THE DENTIST’S CHAIR is not a place I usually associate with spirituality or things of God. But it was there this morning that I learned something about who we are.
The dental hygienist was at a pause point. She was changing techniques from waterboarding, as she called it, to fingernails on the chalkboard, as I call it—scraping my teeth with a pick.
What happened next is this: I choked on a story about my son. Very embarrassing. In the dentist’s office. It’s bad enough in church.
A German connection
We were talking about my grandkids and her two daughters and her son, Birk.
I said, “You should have gone the rest of the way and called the boy Birkenstock.”
She said, “That’s German, right? We’re German.”
I asked if she had been there and told her it’s a beautiful country. Then I told her about hosting a German exchange student many years ago, when our kids were still with us and going to high school.
A sophomore’s pitch to help a friend
Our son Brad, who was a sophomore at the time, came home from school one day and asked if we could help one of his classmates, a German exchange student. The classmate was in a bad situation. His American host family, mother in particular, wasn’t kind to him. So he spent the evenings after school in his room. He lived like that into December. When the hosting organization finally found out about it, they got him out of that toxic house right away.
They temporarily put him in a large family, where he slept on the floor because space was that tight.
My son’s pitch for hosting the boy, Hannes, was that my son would give up his room for Hannes, and move into the partly finished basement.
That’s when I choked. It wasn’t so much a choking on the words as it was the memory of what kind of kids God had entrusted to my wife and I. That was all Brad. I can’t take credit for it. All I could do was to honor it.
When I tripped over my words I said, “I’m sorry.”
The young lady put her hand on my right shoulder and said, “Oh, it’s okay. I think that’s beautiful.”
And it is.
All of it. The memory. The sharing. And the touch.
Looking good behind a mask
She worked from behind a mask and wore the white uniform of the job. I wouldn’t be able to pick her out of a lineup of good doers. Yet without knowing what she looks like, I know something about who she is.
Walking out of the office and to my car in the parking garage, I wondered what she looked like behind the mask. But then it occurred to me that knowing what she looked like could get in the way of knowing who she is.
A body on gravity
My body has changed a lot over the years. I don’t much recognize what I see in the mirror anymore. And my childhood friends who show up on social media look like I remember their grandparents, all yucky and stuff.
It seems we humans have always measured one another by looks. As I just did.
Three thousand years ago, a prophet named Samuel made a trek to Bethlehem to pick a king who would follow Israel’s first king, Saul. A Bethlehem herder named Jesse had a wagonload of sons—tall, good-looking boys. But when Samuel was about to pick the wrong son, the Bible writer says God stopped him with these words:
“Don’t judge this man by how good he looks or how tall he is. I didn’t pick him. I don’t judge people like humans do. They judge by what they can see on the outside. The LORD judges by what’s on the inside—the heart with its character, integrity, and courage” (1 Samuel 16:7).
So, Samuel chose the runt of Jesse’s litter, David, the youngest.
Discovering who we are
I may not look any prettier next time I stand in front of the mirror, but I will remember this:
- My teeth are clean.
- No new cavities.
- I am who I have been. And you won’t begin to know who that is until you close your eyes and listen.
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