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MAKING EVERY MOMENT COUNT #2

ASK NOT . . . WHAT YOU CAN PUT OFF FOR LATER

It’s a bit startling to realize that even the great Christian giant, Billy Graham, can look back on his life . . . and have regrets.  In his autobiography, Just As I Am, he shares some marvelous stories of the conversations he’s had over the years with various world leaders — including every American president from Truman right down to Bill Clinton, who has just these few weeks left at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.  But almost exactly 40 years ago now, when a young senator from Massachusetts was about to assume the presidency, Billy and John F. Kennedy were riding back to the Kennedy estate in Massachusetts.  All at once, the president-elect stopped the car and asked Billy a question.  “Do you believe in the Second Coming of Jesus Christ?”

Well, that was an easy one.  And Billy gave the correct Voice of Prophecy answer!  “I most certainly do,” he said.  And JFK asked him: “Well, does my church teach it?  They don’t preach about it very much.”  Graham, always kind and optimistic in his dealings with others, said, “They have it in their creeds.”

And right there in the car, these two men had a discussion about the Bible.  Billy Graham told the soon-to-be-president about how Jesus came the first time, died on the Cross, was resurrected on the third day, returned to heaven, and promised that he would return.  “And Mr. President,” he said, “that’s the only way we’re ever going to have world peace.”  Later, as Kennedy grappled with the Cuban missile crisis and other global catastrophes, the words of Billy Graham must have rung in his ears many times.  But before Kennedy started the car up again, he said to Billy: “This is really interesting.  We’re going to have to talk more about that someday.”  And they drove on.

Well, that’s not the end of the story.  Several years later, actually in 1963 now — and does that date ring a bell for anyone with an interest in all things relating to Camelot? — the two men met again, this time at a prayer breakfast.  Unfortunately, Billy had the flu — a pretty bad case of it.  He managed to stagger through his devotional at the hotel, and after it was over, Kennedy very thoughtfully invited Pastor Graham to walk out with him to where the presidential limousine was waiting.  When they got there, the president said: “Billy, could you ride back to the White House with me?  I’d like to see you for a minute.”

Well, it was snowing that morning, and it was freezing out there by the curb.  And Billy, already feeling lousy, with no overcoat, said to him: “Mr. President, I’ve got a fever.  Not only am I weak, but I don’t want to give you this thing.  Couldn’t we wait and talk some other time?”

President Kennedy very graciously said, “Of course.  No problem, Billy.  Later will be fine.”

Well, what was it America’s 35^th president wanted to talk about with Billy Graham?  Maybe just some small political issue.  Then again, maybe he wanted to talk about Jesus Christ, and his own deep spiritual needs.  Maybe this dynamic, charismatic man — the most powerful person in the world — was sensing a void in the core of his own soul.  What did he want to talk to Billy about?  But:  “Later will be fine.”

And you know, before the two men would ever meet again face to face . . . November 22 came with the horrors of Dallas and the Texas School Book Depository.  So it was a conversation that never happened.  And Billy Graham writes in his book:

“His hesitation at the car door, and his request, haunt me still.”  (And of course, this is almost 40 years later.)  “What was on his mind?  Should I have gone with him?  It was an irrecoverable moment.”

Well, we have as our title for this Christmas week of programs, MAKING EVERY MOMENT COUNT.  Especially thinking about the fact that life is made up of these moments.  In fact, a person’s life is made up of small moments, small nudges.  Going back to 1960, who knows what impact it had when Billy Graham said to this young president-elect that he certainly did believe in the second coming of Jesus?  That there was going to come a day when peace would reign on earth: not because of brilliant White House strategies, or visionary Senate bills, Salt II treaties, but because Jesus was going to return?

You know, speaking of the return of Jesus, and the Christian Church’s belief in eternal, everlasting life, those doctrines simply magnify the importance of these nudges.  In fact, the impact of the smallest nudge absolutely explodes when you realize that the person you’re affecting — ever so slightly — is going to maybe live for a forever of time.  A million years, a billion, a trillion.  And some word said by you, some kind deed, some expression of faith — just the slightest hint — could start the chain reaction that gives them that eternity in the kingdom of heaven.

In his book, The Weight of Glory, C. S. Lewis writes with incredulity about the realization that these people all around us, grocery store clerks, teenagers on skateboards — well, that was before his time, I guess — housewives, factory workers . . . have within them this potential of forever.  The slightest nudge might quietly roll from a snowball into a future Mount Everest.  Here’s how he puts it:

“It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses” — that’s with small “g”s, to be sure — “to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare.”

In other words, all of us are on our way toward becoming like God, or like the devil.  But now Lewis goes on, and this next remark hits me in the chest, not just a little bit, but as a daily, hourly, constant reality in my own life.  Notice:

“All day long we are, in some degree, helping each other to one or other of these destinations.  It is in the light of these overwhelming possibilities, it is with the awe and the circumspection proper to them, that we should conduct all our dealings with one another, all friendships, all loves, all play, all politics.  There are no ordinary people.  You have never talked to a mere mortal.  Nations, cultures, arts, civilizations — these are mortal and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat.  But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit — immortal horrors or everlasting splendors.”

What do you think about that?  A world government – I’ll use my own United States of America – may last a few centuries, is all.  America’s coming up on Birthday #225, just a flicker of time, really.  While a person, a son of daughter of God, lives forever.  So which is more important?

Imagine meeting a kid on the street.  And what if, as you look at that innocent face as he chews gum, you could suddenly see that someday he was going to be the president.  Or let’s push it beyond that.  You see that he’s going to live forever.  He’s going to grow more and more and more godlike, become more like the design God Himself intended when that kid was formed in the womb.  And right now, this moment, this gum-chewing moment, that kid in front of you, with his baseball hat on backwards and his “Go Chicago Bulls” T-shirt, is going to interact with you for just the next 60 seconds.  What you say, how you treat him, even the look on your face, will give the smallest nudge.  Maybe a nudge toward godliness . . . a nudge which, when you factor in the effect of compound interest — we mentioned that yesterday — will someday grow into something unbelievable.

Now friend, this doesn’t mean that we have to freak out.  All this “eternity - momentum - everlasting consequences” talk doesn’t mean that every word out of our mouths is thunder and lightning.  In fact, C. S. Lewis goes right on to address this.  Notice:

“This does not mean that we are to be perpetually solemn.  We must play.  But our merriment must be of that kind (and it is, in fact, the merriest kind) which exists between people who have, from the outset, taken each other seriously — no flippancy, no superiority, no presumption.  And our charity must be a real and costly love, with deep feelings for the sins in spite of which we love the sinner — no mere tolerance or indulgence which parodies love as flippancy parodies merriment.  Next to the Blessed Sacrament itself” — the bread and the wine — “your neighbor is the holiest object presented to your senses.  If he is your Christian neighbor he is holy in almost the same way, for in him also Christ vere latitat — the glorifier and the glorified, Glory Himself, is truly hidden.”

That’s a long, heavy piece of writing; I know that.  And maybe it suffices us to notice that right at the end, we find a restatement of what Jesus Himself said.  “You bless that kid with the baseball hat,” He said, “and you’re blessing Me.  Because that boy, needing direction, needing encouragement, needing a kind word, an instructive word, will someday, if set on the right path, actually be Christlike.  He can either become, in God’s kingdom, like Jesus Christ.  Or become, in Satan’s dominion, like that master instead.”

So we see people out there.  Their lives intersecting with our own. And here and there we just remind ourselves, “Ripples . . . become waves.”  Or, as I’m sure Billy Graham would agree, “Now . . . not later.”