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Those Who Didn't Know Better

by Terry Barlow
05/04/20
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My friend Carl and I were two young supposed spiritual warriors,  new to the battle. Another older friend was a veteran and reformed alcoholic  suffering from bursitis but willing to teach and he did it well.  He did it so well I turned my class over to him, to the dismay of our Pastor whom I neglected to consult about it. The veteran had left a dark past behind and had come to Alaska to make a fresh start. He burst into tears in the midst of one of his lessons about Peter's denials of Jesus.  It was a very moving moment. He took me fishing and invited my wife and daughters and I to dinner with him his wife, and small daughters.  I'll always remember the huge dish of ice cream he scooped out for me for dessert.  He was a generous man and he invested  a lot of his time as he went about discipling me. I didn't appreciate it fully at the time,  but he must have seen potential in me. Once after a sermon I preached he tried to exhort me to stick to the text of the Bible but I rejected his advice. I realize now he must have been right but I couldn't receive his criticism at the time. 
  Once when my friend Carl and I brought up his name in conversation Carl interjected,  "You mean the guy who makes the pained expressions like he's constipated or something.  We both laughed hysterically at that point.  Now I  understand his pained expressions as I make many of them myself and it's not quite so funny,  but then we knew nothing about the  sometimes chronic pains of aging.  We had suffered in some ways but not in that way. 
  We moved from that small sawmill town and Carl was able to reconcile with his estranged wife by barging into his old home where she was cohabiting with another man. I admired his boldness and the extreme lengths to which he was willing to go to restore his family.  As for my older teacher friend,  he and his family happened to move to the same town where I had relocated.  I saw him fairly often in an office where one of my new friends worked,  but we scarcely acknowledged each other. It was almost as if we had never known each other.  I must have seemed very ungrateful to him,  but today I appreciate him and what he taught me.  I even followed the path he traveled in the  same specialized area of teaching , and even Sunday school  and other goups . I didn't realize the impact he had on me and wish I could tell him today,  but he must be long gone by now,  since he was about 30 years older than I. It teaches me all this,  that when we don't think we're appreciated we probably aren't at the time fully,  but that doesn't mean we won't be deeply appreciated  in a later day. by those same ones that seem to take us for granted now. Anyway,  we don't do what we do to be appreciated by other people  but to please the One who assigns the work.  Still at times God allows us to feel and receive others ' gratitude  and we'd be liars if we didn't admit it felt good and even great!