Reflections by Maxie Dunnam

Reflections by Maxie Dunnam

“It isn’t any of our business, is it, Lord?” A little girl with a tender conscience asked this question in her evening prayer. She had seen a poor needy man on the street that day. “Oh, Mama,” she had said, “let’s help him.” The mother had answered, “Come along, dear. It isn’t any of our business.” 

That night, when the little girl had said, “Now I lay me down to sleep,” she added, “Oh God, bless that poor man on the comer.” And then remembering her mother’s words that day, she added, “But really, it isn’t any of our business, is it, Lord?” 

Unknowingly the little girl expressed a tragic fact. Many of us grow up conditioned by the feeling that the world and the people about us are none of our business. How untrue! Recall Dickens’ Christmas Carol and be haunted by those words of Jacob Marley’s Ghost. “Business! Mankind was my business. The common welfare was my business Charity, mercy, forbearance and benevolence were all my business. The dealings of my trade were but a drop in the water in the comprehensive ocean of my business!” 

Everyman is our business. What happens to the person next door, down the street, across town, yes, even beyond the ocean is our business. We too easily forget one of the clearest words of Jesus, “Inasmuch as you did it unto the least of these you did it unto me.” 

At our age, living in a community like Kirby Pines, it is easy to seclude ourselves, to shut off from others. We even think “other peoples’ lives are none of my business.” The fact is others are our business, and our setting gives us opportunity to take care of business by genuinely caring for one another. 

Because we are “retired,” or at an age that has moved us from a former “active” life, does not relieve us the responsibility of caring. To be sure, there are needs in our community and we can focus our caring locally. But our attention must be broader. I suggest we listen to the news to keep us sensitive to the needs of the world, thus our praying can be focused. And most of us can contribute financially as well as pray. I am convinced that praying and contributing financially to causes that are serving the world is a means of grace that enables us to be more purposefully Kingdom People. 

Put Your Thinking Cap On

I’m calling this column REFLECTIONS. To reflect is to ponder, to meditate and contemplate. Reflecting is thinking about something carefully. Because this is what I’ll be doing in in these REFLECTIONS, there may be a banner accompanying the article calling you to PUT ON YOUR THINKING CAP. The term “thinking cap” denotes an imaginary cap to be worn in order to facilitate thinking. My high school teacher who influenced me most would often say that when we were beginning to explore a new subject. 

In Truman Capote’s Other Voices, Other Rooms, the hero is about to walk along a heavy but rotting beam over a brooding, murky creek. Starting over, stepping gingerly . . . he felt he would never reach the other side: always he would be balanced here, suspended between land and in the dark and alone. Then feeling the board shake as Idabel started across, he remembered that he had someone to be together with. And he could go on. 

Isn’t this our experience? It certainly has been mine. I shiver at the thought of having to go it alone. I get chills when I consider where I might be if, at the right time, I had not felt the board shake because someone was walking with me! 

Life in community, particularly the Christian walk is a shared journey. Whether Christian or not, living in a community such as ours at Kirby Pines, we do not walk alone; others walk with us. Paul provided some guidance for our journey together. I urge you to read Gal. 6:1-6. 

Paul is talking about interrelatedness and interdependence. This principle is laced throughout Paul’s epistles. If one member suffers all suffer together; if one member is honored, all rejoice together (1 Cor. 12:26 R.S.V.). We who are strong ought to bear the failings of the weak (Rom. 15:1 R.S.V). The new life into which we have been born through Christ is a shared life. Because we belong to Christ, we belong to each other. In community, we are bound to each other, to Christ, and to God. Our life is a shared life.