The parable of the lost sheep is not only about a young shepherd carrying the newly found sheep back home but about the sheep’s maddening habit of running away. A good shepherd may be exasperated, exhausted, and frustrated by the sheep’s foolishness, but he or she doesn’t leave them to their own devices.
A road trip story can be humorous, suspenseful, or romantic, but as BBC reviewer Jordan Hoffman says, “Its essence is always the same: an outward journey that triggers and signifies its characters’ inward transformation.”
In The Seven Storey Mountain, Thomas Merton’s classic memoir, the writer monk describes his first visit, in April of 1941, to the Trappist Abbey of Gethsemani in Kentucky for a retreat.
In the movie Charlie Wilson’s War, CIA officer Gust Avrakotos (played by Philip Seymour Hoffman) cautions Congressman Wilson (played by Tom Hanks) not to read too much into the success they had in helping Afghanistan against a Soviet threat. He then tells Wilson the story of the Zen master and the little boy:
When my brother lived in Virginia I enjoyed my visits there. One 4th of July I watched fireworks as I flew over towns and cities below. I once drove 13 hours straight and rang his doorbell at 6 p.m., not a minute past the arrival time I gave him. Often I took side-trips through Pennsylvania or Maryland. I went to celebrate his retirement. I traveled there to help him prepare for surgery he was given only a small chance of surviving. Ten years later I was there for what would be a last visit, only a week later returning to bring his ashes home. I miss him and the trips there.
HOPE IS the last thing that dies in a person, a 17th-century French writer once said, but he had a cynical take on this idea. He believed hope was a pleasant deception that made life tolerable. The story of Lazarus, however, shows that hope is much more than that. It doesn’t make life tolerable; it makes life possible.
ALL LINED up and waiting to see which of them Samuel would pick, David’s brothers come across as a bit full of themselves not to mention a little naïve. Not only did their “lofty stature” not make a difference, but the one who would end up getting the crown was off doing some actual work.
When I was studying in Ireland, my friend Olive invited me to spend a holiday weekend with her family in County Kerry. Kerry is a gorgeous mountainous area with rocky peninsulas that jut out into the sea, friendly fishing villages, lakes nestled in valleys, and trails for hiking and horseback riding.
To choose not to hear, then, to choose not to listen to God’s voice—encouraging you, consoling you, challenging you—is to choose spiritual loneliness, to willingly cut yourself off from love and guidance and the rewards of a relationship with the Divine Word.
THE NOVEL The Last Temptation of Christ has been criticized because the author saw Jesus tempted not only at the beginning of his ministry but all through his life, even when dying on the cross: to escape and lead a normal life as a husband and father. Those who object seem to forget that the Letter to the Hebrews explicitly says Jesus was “tested in every way, yet without sin” (4:15). Temptation itself is not a sin. It does, however, come in some subtle forms.