“Christians have won an insufferable reputation for always dispensing answers, even when no one has a question.”
Os Guinness
Well, my mom was one tough cookie!
She was raised to be tough: Daughter of two German farmers who moved to a working-class neighborhood in Dayton, Ohio. Her mom was a waitress at a bar while her dad worked in a factory. My mom had to take the public bus to school and landed a job as a secretary immediately out of High School. She pretty much raised herself. So you could say, she grew up in the tough German school of hard knocks.
Needless to say, raising six kids for her was a piece of cake. I was the easiest one of those kids, I was also the youngest, the baby boy. My sisters still claim I was her favorite. Why shouldn’t I be? I was the cutest, the happiest, the smartest and most peace-loving. I was the most humble too!
So with a barrel-full of kids scampering around the house, she would be busy cleaning, cooking and watching “As The World Turns”. She also would rarely answer the front door when people came calling. If she wasn’t expecting a friend over, it was her habit to ignore the “Ding-Dong” of our loud, annoying doorbell. She told us not to answer it if it was a stranger; because more than likely it was one of the irritating Encyclopedia pushers, or Kirby vacuum cleaner sales nuts – – and she didn’t have the time or patience to listen to some lousy sales pitch.
For all intents and purposes, the Weeks’ front door was considered “Closed for Business” to all unwanted visitors during the day. My German mom had better things to do.
That is until that fateful day when the whole Treemont Fire Department came knocking in earnest on our front door…seven strangers outfitted in full fire gear, knock, knock, knocking on our front door – – a group my mom was more than willing and ready to open the front door, back door and second floor window to. Here is what happened:
And then I had to go to the bathroom. I slogged up the stairs to the second-floor bathroom, closed the door, and locked it. The oak doors of our house were well made, and they also had a solid locking system that took a double turn of the bolt to secure it. I sat on the toilet, did my business, and then got ready to go back downstairs to do some more four-year-old things. I think I even washed my hands this time?
But when I tried to open the door to leave, it wouldn’t budge. It was locked – – and I forgot how to unlock it. I may have been a cute little guy, but I wasn’t yet the brilliant problem solver that I am now. I was only four, give me a break! Anyhow, after many attempts, I started pounding, screaming and crying,
“Mom, I am stuck! Mom, I am locked in! Mom, I am going to die! Mom, H-E-L-P !”
Did I mention, I was also a bit dramatic? My mom came running and tried to open the door from the outside. It wouldn’t budge. There was no way to unlock it from the outside. Talk about security, they sure did know how to make a door back in the day. Being a good non-emotional German, she was calm under pressure…but I wasn’t, I had a lot of my dad’s Italian/Polish passion. “Mom, get me out of here!”
She tried to explain to me how to turn the bolt, but it still wouldn’t move. And plus it was hard to see through my stream of hot tears. I tried and cried, tried and cried. Nothing. My sisters even came up to help calm me through the door. But to no avail – – I was an inconsolable wreck.
This went on for a good hour. But the door remained closed, and I remained trapped in the upstairs bathroom alone. Poor little desperate guy…it still breaks my heart thinking about it.
A brilliant idea popped into my mom’s head, “I will call the fire department, they will know what to do.” After she made the call, in mere minutes you could hear the wailing & whirring of the fire truck siren come screaming down the street, “YEee, YEee, YEee – – HOOONNK, HOOONNNK!” The whole department came to the rescue for a four-year-old boy trapped.
While one team knocked on each entrance, front door, back door, side door; another team got out a giant ladder and extended it to the second-floor window. They all were outfitted with both axe and helmet. One brave firefighter climbed the ladder, and when he reached the window, luckily it was unlatched and he opened it with ease. He jumped through the window with extreme bravery.
In the flash of a quick second, he found me. There I was, calmly playing marbles in our old porcelain bathtub.
I guess I found something to do that a four-year-old loves to do, play with marbles in the bathtub – – I forgot all about my terrible, horrible predicament. I looked up at the fireman and said, “Hi, want to play marbles?”
The deft firefighter walked over to the door, and with the quick flip of the lock, it sprung open and my worried mom ran in to get her son with relief and gratitude. My sisters all laughed at me with cynical unbelief, “We were worried sick, and you are playing marbles? Figures!!!” All was well!
Do you realize, you can’t open the front door until people behind it are desperate? Do you realize the gospel can’t enter into a heart until that heart is asking for it?
Os Guinness in his book on Apologetics writes this, “…in our age most people are untroubled rather than unreached, unconcerned rather than unconvinced, and they need questions as much as answers – or questions that raise questions that require answers that prompt people to become genuine seekers.” Pascal said in his ‘Pensees’ one of the main tasks of the Christian teacher is, “to arouse in man the desire to find truth.”
My German mom kept her front door closed to the knocking of the outside entreaties of the public, that is, until her little boy was trapped and she needed help. And then, because of her personal unsolvable dilemma, she was more than willing to open the door to those who had the answers she needed.
As enlightened Christians, we do have the answers, but no one is asking because they think they are doing just fine. Our job in this smug age of luxury and distraction is not to prove we have the right answers as much as to awaken people to their internal desperation. Everyone needs Jesus, they just don’t know it. But when crisis comes calling, people will be hungry for God’s peace; and they will find in the gospel a boy playing marbles in the bathtub. The soft and kind grace of God has always been there waiting. Most people are just too closed to it to appreciate it!
Ironically, people are in need of a real crisis to bring them to God’s peace. And until the crisis comes, the doorbell will never be answered. Your job, my Christian friend, is to arouse desire and desperation in the hearts of those around you, and until then, all doors will be as solidly locked as a second-floor bathroom door was for my mom.
A boy, a marble and a bathtub. I never knew my silly four-year-old ways could open up such windows of wisdom? I guess sometimes it takes 47 years to see it?
