. T. Chiu, Archie Cameron, and Dewitt Baker. They've torn big chunks out of the darkness.
But most of us lead a more ordinary Christian life of inflicting mosquito bites. But that pleases God, too. Very much.
I'm always drawn to people who do little things without fanfare or notice. When Dad was a pastor in Pixley, Calif., every couple years a local mechanic would show up at the house and say, "I'm supposed to put four new tires on your car." We never learned who was paying to have this done. But somebody in the church kept an eye on our treadsÉand saved this poor pastor's family a lot of money.
When I'm with missionaries, I often hear, "Do you know so-and-so? She writes us a letter every week." These so-and-so's are typically very ordinary people in ordinary churches, persons who get up in the morning with a missionary in far-off Brazil or Australia on their mind, and they write a letter and send up a prayer.
There are all kinds of mosquito bites. Not honking that car horn in anger. Mailing $20 to a college student. Sending an encouraging email to someone, anyone. Getting acquainted with that new couple who are standing by themselves in the foyer, feeling uncomfortable. Turning away when a coworker starts telling a dirty joke.
There are people--every church needs one or two--who keep an eye on the church facilities, and will show up to paint a spout or repair a railing, buying supplies from their own pocket. Nobody else sees or knows. But Satan reaches for the Off.
Nearly every aspect of our work in Honduras bears the mark of Archie Cameron, who has spent nearly 50 years living there. My heroes have always been missionaries, and Archie is one of them. Who are his heroes? One is Betty Brown, a single missionary from a small UB church in Illinois who spent 20 years in Honduras, up until 1969.
"Everybody saw Betty as a Godly woman," Archie told me. "I always characterized her as a person who really lived 'I am crucified with Christ.' Although she did great things--she ran the school well, she trained girls, she worked in the bookstore--she was always in the background doing all the little things that no one else would do, helping in every way.
"Betty's greatest contribution was just all the little things that she did. She would wrap up a bottle of Coke to give somebody for a birthday. I wouldn't do that, because that's too small, but it wasn't too small for Betty. And you can imagine how much that person appreciated that bottle of Coke."
While Archie was ripping great chunks out of the Honduran darkness of the 1950s and 1960s, Betty was pecking away with mosquito bites, and making a difference. There are few Archies among us. But there are many Bettys.
Copyright 2005 Steve Dennie |
