Last night I was on a train for a couple of hours (too long a story). With two seats facing two seats, I was knee to knee to knee to knee with a fifty-something man who was working hard on a conversation with the man sitting next to him, a college student from Japan. It was impossible not to listen to their conversation, so I learned that he is a business consultant whose area of expertise seems to be mergers of large corporations, most especially mergers of Japanese banks. But he has a Ph.D. in literature, and taught for years and years before his current position. Their conversation ranged from Japanese literature to Shakespeare to Nietzche to Plato. He can’t help but teach, can’t help but challenge the young man’s assumptions, can’t help but be infinitely polite and respectful in a slightly condescending sort of way. He seems to make the most of every opportunity: every conversation, every book, every thought wants to be captured and engaged.
He seems to know his strengths and be living into them. Even on a train, 3000 miles from his home in Washington D.C., with a college student speaking English as a second (or third or fourth for all I know) language.
I suppose that’s been a fairly constant theme in my own prayers over the last week or so. God, help my eyes be on you; help me find contentment; help me live into who you have made me to be. And I was content with myself today…without ANY help from the circumstances, mind you. I woke up with a crick in my neck…on less than six hours of sleep…shot the worst 9 holes of golf since the 7th grade (and the back nine wasn’t much better)…had to say “no” to an evening with a friend, because I wanted to see my family.
But I enjoyed the fact that I did get to spend time outside with friends…drank in the beauty of clouds racing across the sky…and I got to be a shoulder for a daughter to cry on as she went to sleep.
May God overwhelm us with his grace, and may we have the eyes and ears to see and hear it.