Category: 500 Words

As I approach the “official” age of being considered an old man I find myself recalling the events of my life. More and more often, as I move through my daily life a phrase or an action by a young person will trigger a vision in my mind of myself, a much more cocky and immature self, performing or saying the same activity or phrase many years ago. 

Most often the memory isn’t one that casts a favorable light. I don’t know if that is a sign of the times or just God reminding me of what an idiot I used to be, and still am according to many.

But these glimpses into my past seem to have a silver lining. They seem to be reminding me of the things I’ve overcome, the challenges I’ve faced and answered, and the rewards that have been bestowed on me by the road that I’ve travelled.

There is a poem by Robert Frost called, “The Road Not Taken.”

Most people believe it is an endorsement of individualism and a call to forging your own path in life. That was not the intent of its author.

The unintentional meaning of his poem is however applicable to my life. I’ve taken the road less travelled at most every turn. I’ve forged new trails and explored most every whim that I’ve had. I’ve felt the loss from a misguided love, chased after dream after dream and failed at most. I’ve won and lost and learned to make the best from both outcomes. 

I’ve become a pro at believing in God’s providence. He’s taken care of me every time I was in want of a meal or an encouraging word through coincidences beyond coincidence, synchronicities are what Carl Jung called them.

The road less traveled is not easy, neither is the road well traveled. Life is hard for all of us but in the later years of life, it seems, what was once difficult has become simple and life ups the ante at every triumph to push us into a new adventure, forcing us out of our comfort whether we want it or not.

Older years present challenges that my younger self never imagined. Friends, parents, siblings, and cultural icons begin to die at closer intervals. Our bodies no longer function with the efficiency and ease that they did before. Children move away and seem to forget about us, though I know they don’t in fact, it still feels like it.

Challenges, both physical and psychological, become more harsh as life increases its pressure, unforgivingly pushing us closer and closer to death.

But the capacity to withstand that pressure increases as well. 

Oddly, the things that I remember most… are not the victories…

The things that I remember most… are the battles. The battles fought and challenges met, whether won or lost, have prepared me for the new battles that life is giving me. Hardship has forged my will into an instrument that can respond to adversity rather than run from it. 

I hear the words of young people saying, “It’s too hard” or “I can’t.”

And my thoughts turn to myself as a young man believing the same things. But the truth is that it doesn’t matter if you can do something or whether it’s too hard because life will arrange itself in a way that will make it necessary for you to fight. There is no “safe place” to hide. Life will find you.

But the good news is… whether you want to or not… you will become capable of withstanding the pressure… as the world slowly turns you into a diamond… by squeezing all of the weakness out of you… one day at a time.

But what do I know? I’m just a dummygod.

I’m a Christian, a follower of Christ. I believe in God and I’m always running into people who ask me to prove that God exists. They call themselves atheists.

But it isn’t my burden to prove to them that God exists… because that’s impossible. If they want proof that God exists, they must prove it to themselves. Unfortunately, all that most of them are looking for is reassurance that they are right about His absence.

Recently I was involved in, let’s say, an altercation with an atheist. Her contention was that if I wanted her to believe in God I needed to prove to her that He was real.

She didn’t like my answer.

My answer was, “I can’t swing the hammer for you.”

“What does that mean?” She shot back. 

I don’t know why atheists are always angry. 

She didn’t know the story behind the statement but I’m going to let you in on it.

I like to do a little blacksmithing here and there. Nothing major. Just wall hooks and hinges. Occasionally I’ll do something like a table or an ornamental fire screen or a tangle of vines climbing over a set of kitchen cabinets… you know… little stuff.

I’ve been blacksmithing, as a hobby, and sporadically for commissions for about 38 years. I’ve swung the hammer many times in that span, bent a lot of steel, and learned how to persuade the metal to move where my imagination wants it to go. The skill has been hard won and I am proud of the prowess that I’ve developed over time.

Many young men have come by over the years and asked if I could teach them how to do what I do, and my answer has always been yes, but I don’t believe that I have ever actually taught any of them to do what I can do with a hammer. 

They want to be creators and skilled craftsmen but all of them lack the simplest ingredient. They don’t have the will to be failures first. They expect to be able to watch a video or listen to an explanation and then be able to do it, first try, no failures. They’re looking for shortcuts. 

They usually come to the forge with a primitive knife or hook that they’ve made in some forge somewhere that looks very similar to the first knives and hooks that I made. 

I tell them, “That’s great! Now go make a million more.”

“What?” is the usual reply. “Can’t you teach me?”

And they never like the answer, “Looks like you already know how to make a knife. Now practice making it better til it looks like the picture you have in your head. It’s as simple as that. You have to swing the hammer.”

You can’t become a master without being a novice for a long time and the master will tell you, if you ask him, that he is not a master. He is trying to become the Master. He swings his hammer and listens to what the Master whispers to him. He forges on through trial and error and failure after failure doing his best to become even a fraction as good as the true Master Craftsman, God. He’ll tell you that every new project teaches him something. He must fail over and over again until he finds the secret combination of force and faith that allows the vision in his mind to become something tangible and real. 

Every day the master becomes a novice again. He knows how to fail gracefully.

The teacher has swung the hammer and he knows that he must keep swinging it every day until he dies.

The student has not.

When my atheist friend challenged me to “prove” the existence of God she thought that she had swung the hammer of faith and learned that there is no God. She doesn’t realize that if she looks for Him and wants Him in her life He will be there… but SHE has to be the one to swing the hammer.