The book brought tears to my eyes as I read his “What I’d do differently” having just learned that he had passed.
Having just finished Calvin Miller’s memoir, I’m thankful to the Lord for his life, and even more for him having opportunity to write it down. While it was a good story, at several points I was struck with several convictions (as every good story ought to leave with us):
- Make sure you don’t love “the things of God” in place of God himself. Make seeking Jesus your daily endeavor. It is him with whom you’ll be spending eternity.
- The people we interact with are human beings, created in the image of God, and we ought always to treat them as such. To hell with the backbiting and intrigue, with gossip and disregard of other’s lives. Let us tread carefully when rebuking or criticizing and not strain at gnats.
- We are called to serve those around us, but our first duty of service is to the wife and children God has given us. Let no other project cause you to sacrifice them on the altar of success. At the end of your life you will not wish you had spent more time pursuing an agenda.
- The world is so big, don’t be so laser-focused that you only ever have time for the drive and miss all that’s around you. Art, creativity, and leisure are not necessarily distractions from the mission, but are part of who we are. Did Shakespeare waste his life, or did he serve God and his fellow man?
- Often the deepest joys are manufactured in the laboratory of pain.
Preface: A backward glance at upfront things
joy rarely erupts in the safe centers of our lives. Laughter may inhabit the middle, but not joy. Joy rises only along the edges. (xv)
Chapter 2: The Five Good Gifts of a Scoundrel
A matter once decided finds little betterment in being fondled. “What might have been” leads only to a dour rehearsal of “what ifs?” It consumes our good judgment. It negates reality with years of frivolous fictions. (24)
The last place you want to go worship is the place where people need you to be poor so they themselves can feel rich in the dispensation of their charity. There is something grandiose about giving a beggar a dime, but there’s nothing grandiose in receiving it. Beggars don’t ask for money so they can think well of themselves, but because feeling bad about themselves is usually less painful than starvation. (59)
Chapter 7: Coming of Age in Pond Creek
John and Sophie taught me that it is not enough to believe in something sincerely. It is also important to be informed. This was one of the morst important things I ever learned. The difference between being passionately wrong about a thing and being cooly informed is the wide chasm known as naivete. Most all of my life, it seems I have been helping people past the outcome of disconolate policies they picked up from being zealous about former errors. (155)
Chapter 8: Beating the underwear people
“Keep every plan out in the open, and you’ll never get in trouble. Keep the church finances that way too Let everybody know freely everything you know, and don’t have any special people you try to placate by giving them information first. When everybody owns the church and its dreams, the church is healthy. When there are little secret pockets of informants, decay is in the wind. Paul said over in 1 Corinthians 1:10 that the church must be perfectly united in its reasons for existing. The leader and the led are equal partners in the union. The church has got to be owned by everybody, son!” (177)
People who only kiss are too much interested in the fire that lies beyond it. Watch those who opt for holding hands instead. These know the life of partnership and offer the hand at evert patch of ice that threatens life. Hand-holders survive. Kissers slobber and move on to other empty promises of fire. (182)
Chapter 9: Dearly Beloved, We are Gathered Here a Bit Confused
Honor is the bedrock of every real promise and I believe it is the bedrock of every marriage that lasts. I will never love Barbara any more than the sacredness of my promises. In a minite I’m going to look her in the eyes and say, “For better, for worse, in sickness and in health, till death do us part.” And when I say that, I’m going to mean it as no one standing at any altar has ever meant it. I believe that somewhere out there in the future, I will be more certain about love, but I will never me more certain about integrity than I am right now. (195)
The mean temperature of Oklahoma in July is posted daily hyst outside the gates of hell to remind the damned just how bessed they are. (198)
Chapter 10: Umbilical Stretch
In the heart of my heart I can see that the end of all procreation is a simple symmetry. The children were never ours. They came from God through us to take their place in the kingdom of God. And when they were gone, all that once had made us rich, left us richer still. And I can see that when we sit alone surrounded by the thousand ghosts who made our lives full, we shall be real in their midst and agree that God meant us for this thing called parenting. And we are proof that once our children were gone the only treasure left was our togetherness. (224)
Chapter 11: Bloody Sundays
I could solve my God need if I could only be a little more “how to” than I am. Countless books tell pastors how to build empires, collect stock portfolios, preach in a clever fashion, and stay in the saddle during a church crisis. But I don’t want to succeed at any “how to” I can think of. Not primarily at least. I just want to be friends with God - close friends! (228)
Chapter 13: The Year with No Christmas
I do believe this: our lives belong to God, and I suppose it doesn’t much matter what we spend them doing as long as we desire his perfect will to be carried out in our love for Him. There was something exhilarating about a career change, if it can be called that. I found myself looking forward to professorhood. And the notion that it was what God wanted enhanced the days ahead. (284)
Chapter 14: The Calcutta Kid and Tombstone Shopping
Love exists only in the lives of those who have learned to kiss in the laboratory of pain. Love is the kiss that has laid aside by the fire of the honeymoon night, and found itself in the chaste hello of the cancer ward. Love is the trembling feel of faithful lips on a wrinkled hand. Love is a willingness to walk slow when our lover finds each plodding step a triumph over sluggish tendons. Come back to me you over-ecstatic, untried twenty year-olds, when you are broken by age, then tell me of your love once you have gained the right to define it. (309)
Chapter 17: The God of What’s Left
What would I do differently if I could do it all over again?
- I would put more emphasis on being a better husband and father…
- I’d celebrate my mother in her presence…
- I’d build a monument on Golgotha
- I’d babysit