FRONT-PORCH GOSPEL: A ‘childlike-wonder’ lesson you’ll need today
Welcome this week to the “front porch.”
We’re talking childlike wonder for the second week in a row, and you may wonder why. There are so many worldly events to talk about right now, why this? Well, there’s the answer: There ARE so many worldly events to talk about, and what we’re about to tell you is one of the best secrets to dealing with the problems that I know.
Even as I write, the amazin’ blonde walked into my study this early-morning and told me that an acquaintance of ours from Oklahoma who just had one heart by-pass a couple of weeks ago is not going to wake up. The days have shortened. His wife said, “Two weeks ago everything was as normal as it could be, now it isn’t.”
Ah, my friends, when we look at life from that perspective, we remember why a good dose of childlike wonder is always healthy. It’s a vitamin C that you can take any time of the year, all year long. What I want to emphasize to you here is how so very easy it is to lose that inner wonder, that overwhelming deep-down feeling of seeing a home run in a sunrise and a bases-clearing double in a red rose blooming outside the door. We actually do have a beautiful big, red, rose bush right outside the back door that I can see as I write. There’s wonder for me, I guess, outside my own door. I just need to make sure some ‘wonder’ stays on the inside, too. You understand.
To remind you today to carry that great spirit with you as you go about your business, I want to take you to the 900-block of Juniper Street in LaGrange, Georgia, somewhere in the mid-1960s. I spent some of the best years of my life on that street, during that era, and you know why, I’m sure.
My big brother Wayne invented a little game of imaginary baseball that he and I must have played a thousand times. Mainly we played it separately, but at times we’d try to do it together. Our house on Juniper had some tall concrete steps leading up to it. We would stand on the edge of the street that ran in front of our house and throw a tennis ball against the steps and try to catch it. If we caught it, it was an out. If it got over our head, it might be a double or a triple. Or even a home run.
If we weren’t careful, the ball would get away from us, cross the street, and land in Mrs. Richardson’s yard. Her house was kind of in a hole, sitting a good twenty feet below ours. When the ball got by us good, it would jump the curb and roll off of a five-foot retaining wall on the edge of her yard. It was a huge drop-off. While an MLB outfielder can hurt himself crashing into the outfield wall, we could hurt ourselves by plunging down over the wall. Good ’ol childlike wonder has a few thorns mixed in with the roses, too.
Of course, any time the ball cleared Ms. Richardson’s wall it was an out-of-the-park home run. We just had to hope that it happened when our team was up to bat.
Wayne and I both gave up our share of those home runs through the years; but he was the only one to give up a tape measure home run that landed in Mrs. Richardson’s bedroom. Of course, Mrs. Richardson wasn’t too happy about having her window busted, and it ended up costing Wayne more than a little change. The commissioner (Mama) levied out the fine with a smile.
But that small hiccup didn’t deter Wayne from playing our great game. He played it until he was at least 16 years old. By that time the tennis ball had turned to a golf ball, because a golf ball could really fly! Whenever he’d throw it a little too hard, it would get over his head, bounce across the street, jump the curb, and, naturally, plunge over that five-foot wall into Ms. Richardson’s yard. Amazingly, the one busted window was the only real damage that anybody sustained in all the years we had played. Except for one other time.
One day while playing he must have thrown a fastball right down the middle of the plate, because that golf ball came off the steps like it was shot out of a cannon. Wayne thought he could track it down. He always lived by the philosophy that if Mickey Mantle could chase down fly balls in Yankee Stadium, why couldn’t he do the same in the middle of Juniper Street?
Wayne went after that golf ball that day with lightning speed. He sprinted across the street, jumped the curb, and lunged for the ball, stretching out like a runner crossing the finish line. Before he knew it, he was flying through the air and falling headlong down that five-foot drop-off.
Wayne ended up breaking his arm in a couple of different places and finding himself on the injured reserve list. But that wasn’t the worst part. It would be years later, after we both were grown, that he told me that part of the story.
“Steve,” he said with a sigh one day, just a few years ago, “after I broke my arm, I never played that game again.” I cannot help but sigh myself, even as I relate you this story to you again today.
I have to pause, just for a moment, in my writing to absorb that unfortunate end of Wayne’s great career. The game was awesome, and it must have been a distraction to a thousand problems that a young teenager of the ‘60s encountered. Too bad it ever had to end.
As I mull it all over, I can look outside the big double-glass door from my writing-spot, and I can see some dark clouds gathering there in the west. But I can also see our rosebush over by the door still blooming big as ever.
Coach Steven Bowen, a long-time Red Oak teacher and coach, now enjoys his time as a full-time writer and preacher of the gospel. In addition to his evangelistic travels, he works and writes for the Church of Christ of Red Oak at Uhl Road and Ovilla. Their worship times are 10 a.m. Sundays and 7:30 pm. Wednesdays. Email coachbowen1984@gmail.com or call or text 972-824-5197.